Bane
"Something Wicked This Way Comes"
Excerpted from Netheril, the Kingdom of Mages, by Strenthi Renn, Year of the Goat*
...and that is when the end began for Hemmontept, First Sorcerer of Netheril.
The year was 317 pf.** Hemmontept's court archmage, a treacherous wizard named Sammaster, presented him with a gift, a mighty and magickal sword which Sammaster himself had forged. The gift, however, proved to be not a bid for favor, as Hemmontept assumed, but rather an assassination. Sammaster knew he could never hope to defeat Hemmontept in a spellwar, so he had resorted to trickery.
The sword had been cursed, but cursed so subtly and powerfully that not even Hemmontept's spells of inquiry alerted him to the weapon's true nature. It began corrupting Hemmontept's mind, eventually driving him to such ferocious acts of bloodlust and sadism that his own High Court was forced to band together and slay him.
But Hemmontept's death was not Sammaster's only goal. Sammaster had become fascinated, indeed obsessed, with Hemmontept's slave wyrms.*** He would spend hours speaking with them, learning from them as best he could, and with Hemmontept's death he saw an opportunity to be of use to them. Sammaster broke the mighty spells which bound them.
The wyrms quickly slaughtered everyone in the capital of Entharii, but that wasn't enough, not for all the decades they had been kept as slaves. These wyrms called more wyrms, who called even more wyrms, until hundreds of the evil beasts descended upon the kingdom. The battles were indeed mighty, but not even the combined might of the remaining Netheril mages could hold back the wyrms. The entire kingdom was laid to waste overnight. The lush and fruitful plains of Netheril gave way to the desolation of the Great Sand Sea****, which even to this day continues to grow in size...
* 609 years ago
** Between 1,500 and 2,000 years ago
*** References to wyrms are generally considered to mean either wyverns or rhemorhaz
**** Today known as Anauroch
...however, despite the weapon's power and evil nature, it has always been rumored that there is a way in which to break its curse. Many mages believe that the sword's power stems from the spirit of a slain warrior trapped inside the blade. It is theorized that by allowing the spirit of the sword's wielder to enter the sword itself, such as by a spell of Vitae Migras,***** then the wielder could destroy the sword's curse by defeating the spirit within. This is the only hypothesis ever put forward, but it has never, to any mage's knowledge, been attempted.
My esteemed colleague, the mage Jhareeta, cautions me, however, that this procedure would need to be initiated by someone other than the sword's wielder. Although the sword is not actually considered to be sentient, it has shown in the past that any attempts to harm or mistreat it are dealt with harshly, usually fatally. Therefore, the wielder and sword would need to be somehow subdued before the spell could be cast. Furthermore, should the wielder fail to defeat the sword's spirit he would be killed.
Having spoken then of the sword itself, let's now turn our attention to it's first victim, Hemmontept. Hemmontept was born...
***** "Soul Migration"