ON THE NATURE, HISTORY, and METAPHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY of the MORTAL REALMS, by Fr. C.V. VonSilence.

A Preface to the 4th Edition, with some words upon the Artes of High Magic and Natural Science in these Mortal Realms

Fr. Cornelius VonSilence, M.PhD Colegiate Arcane of Hallowheart, Golvaria Aqshy. Year of our lord 347 A.o.S ———————————————————————————-

The Mortal Realms are Vast...indeed it is said without reservation, that they are vast beyond imagining! The Mortal Realms are old as well, older than we can reckon with time or timepiece.

All the boundaries of the realms in time and space fray at the edges. Distance means very little in the lands so far from hearth and home that up becomes down, left becomes right, and near becomes very very far away indeed! Time also bends into shapes we cannot comprehend in the time BEFORE time, which is decidedly MOST of it, and the time AFTER time, which is very nearly all of it! The first life age of The Realms was brief, but also aeons beyond counting, and the future is an ocean with no horizon.

There are rules, of course. Here in the civilized world, far from the edges of creation, we find everything to be measurable, reasonably predictable, and marvelously consistent: The elegant and unassuming Laws of natural science (which are my forte), the bombastic and superior laws of Aetheric Mechanics and Magical Dynamics, (with which I have a great deal of classroom experience) and even the inscrutable laws of the gods -which some call “fate”- etched, as they are, into the skies of High Azyr and the zodiac of the aetheric void that wheels above our heads — although between you and me, gentle reader, I don’t put much stock in Fate. Astrology is a damned wooly business! (but don’t let my esteemed colleagues on the hundred and eleventyith floor know I said so!)

Our realms are awash in available power, rushing like a gale force wind from areas of concentrated power to areas becalmed just as water is wont to flow downhill towards the sea. This fountainhead of energy swirls about us at times like a hurricane, rushes beneath the earth like a mighty river, and falls upon us like a gentle rain; it even sometimes builds up in pools or frozen drifts of potential...and all this, sometimes, in the space of less than an hour!

This great ever-churning dymano is the beating heart of the realms, and the armature to which they are welded, binding them to one another as a riverbend gathers a village around it, or a nursing sow her hungry little piglets. This fountain of power is, of course, largely invisible to mortal eyes. We often note the consequent phenomena, which can be spectacular! (the Sunlight of Hysh, for example, the titanic storms of Azyr, or even the titanic godbeasts of Ghur which are too vast for natural law to reckon with on its own). These wonders notwithstanding, the winds of magic themselves are quite unnoticeable to the untrained and unagumented eye. But the ARE there, I assure you, and they CAN be reasoned with.

There is the raw magic of the hated OTHER Place, mutagenic and uncontrollable and utterly anethema to reason which we may rightly shun and despise. But our beloved MORTAL realms, both collocated and infinitely far apart, split this raw flux into elemental components, as the glassmaker’s prism splits the light of hysh into its component colors. Each wind, although predominant in the realm for which we name them, suffuses every one of the realms in a dance of creation and uncreation too magnificently complex for mere mortals to understand. We may reckon with this immensity in only the roughest and most vulgar terms which we humans call “Magic.”

This magical power is at the root of all light and life in our realms. Consider the light of the sun, whose energy is powered by the realm-sphere of Hysh. This light nourishes plants, where the wind of Gyran blows. plants feed animals, and the wind of Ghur hums in their hunger and their hunt, and when animals die their flesh feeds the worms and their dying breath becomes the wind of Shyish; of death and of endings.

So, what began as pure Hyshian energy then engendered light, which engendered life, which begat struggle, and finally death. The whole cycle Of life has, at its spine, an electrical current of wind and power that blows from Hysh into Gyran into Ghur and finally into Shyish. Every natural process in our realms is grafted onto a magical framework just like this, and where one wind refracts into another, enormous power is released. The power to grow a tree, wear a mountain range to gravel, or turn lead to gold. All of these common and uncommon miracles eventually deposit the last of their motive power as they bow drowsily into the sleep of Shyish, the Amethyst Wind, and the final resting place of magical power utterly spent by the manic ballet of life in these Mortal Realms.

My name is Fr. Cornelius Vertibrandt VonSilence (Pronounced voon-SEE-lens). And the Wind of Endings is my speciality. I am, at this time, Dean of the Department of Amethyst Artes and 32nd degree Frater of the College of Hallowheart.

My real passion, however, is for those things we once knew that have been forgotten. I am, dear reader, a sorcerer by trade but in my heart I am an Archeologist, natural philosopher, amateur zoologist, anatomist, and Historian. While it is The Amethyst Wind that blows in my sails, my prow is pointed ever towards our ancient past and towards those hoary mysteries which we have forgotten but should not have. Will you, dear reader, join me on this journey? I sincerely hope so!