"Ed Greenwood - Volos Guide to All Things Magical" - читать интересную книгу автора (Greenwood Ed)

Volo's Guide to All Things Magical

As Edited and Amended by Elminster of Shadowdale
(However Hard He Might Care to Deny it)

by Ed Greenwood
with Eric L. Boyd


Elminster's Introduction
What a pretentious title. Not even I would dare to pen something that purported to be a guide to all things magical. Volo did not even try. What he foisted upon Faerunians hungry for enough secrets of magic to make them rulers of the Realms was a grab bag full of odds and ends about the Art: notes about this and that, gossip, and distorted fragments of spells and processes copied from spellbooks on the sly or mis-remembered from brief glimpses snatched in places and on occasions when he dared not write anything down.

In the interests of reader safety I was forced to spearhead an exhaustive search for every last copy of his masterpiece of horrors - I think we got them all-and then convince him of the error of his ways. Just about every other mage who had seen the work offered to help in this little task. After due passage of time, I agreed that something called Volos Guide to All Things Magical (that title-what an arrogant longnose!) should become available across Faerun , if only to stop greedy adventurers from getting themselves killed in the defenses of every mage's tower between Evermeet and Kara-Tur in an attempt to gain a copy of the work rumored to yet to survive.' Yet mark ye -it was not going to be the same opus Volo fondly thought of as his great gift to all seekers after magic. I set to work on the only copy of the text remaining (safely kept up to that point in my library) to expunge the worst of his distortions and just plain errors in order to keep Faerun from being overrun with uncontrolled elementals and worse summoned extraplanar beasts-to identify just one consideration.

And then, of course, a little minor surgery was necessary on what he got right. I really do not think the Realms would be better off without any wizards around to keep the beholders, dragons, drow, orc hordes, petty sword-swinging tyrants, insane Baneliches, and other evils at bay-and that is what would have happened if Volo's little list of carefully pilfered command words, phrases of activation, truenames, and the like had fallen into the hands of the inhabitants of wider Faerun Some things only the magically enlightened, whether wizards or priests, are meant to know-really! Accordingly, I considered just what delicate deletions to make and then went out and got a good sharp meat axe.

When a small pile of tattered scraps of parchment were all that remained of Volo's opus, I set to work restating his fumbling prose into understandable terms' and chopping the most irresponsible blow-up-all-Toril spells. What emerged is that which ye hold in your hands: a few fragments of useful material about magic. These are only the bones of Volo's colossus of magical revelation, but at least they are now the right bones to keep the thing standing up.

Spells found in other recently released volumes of Realmslore, I by the way, for the most part are not repeated herein unless substantial amplifications or corrections of earlier accounts are also included. With that said, the reader is warned that to act on much of the information in these pages is inherently dangerous and may even earn the dabbler some perilous foes. Moreover, much of the information herein' is dangerously wrong!

On the other hand, the revised work in your hands does have value as a source of ideas - a spur to the sorcerously creative, if ye will. A crucial part of the Art and any understanding of it is to recognize that there are many ways to achieve a desired effect or result, just as many cooks prepare the same dish in different ways. What Volo says herein may be a way of doing thus or so, but bear in mind that it is often (nay, usually) not the only way of doing it.

Priests will find some lore of practical use to them in this book, and mages who follow other paths to mastery of magic will find that what appears herein is almost wholly concerned with magic as practiced by humans dwelling in Faerun . Thankfully, Volo resisted the temptation to set down wizard jokes in print, so none of them are perpetuated here.'

For all my work, this tome is still a grab bag of this and that and not a comprehensive guide at all. That is something that can probably never be written. Only the beings known to us as Mystra and Azuth could possibly encompass the subject, and I can conceive of nothing that would induce them to write a work that lays bare in a few pages what should take mortals a lifetime of careful study and experimentation to learn the paltry beginnings of.

To readers who trust in the sword or the dagger and hope to find in these pages a guide to how to lay mages low, I tender the following piece of very good advice: "Wizards? Avoid 'em. Life's better when ye're not a frog." That anonymous trail saying of the Sword Coast lands has been around a long, long time, but it is best never forgotten-if ye take my point.

Happy reading, then, dabblers in magic-and try to leave a little of the Realms still standing when ye are done, will ye not?

--Elminster of Shadowdale
The Secrets Laid Bare
Volumes such as this one come along but once in a lifetime. You are wise indeed to have opened this tome after, I hope, laying down good coin for it-for your eyes now look upon more tore useful to spellcasters than can be found anywhere else in all Faerun . Oh, there are more powerful spells, and books that bristle with more of them, but this is the place where lore about the use of such magic appears. The reader of Volo's Guide to All Things Magical can gain a brief taste of the rich variety and many-fold complexity of the Art of wielding magic-at least, as human mages outside of secretive Thay and Halruaa practice it.

Writing this book almost got me killed - or worse, transformed into a helpless shape and placed in a spell-governed situation of endless torment where death would remain forever elusive, but the raw pain would make it desirable (or so a certain Catanarla the Crimson Cloaked, a sorceress of Telflamm, promised me). Many mages, it seemed, objected to my revelations of their pet spells, past peccadilloes, secret words, and names of power. Elminster and Khelben between them saw to it that I lived-though not before amusing themselves by delivering me into the claw - er, graceful hands of the Simbul, Witch-Queen of Aglarond, who demonstrated upon my person what the consequences of future unauthorized sorcerous journalism would be. It is not much fun to be thrust into bird form and forced to fly full-tilt into a stone wall, not to mention smelling all the hair burnt out of my head, along with other more-horrific-experiences.

I will not even open the subject of all the curses that are riding upon me as we speak, ready to strike if I do delve further into any means of revealing the secrets of sorcery. Suffice it to say that I am going to be a very good boy where dealings with wizards are concerned for a long time to come. They have promised me that.

This book of mine, however (suitably butcher - er, revised and embellished by the vigilant Elminster), will now see a wider audience than I had ever hoped it would, and some, at least, of the juicy secrets I uncovered will be shared with readers who are not all I hope) crotchety old archwizards or liches already. So welcome, and read on: magnificent power and fascinating lore about it awaits thee, as old Elminster might say.

This spot is perhaps the best place to touch on a few odd topics that do not fit anywhere else in this dissertation. They are but a few of the fascinating things I have learned about sorcery in Faerun . Read on, and discover a whole book of them. It is my hope that my Faerun readers find this work both enjoyable and practical and that it goads them into at least investigating magic. Life for all in the Realms can only become richer and better if there are many folk who can wield a modest amount of magic rather than a few stunted old graybeards' who wield a lot!

-- Volothamp


The Mage Fairs
Many wild legends and tavern tales across the Realms mention these wild, spell-hurling occasions, and only a few of these stories exaggerate what goes on at a Mage Fair. These gatherings are open only to wizards, and the usually remote sites at which they are held are guarded by heavily spell-shielded guardian mages (often levitating) who permit entry only to those who demonstrate an ability to cast spells.

Initially held once a decade, then every five years, and for a brief time every three summers, Mage Fairs are now annual affairs, their increasing frequency driven by the enormous rise in the numbers of competent mages in Faerun during the current century. At a Mage Fair, mages of all backgrounds meet under the safety of an agreed-upon set of rules' to conduct Rus iness. They negotiate and sign contracts, non-aggression and territorial agreements, and research pacts, and they sell services, spells, training, enchanted items, rare material components, potions, and information. Young mages lusting after a reputation and elders desiring to attract followers or pupils show off their mastery of difficult or powerful spells, and would-be masters and would-be apprentices take their measures of each other, trying to find the right match. Several well-known mages in cities up and down the Sword Coast sell complex spell disguises (for 1,000 GP per layer, with the simplest having eight layers and most running to at least double that) for use by wizards who dare not attend a Mage Fair as themselves. (Wizards of any age or accomplishment seem to acquire enemies or at least unscrupulous rivals, as easily as most of us breathe.)