by Michael Easter

Created on: June 08, 2009

The Prologue and introductory chapter to a series in progress, Book One, the Alchemist's Curse, hope someone enjoys it.

Prologue:

Alchemy has become a magical science which allows its students to create various mixtures with amazing properties. A skilled alchemist can create powder which explodes on impact or a potion that increases one's strength. Almost any magical spell can be replicated in a potion, whether it's protection from evil or a potion of invisibility. There is very little a modern alchemist can not accomplish.

Alchemy did not begin as such a vast and wide-ranged study. Most of the earlier potions created by the pioneers of alchemy were stumbled upon quite by accident. In truth, Alchemy was born from the search of one answerhow to create gold out of a more common metal.

Early alchemists exhausted themselves trying to discover a way to accomplish this feat. Most wished to take a cheap, abundant metal such as lead and transform it to gold in an inexpensive manner. The value of gold came, of course, from its rarity so there were certain scientists who wished to profit greatly off the transformation. Some wasted fortunes in this pursuit.

It is said that one such scientist, a wizard actually, who we know as Morlavon, devoted himself to the idea that he could transform lead to gold. Morlavon was a clever wizard, a hard worker, and came from a very wealthy family. It is said that after he inherited his father's fortune, he spent it all on his studies. But Morlavon did what many had attempted and none had accomplished before.

After decades of study and countless failed attempts, the relentless wizard was able to create a potion which, once applied to lead, transformed it to gold. It didn't just change the color or texture, but actually transformed the physical properties to those of gold. No expert on the properties of the precious metal could tell the difference between a bar of gold dug from the ground and melted in a furnace from one created by the magical transformation of Morlavon's potion. Even spells of divination and identification were fooled by this miraculous transformation.

There was a flaw with the potion, however; one that Morlavon had no awareness of until it was too late. Some obscure component of the potion caused a slow transition in human beings to undeath. The contaminant infected any human who touched the transformed gold. The fortune

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