Karsus
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Karsus is a fictitious character in the Forgotten Realms setting. He is largely recognized as the most powerful mage in the history of the Realms, attaining godhood with a single spell of his devising, even though the empire he was trying to save, Netheril, was destroyed by his folly.
Karsus was an exceptionally powerful and talented arcanist of the Netherese Empire. He was responsible for bizarre advances in magic. He was also the ruler of a floating city of Netheril, Eileanar, known also as Karsus Enclave. He was born in −696 DR (the Year of Great Rains), which marked the beginning of the Shadowed Age of Netheril. Karsus instinctively cast his first spell at the age of two. In −669 DR (the Year of Summer Frosts), at the age of twenty-two, Karsus created the enclave of Eileanar, becoming the youngest arcanist to create a floating city. In −408 DR (the Year of Sleeping Dragons), Karsus discovered “heavy magic” and soon began experimenting with it. During his experimentation, he accidentally slew the renegade archwizard Wulgreth, who was subsequently transformed into a lich. He later nurtured the shadow magic studies of Telamont Tanthul, who would become the ruler of Thultanthar, or Shade Enclave.
Karsus was a cruel and extremely arrogant and proud man. He possessed a youthful face ringed by tousled hair with the stubble of a beard, and his eyes blazed gold. In his hubris, he proclaimed himself the Lord of Lords, a God among Men, and the Arcanist Supreme.
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[edit] Karsus’s Folly
During the war with the phaerimm, many arcanists fled Netheril. Ioulaum of Seventon, the inventor of the mythallar and of the first flying city, abandoned his flying city of Xinlenal for his lair in the Northdark in −339 DR (the Year of Sundered Webs). He was immensely popular and a sort of folk hero, so his disappearance started a panic among the population.
Due to the civil unrest, Karsus felt it his duty and privilege to save Netheril, and in the same year as Ioulaum’s disappearance, he cast his spell “Karsus’s avatar,” which linked him to Mystryl, the goddess of magic, allowing him to wrest control of the Weave from her and making Karsus the god of magic for a brief amount of time. Karsus swelled with divine power and unimaginable knowledge, including the knowledge of the terrible mistake he had just made. Karsus was not prepared as Mystryl was to control the Weave and constantly repair the damage done to it by the Netherese and phaerimm. Mystryl sacrificed herself in order to save the Weave before the damage became irreparable. This negated all magic throughout Abeir-Toril, causing all but five of the cities to crash to the ground and severing her link to Karsus, petrifying him in the form of a red sandstone butte. Karsus still contained a fading omniscience as he watched all he cared about destroyed. Mystryl was reincarnated as Mystra almost immediately, and she recreated the Weave and saved three of the plummeting cities before they hit the ground. (Shade Enclave had escaped to the Demiplane of Shadow, and Selûnarra, or Opus Enclave, was rescued by Selûne and brought into her heavenly domain, the Gates of the Moon.) Mystra gave new Weave stricter requirements for spellcasting that prevented the heights of power that the Netherese had attained. (However, in Troy Denning’s Return of the Archwizards series, this change in magic was attributed to the Weave splitting in two—the newer, weaker Weave and the Shadow Weave.)
[edit] Karse
Karsus was petrified in the form of a red sandstone butte, which crashed to earth in the High Forest. His heart became a boulder from which flowed a river of pure, silvery, liquid magic. Naturally, this boulder rested in the center of the butte and later became known as the Karsestone.
The Cult of Karsus arose in the years immediately following Karsus’s Folly. The cultists believed that the act that had caused the empire’s collapse had also turned Karsus into both a divine and a mortal being and that his divinity still endured. They thought the Momentary God would be reborn and lead mankind into a new, more experienced age of magic.
The Cult of Karsus attracted many adherents, but it was considerably outnumbered by its enemies. Religious persecution eventually drove the cultists to build the holy city of Karse around the red sandstone butte of Karsus in −298 DR, the Year of Nine Watchers. The inside of the butte was then carved into a temple.
The Netherese lich Wulgreth came to Karse and exacted his revenge by creating divisions within the Cult of Karsus, which eventually tore the city apart a little more than a decade after its founding. After the cult disintegrated in −286 DR (the Year of Foul Awakenings), Wulgreth moved into the temple to ensure that no one would ever rebuild the city. He eventually became a demilich.
More than a millennium later, an Ascalhi wizard, also named Wulgreth, consorted with devils in defiance of the ancient pact his ancestors had made with the Eaerlanni elves to abandon the dark arts of the Netherese. Wulgreth of Ascalhorn bested his rivals for six decades because of the help of his devils. In turn, his rivals summoned the aid of demons for their own defense, which killed the devils, conquered all of Ascalhorn (which then became known as Hellgate Keep), and overran the elven kingdom of Eaerlann and the dwarven kingdom of Ammarindar, destroying them both. This occurred in 882 DR, the Year of the Curse.
In 883 DR, the Year of the Giant’s Oath, the Ascalhi Wulgreth fled to the ruins of Karse, along with his man-at-arms, Jingleshod the Iron Axeman. Wulgreth intended to exact his revenge against the demons by raising an army of undead from the ruins of Karse. When Jingleshod realized what his master was up to, the knight slew Wulgreth. Unfortunately, he did this while Wulgreth was casting his spell, and the arcane energies the archwizard had been drawing from the area were released, transforming Wulgreth into a lich and the area surrounding Karse into a place of twisted magic and undead creatures known as the Dire Wood. To punish Jingleshod, Wulgreth hunted him down and turned him into an undead knight. Wulgreth then resided within the temple, in a different part of it than the Netherese Wulgreth was in, and made the Karsestone his phylactery.
On 30 Nightal, 1371 DR (the Year of the Unstrung Harp), Galaeron Nihmedu permanently destroyed the Netherese Wulgreth. He also destroyed the body of the Ascalhi one, but it lives on because its phylactery is the Karsestone, which is now in the hands of the goddess of darkness, Shar. Jingleshod wishes to die, but he cannot as long as Wulgreth of Ascalhorn still lives. That same day, Galaeron used the Karsestone to bring the city of Shade back to Faerûn.
[edit] References
- Baker, Richard; Ed Bonny; and Travis Stout. Lost Empires of Faerûn, 2005 Wizards of the Coast, Inc.
- Denning, Troy. The Summoning, 2001 Wizards of the Coast, Inc.
- Greenwood, Ed. The Temptation of Elminster, 1998, TSR, Inc.
- Greenwood, Ed; Sean K. Reynolds; Skip Williams; and Rob Heinsoo. Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, 2001 Wizards of the Coast, Inc.
[edit] External links
- “Netheril, the Archwizards, and the Return of Shade” — article written by Sean K. Reynolds at the official Wizards of Coast website
- “The Ruins of Karse Plot Recap”, Summary by Eric Menge, at the official Forgotten Realms website
- “Netheril Timeline” at Candlekeep.com
