The Legend of Nostur'yl Part 16 - Spells of Power

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Spells of Power Prellis the scribe Oct 3 2000 5:27PM

It had taken several weeks for the slave mage, Rathgith, to determine the best course of action to raise the obsidian post from its watery grave. He knew the basics of what was required, a modified telekinesis spell of sorts, but to grab hold of something which he could not see and drag it so far through the water was another problem altogether. So he had set about the task of searching out old manuscripts and doing research into the spell he was to create.

Throughout the period of his research, Rathgith had begun to enjoy his freedom. Freedom from the icy prison where he had lived for so long, freedom from the harassment he received from the ice fiends when his master was not about, and most importantly, freedom from his master the frost daemon. It was something he would soon miss once the spell was completed, but for the mean time he had grown to enjoy his visits to Rivendell and the drink he shared there. He had even come to enjoy the company of those people who sought to destroy Nostur’yl, the daemon he now worked so diligently for.

By the time the slave mage had come to an understanding of the spell he was to create, and knew what would be needed for it, he honestly considered many of the towns folk in Rivendell to be friends. Friends, the word struck a cord in his mind whenever he thought about these people. How long had it been since he had friends? There were the other mages within the ice dungeon, the pets of the ice fiends, but they were social at best and bitter rivals more often than not. No, friendship was something he had not felt in more years then he cared to remember.

For many more nights Rathgith would sit pouring over his books and find his thoughts drifting back to the people he had met - and then his thoughts would turn to Nostur’yl. The daemon lord was not the harsh taskmaster the frost daemon was, and surely not as horrid as some made him out to be, but he was a threat to this realm, to these people, to his friends. Surely something could be done?

It would be during one of slave mages excursions to Rivendell that the answer would strike him. For many years he had been privately researching a spell his master knew nothing about, a spell to bind the frost daemon in a fixed form. This was an area of magic he was entirely uncertain of, but the hope of being freed from his master had driven him to great lengths to succeed. Such lengths that during his initial research into teleportation and telekinesis he had gone so far as to endanger the party by forcing a confrontation with a Lord of the Abyss in Hythloth in order to obtain the ribs he believed would be needed for such a spell. Rathgith sat that night in his makeshift lab and pondered converting the spell to work upon a daemon lord.

And so it began, Rathgith would spend a day with Nostur’yl’s allies, gathering the special reagents needed for the spell to raise the post, only to spend the following day with the daemon’s enemies, searching out the reagents needed for the binding spell. It did not take long for word to reach back to Nostur’yl on this betrayal, but for some reason the daemon was not overly upset.

As a daemon, Nostur’yl understood the nature of a contract and knew very well that the slave mage was bound to provide the spell that would raise the obsidian post. Completion of that contract would take place by Rathgith and that was all that mattered at this point. The mage could fill his fancy with dreams of binding a daemon lord; perhaps he was even powerful enough to bind the frost daemon, but it would take power equal to the now dead Oracle to hinder the likes of Nostur’yl. So to the daemon lord, it mattered little that Rathgith worked upon the two spells of power at once, one to help and one to hinder. In the end the post would be his and the abyssal gate opened.