Izlude the Sorcerer - AR 170 Lillian Williams Transcription

This book has been transcribed by Lilian Williams in AR 170. The original author is unknown.

---------------------

Izlude was a sorcerer in the earliest days of Arelith. An agent of discord and evil, he used his considerable presence to become an arch manipulator; sowing doubt, confusion and ultimately bending the very will of many he encountered. The story of his downfall is still spoken of, even today, though few truly believe it to be true.

It was said the one emotion he could not truly inspire through his many machinations was love, and he became enraged when the one person he truly wished it from refused to grant it. Filled by love and hate in equal measure, the quest which this set him upon eventually led him into the deepest realms of Faerun, there to learn the secrets of the legendary illithids; the truest masters of mental domination. Little is known of the bargain that was struck, or how he betrayed it, only that Izlude returned to the city with secrets of the Thought Sphere stolen from the mind flayers.

He used them to craft a mirror, one that he then presented to the woman who had refused him. As she looked into it, her mind and soul were captured in her reflection, transferring her very essence into the glass. Powerless, and with all other senses stripped away, she was left only yo look on at the body she had vacated. A body that now belonged to the wretched sorcerer, and one that he intended to keep forever in his chambers, dooming her to bear witness from her prison.

Izlude never realised this ambition, as that very night the illithids themselves entered the city, shuffling along the alleyways and dulling the mind of any they passed, they surrounded the home of the sorcerer and began their incantations. Come the dawn they, Izlude and his mirror vanished.

The woman walked free from the house, there to share the tale of the price Izlude paid for crossing the mind flayers. She told how after her release they took control of the sorcerer's mind, forcing him to stare into his own creation, replacing her within it.

Izlude has been left, alone in their lair, to watch as his own body aged and died before the mirror. Judging by the state of his remains it is clear that the illithids prolonged his life for many decades. All that remains is the reflection of a broken mind, driven near mindless by the torment he has endured.