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Prologue
"You can't do this!" Palm said, dazed,
disbelieving. "How can you leave us?"
"We make this sacrifice to save the
creation we love, my son," Fizban
answered. He shifted his gaze to the bodies of
the knights, to the handkerchief
he held in his hand. "Just as
they sacrificed to save what
they loved."
The power of the heart has come to the people of Ansalon at a spiritually confusing time. Much of the world is now under the domination of the Great Dragons, the Knights of Takhisis, or some other force of Evil. As if this sad truth were not enough to break the spirit of the people, they also have had to come to terms with the fact that the gods have departed the world again, just as they did more than four hundred years ago after the Cataclysm. Just over thirty years ago, in that twilight time following the Chaos War, people began to realize the pantheon of Krynn had left them. Priests of the true gods - in other words, those who served the Holy Orders of the Stars - were the first to feel they had lost their direct connection to their deities. Although their prayers were no longer being answered, most of these priests and clerics hesitated to admit this to the general public. It did not take any great insight, however, for the common folk to realize that something was amiss. As the Great Dragons unleashed their destructive powers on Ansalon, what had begun as a mere concern grew into the view that indeed the gods had again abandoned Krynn. Not everyone, however, has come to accept this divine absence. Many priests, who received the clearest evidence of the gods' departure, blame the Chaos War for the gods' distance of late. Holy Orders of the Stars At the close of the Fourth Age, the world came close to unraveling into the Chaos it was formed of. Although the Chaos god ultimately abandoned his plan to destroy Krynn, the other gods still fear his possible return, proponents of this theory claim. So, while the gods have not actually departed, they must work their will more subtly than before, so as not to reawaken the Chaos god and risk the destruction of their children on Krynn. No longer could the gods grant their divine favor directly to their worshipers, as they did in ages past. Instead, they presented a tiny spark of their magical strength and divine essence directly to every intelligent creature on Krynn. Thanks to the lingering influence of Chaos, this gift settled imperfectly on the people of the world. Some have a greater affinity for understanding and controlling the divine power of the spirit than do others. Furthermore, the awareness of this power does not come in the same way to everyone - a tradesman from Palanthas is less likely to discover his mystic potential than a more spiritual individual. So, while the gods may never again walk the earth, they have not abandoned their children to the whims of a mad god, explain members of the Holy Orders of the Stars. The argument that mystic magic is the gods' divine gift has led the worship of the true gods to enjoy a slow but steady renaissance of spiritual power, for the people of Ansalon want to believe they are not alone. A Scholary View Other arguments, primarily those of scholars, claim that the above view of "divine" magic is only true in part. Indeed, the ability to wield mystical and sorcerous magic may be a gift of the gods, the sages say, but it is an unintentional one, and one that was "granted" ages ago as a by-product of the creation of the world. According to the Iconochronos of Astinus Lorekeeper, the world arose from the High God's desire. Reorx fashioned the world out of Chaos itself, hammering it into shape over the course of millennia. The creatures that followed also resulted from the desires of the gods, and they, too, arose from a combination of the will of the gods and primordial Chaos. Thus did every creature on Krynn bear a tiny mote of divine essence from the Age of Starbirth. It is this divine essence that gives people the power to wield magic, the scholars say - in fact, this essence was the sole source of wizardly spellcasting before the gods of magic taught mortals High Sorcery. A mystical counterpart to this "wild magic" was found among what came to be known as heathen priests and druids. However, in those early days, mankind never really understood the nature of magic - a failing that created problems with early magical experiments. As humans and other mortals delved ever deeper into this source of limitless power, they came ever closer to unleashing a power that could rapidly spin out of control, causing great destruction and risking the integrity of the very fabric of reality. Such a tragedy occurred during the Second Dragon War millennia ago, when a group of wild mages caused magical havoc in their attempt to subdue their dragon foes. The three gods of magic then taught these mages the power of High Sorcery as a means of controlling the release of magical power, '['he Orders of High Sorcery relied more upon the ability to memorize the gods' highly complex arcane formulae than any inherent magical talent. This more controlled approach to magic eventually eclipsed the more "natural" wild magic. As time went on, even the early priests tapped the powers of the gods more and more, and the magical force of the world less and less. The gods eventually came to grant such supplications for aid to exercise some control over the magic their followers used, although spiritual magic was not normally as dangerous as sorcerous or "elemental" magic. All Magic is One? From more radical scholars comes the theory that sorcery and mysticism spring from essentially the same magic. Some people seem predisposed toward understanding one rather than the other but, in essence, the two types of magic are not so different. This theory has gained some ground with recent discoveries of bridges between the two types of magic. However, most researchers consider these findings exceptions rather than rules. They continue to hold that the two types of magic remain distinctly different from each other, and that any crossover results more from imperfect human categorization than anything else.
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