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'''How the Art came to Maulaugadorn''' by Rhue del'Asandro

In the days when the North was young, one ambitious man wanted to hurl back orcs and owlbears and all with his shining sword and carve himself a kingdom. This man was called Maulaugadorn. His face was handsome, his hands swift and sure, and his temper fierce. He swept all before him and came early to his dream.

As he sat upon his new and gleaming throne, the sword that had hewn many hundred heads winking naked across his knees, a restlessness came upon him, for his dream was hollow, and he wanted more. Then did his servants come to him with word that his sister, the gentle Alandalorne, was seized with a strange affliction. Fire poured from her lips and played up and down her slender curves and limbs.

Maulaugadorn the Mighty rose and strode to the chamber of his sister, who was wont to keep silent and speak but with her smiles. He found that her affliction was so, and the fires did rage, so that Alandalorne crouched bare and ashamed in a scorched corner of one room, with all smouldering around her.

He spoke to her, amazed. She swore she knew not how this malady had come upon her. At last he believed her, and straight away commanded that his best horse and a dozen oxen be sacrificed in flames to the god Tempus, who was his god. When the flames of the roasting were a-roar, Maulagadorn cried in the name of Tempus in a great voice and prayed, demanding to know what had so afflicted his kinlady.

From out of the flames came the Helm that Hovers, the deep voice of Tempus that is all battlesteel clanging upon armour was in his mind. Tempus told him that Alandalorne suffered no malady, but was naturally able to call upon the Weave and had just now come into her power. There were many beings, human and not, who could work magic when they mastered such might, and they were called sorcerers.

Maulaugadorn asked straightaway, "So is this sorcery a weapon like my sword?". Tempus answered him that it could be. Then Maulaugadorn called every wise and learned person he could find to him and demanded they tell him all the secrets of sorcery.

Yet when he stood alone with all the runes they had drawn and powders they had sprinkled around him glowing, no fire came into his hands for all his straining. And he was wroth. He cried out that such trickery was ill laid upon him - and out of the glow came a quiet voice he had not heard before.

This voice told him that only a few mortals could call upon the Weave for themselves, and all others had to learn the Art by crafting spells, or using the magic of others who'd gone before. Maulaugadorn demanded to know who spoke to him, and Mystra the lady of Mysteries made herself known.

Maulaugadorn demanded to know how this Art could be made a weapon in his hands so that he could rule. Mystra answered that long years of study and work lay ahead of him, as it lies before all, but he could set forth, if he would, that day on the road that would take him in time to string the Malaugrym.

Maulaugadorn frowned and set aside those words, seizing only upon the sight of the road to magic she spun with her words. He received with gratefulness a spell she placed burning in his mind.

In return for it, he was never to suppress magic in others. With this new weapon blazing in his mind, Maulaugadorn gave her great thanks and ran forth from that room. He never heard her final words. "The Art is not always a gift one should be thankful for. It is what one makes of it - a new weapon, or something much more."

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