I, Ristidor, historian of Darae, Elder of the Brotherhood, pen this.

I have always found Darae a pleasant world under a friendly sun. Broad continents and broader seas. Dangerous shoals and scattered islands. A world blessed by the Light.

And the Light? Ah yes, gentle reader, we must speak of the Light. The Light which made us all, which created all we see. How may I describe the Light but as eternal, with no beginning and no end? That It ever was and will forever be. With such greatness, It need not bend to us, yet It does. Through mana, a mage may call upon the Light to manifest both creation and destruction.

But why, gentle reader, why only on the continent of Dereff? Perhaps because it was on Dereff that a man first called upon the Light to heal his wife as her life seeped away. He called upon the Light, speaking words he did not understand in a language he did not know. Mana swirled around him, flowed from him to his wife, and she lived. But why did the Light respond to him? How did he discover that mana would come to him?

We lose the answers to such mysteries to time. What’s not lost is the use of mana to cast spells, although only one in a thousand can learn to control its powerful flow, and each must be trained from an early age. The Elders go on Search throughout the land seeking children of seven years to find those capable of learning to control magic, to bring mana from the Light. When found, they are educated at one of the two great Schools of Magic.

But I am an old man, and I tire even as my wife calls me to food and rest. Perhaps I will have an apprentice assist me with this memoir; these thoughts I wish to record. We shall see.

Till then, may the Light guide you.