🔮 MEMORY LIST

OPEN TO ALL —
🔮 AS A CHILD, GALE CAN ALREADY COMMAND THE WEAVE, HE SUMMONS SCORES OF RABBITS AND MAGMA MEPHITS, MUCH TO THE SURPRISE OF HIS MOTHER. ON MYSTRA'S COMMAND, GALE IS VISITED BY THE GREAT WIZARD ELMINSTER, WHO HAS HEARD OF HIS TALENTS.

You could have been no more than eight summers' old, clutching your mother's apron, eyebrows singed off by the fireball you'd unleashed into your neighbor's rose bush. You were crying because the flowers were so beautiful, and you did not mean to destroy them.

How kind, how eager, how brilliant you were. And yet so naive. You could not yet see that power so carelessly begets destruction, but so too might your good nature be the guiding light by which your abilities shape our world for the better.

🔮 STILL A YOUNG BOY AND OH SO LONELY, GALE SUMMONS TARA THE TRESSYM AFTER HIS PARENTS DENY HIM A KITTEN. SHE BECOMES HIS CLOSEST COMPANION.

What appears at first to be a particularly rambunctious kitten is far too quick, too clever to be just that. In time, your beloved friend Tara will sprout wings and speak the common tongue. A Tressym, the rarest of familiars for a wizard or sorcerer. Only the most experienced mages can connect with so brilliant a creature.

And you know that a tressym will only accept a good-hearted partner. You must be worthy, now and always.

🔮 GALE’S MOTHER, MORENA, SETS ABOUT TEACHING HER SON TO COOK. SHE REMINDS HIM IT’S ESSENTIAL HE CAN CARE FOR HIMSELF WITHOUT THE AID OF MAGIC.

Your mother loves you. You have always known this. You will never doubt it.

Even after the loss of your father, she works to ensure you receive every advantange. Tutors from across the land, any book you desire. You will be great because she has supported you to be.

🔮 AT THE ACADEMY, GALE STEALS THE FAMED BLACKSTAFF AND OPENS A PORTAL TO LIMBO.

You are so, so young, only a few months into your studies, but you know you are destined for greatness. Elminster and Mystra both have promised you this. The others do not believe you, of course, so you must prove it.

You will cast with the famed Blackstaff itself, a focus that can only be wielded by the most powerful mages. It is too easy to spell open the lock to his chambers, to bypass the wards and uncover the illusions that hide the staff. It is easier still to thieve it into the hall and cast a simple spell, opening a portal.

However, instead of revealing your first-year dormitory, so you might greet your peers in triumph, you find found yourself pulled into Limbo, facing a very irritated Death Slaad. The Blackstaff himself comes to the rescue, hauling you back from the brink and straight into several months of writing lines.

Or rather, finessing your autograph.

🔮 GALE DIPS OUT OF THE BLACKSTAFF BALL, WISHING MYSTRA WAS THERE WITH HIM. (CW: GROOMING)

The Blackstaff Ball is the event of the season, as magical as its namesake. Your hand is more in demand than it has ever been before, fluttering lashes and hopeful eyes upon the one they know will ascend to legend, like the Chosen who came before him. There are individuals you indulge. A clever botanist, beloved by your mother and kissed once, at the first soirée of the year. A conjurer who you suspect could give you a challenge, if he applied himself to his studies half so much as his flirtations. What a delight it is, to trip the light fantastic in their company. To be among people like yourself.

And yet — before the Waterdhavian waltz begins, you skirt a bladesinger who catches your earring, your token on a fingertip and slip away from the laughter, the dancing lights, the clinking glasses.

You can't quite describe it, the need you sometimes feel to see her—to draw the filaments of fantasy into existence. No sculpture or painting could ever do her justice, only the fabric that she herself is and embodies. 

When she deigns to give it, her attention feels like love, but perhaps it is not quite that.

It is most certainly love to you.

🔮 AFTER GRADUATING WITH HONOURS, GALE BECOMES AN ARCHMAGE. HE IS NAMED A PROTECTOR OF WATERDEEP.

You are the archmage of a great city. You are the champion of the goddess of magic, enacting her will and ridding the realm of all that is dark and dangerous. Few are more lauded — or envied — in wizarding circles.

🔮 ELMINSTER TELLS GALE — AND THE REST OF HIS COMPANIONS — THAT MYSTRA HAS ASKED FOR HIS DEATH IN EXCHANGE FOR HER FORGIVENESS.

Elminster's visit weighs heavy on your mind. His face you did not expect to see again. When you last saw him, you were in your prime. No orb, no tadpole. A mage of growing renown, all power, pride, and potential —beloved by the goddess of magic herself.

It's one thing to have fallen from such heights, but to have Elminster himself now witness your humiliation is almost unbearable. His disappointment cuts deeper even than Mystra's. He was your hero. While most know of Elminster the legend, few know him as you have. He plucked you from obscurity. offered you his guidance. His faith. And most recently, his pity.

You take comfort in the fact that he did not wish to deliver this message. As Chosen, Elminster could not have denied the goddess you once shared. The truth is, you were living on borrowed time already. Consuming those items would only have kept the orb sated for so long.

Mystra commands all magic. Salvation, if such a thing exists, is hers to grant or withold.

You know what you must do, but you're terrified.

The slate will be clean, wrongs will be righted, the Absolute will be gone…and you along with it.

CLOSED TO EXISTING CR —
🔮 MYSTRA APPEARS TO A YOUNG GALE AND OFFERS TO MENTOR HIM FOR HIS SINGULAR SKILL IN THE ART OF MAGIC. (CW: GROOMING)

You are what one might call a wizard prodigy, who from an early age could not only control the weave, but compose it, much like a musician or a poet. Your skill has earned you the attention of the Mother of Magic herself, the lady of mysteries, the goddess Mystra.

She comes first to you in whispers. Lavender and rosewater on the breeze. It is not long before she visits your dreams and dotes upon your studies.

🔮 MYSTRA ASKS GALE TO BE HER CHOSEN, BESTOWING THE TOKEN HE NO LONGER WEARS. (CW: GROOMING)

As Mystra reveals more of herself to you, she becomes your teacher, your muse, and in time, your lover. She shows you the secrets behind the veils — the gossamer veils first, draped across the Weave itself. The delicate veils next, draped across her body. “Chosen one,” she whispers, as she slips them off completely.

It is no small thing to be a god's Chosen. Whatever life you once dreamed, you will no longer. Wherever Mystra leads, you will be forced to go.

It is either your mother or Tara that reminds you the gods do not give without expecting something in return.

You ignore the warning. You are different from all who came before you. Prodigy, exception, Chosen.

🔮 GALE BEGS FOR MORE — MORE POWER, GREATER ARCANE SECRETS, TO BE MYSTRA’S EQUAL. SHE DENIES HIM. OVER THE COURSE OF SEVERAL MEETINGS, SHE APPEARS TO GROW BORED OF HIM.

You enjoy each other's company — body, mind and soul. But even so, you desire more. You see, no matter how powerful a mortal wizard can become, you can never scratch more than the surface of the Weave. Mystra keeps you in check. Reminds you of your place at her feet. The boundaries that are of her design.

Yet every time you lay with her, you stand on the precipice of higher knowledge, gazing into the wonders that lay beyond. You try to convince her you are worthy of more. You pout. You plead. You swear your ambition is only to serve her better. She tells you to be contented.

One day all too soon, her whispers stop. Your goddess does not come to you when you cast or summon you to her realm. The veils are drawn once more, and you are left behind, heartbroken.

🔮 GALE LEARNS OF WHAT HE BELIEVES TO BE AN ASTRAL FRAGMENT, A PRIZED RELIC THAT MYSTRA WOULD DELIGHT AT HAVING RETURNED TO HER. UPON TOUCHING IT, THE FRAGMENT TRANFORMS, DEVOURING HIS BODY, SPIRIT, & MAGIC.

Once upon a time, very long ago, a mighty lord lived in a tower. He sought to usurp the goddess of magic so that he could become a god himself. He almost managed but not quite, and his entire empire – Netheril – came crashing down around him as he turned to stone. The magic unleashed that day was phenomenal, rolling like the prime chaos that outdates creation. A fragment of it was caught and sealed away in a book. No ordinary book, mind you; a tome of gateways that contained within it a bubble of Astral Plane. It was a fragment of primal Weave locked out of time – locked away from Mystra herself.

"What if,” you thought. "What if after all this time, I could return this lost piece to my Goddess? What if I could be the one to make her whole?”

You stare down the endless corridors of a dread memory. An encroaching dark. Ancient and terrible. A book, bound, then suddenly opened. Inside there are no pages, only a swirling mass of blackest Weave that pounces. It’s teeth, it’s claws, it’s unstoppable as it digs through you and becomes part of you. And gods, is it ever hungry…

🔮 MYSTRA REBUKES AND CASTS GALE OUT FOR HIS FOLLY.

You are lucky to live at all, she tells you. Your folly would have killed a lesser wizard, uncloacked in her protection. That it entered your body and consumed no more than your powers was a miracle. But you will not be granted another.

You overstepped. You crossed the boundaries that protect not only you but all mortals, as well as the very fabric of the Weave itself.

You are Chosen no longer.

You are nothing.

And you are surely dying.

🔮 GALE AND TARA TRY TO UNDERSTAND HIS RAPID DETERIORATION. HE CAN NO LONGER CAST BASIC SPELLS. THE PAIN IS UNBEARABLE. NOTHING WORKS, UNTIL…

You cast one-handed to enchant the hearth as you always have, but the sparks die on your fingertips. The pain comes after, radiating outward from your chest. It is one symptom of many that speak to your deterioration. Muscle spasms, disorientation, a slight ringing in the ears.

There was a time when you could make fire come alive. With a breath, you could give it the shape of a dragon and make it roar in delight. There was a time when you could silence a Beholder with a word, and lift a tower from its foundations with a flourish. There was a time when you were all but one with the Weave. With Her.

But no more — you are a mere shadow of the wizard you used to be. The pain is unbearable, otherworldly, ever advancing.

It is Tara who gifts you a stay of execution. If the orb must feast, why should it be upon your flesh? You rend the magic from glittering rings, from priceless tomes, from arcane wards, reducing them to mere trinkets. You destroy the collection of wonders in the tower you call home and dismantle the spells that have made it special.

Within weeks, you know these efforts will not save your life. The hunger only grows, ceaseless and senseless. It wracks your body, like a distant thunder sending tremors through the soul. You need to consume artefact after artefact, else the lightning will strike and level the earth. Your tower does not hold an endless supply. And a lone wizard with a chronic impairment will not be able to defend himself on the search for more.

You will be lucky to last the year.

🔮 GALE LEAVES HIS TOWER FOR WHAT HE BELIEVES WILL BE THE LAST TIME. (CW: SUICIDAL INTENT)

You are no longer able to stop it. You must do everything you can to ensure no one but you pays for your mistakes, least of all your oldest friend Tara, your mother, or your great city.

You leave without word or note. You watch the sunrise over the City of Splendours for the last time.

You will find the remotest place on the surface of Faerûn, or perhaps far below in the depths of the Underdark.

You will await that death alone.