Chapter 1

Thump-thump.

It was oddly comforting floating in the womb, listening to gentle sound of my mother's heartbeat. A soothing cadence that constantly reassures me that everything will be alright.

Thump-thump.

You would think I would go mad. Trapped, helpless and blind. I would have thought so before. Instead I drift. Half awake, almost dreaming. Listening.

Thump-thump.

I couldn't see inside the womb. Sight, along with taste and smell were all cut off. The only thing I could do is listen. And so I did. I cannot begin to describe the sound. It wasn't dull or repetitive.

Thump-thump.

The sound was thick and warm and I greedily embraced it. It was was rich and complex as life itself. It came to mean everything to me.

Thump-thump.

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Contrary to all of my expectations I wasn't born a bhaalspawn. Or at least I don't think so. I had no murderous urges nor did I dream of killing everything around me. I also wasn't born in Candlekeep and there was no one named Gorion anywhere nearby.

My second guess was just as off. I wasn't born on Evermeet. I also wasn't born in Evereska or any other elven city. I wasn't even born to elven parents!

Nope. I was born to a pair of humans. Well at least one human. And maybe one ritual?

To understand what that means I can just point out my last name. Harpell.

It's a name that strikes fear in all those who value rationality and common sense. It's a name just as synonymous with recklessness as it is magic. And it's now mine.

Of course it's not necessarily a bad thing. I seriously doubt there are many families that would have accepted the birth of a sun elf to a single human mother so easily. Aside from a few tests I was accepted without reservation.

Of course that might be the work of whatever deity that conspired to bring me here. If I had the slightest doubt it wasn't deliberate it was gone the very first week after I was born. Why else would my mother just happen to make up to the theme song to Baldur's Gate and use it as a lullaby. No, I definitely have a deity interested in me.

My first few months I seemed to spend either sleeping or laying inside ritual circles as everyone cast divination spells at me. My mother, Authrar, accepted me unconditionally and I admit that I easily found myself loving her back.

Not only did she accept me, but she was the medium through which I had first heard the song. Even after being born I just had to hug her to feel the faintest echo of it. I probably came across as extremely clingy when I was growing up.

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Authrar beamed down at her baby. To her he was absolutely perfect. That he was an elf didn't bother her in the slightest. He was still her precious baby boy.

Growing up Pharaxes was such a cuddly baby. Any time he wasn't sleeping he wanted to be held. Sadly she couldn't hold him all the time. She still had to run her festhall. At least she didn't have to worry about repairs and replacing her lab.

The birth of a pure sun elf had captured the interest of her entire family. Everyone had been interested in trying to figure out how that happened. So she took the practical route.

They can run tests on him as long as she was there and he was home. Everyone pitched in. It wasn't long before she had a shiny new lab with a ritual room with the crib placed in the very center.

Pharaxes certainly was precocious. Earning his keep while only a few weeks old. Of course that wasn't the only area he was advanced.

No one was quite sure why, but Pharaxes developed incredibly rapidly. He spent less then a week crawling before he started walking and he was speaking before he was even a year old. He started reading not long afterwards.

The Harpells were an old family, existing for over three centuries. They were also a large family with several branches. And finally they were all close. All of that contributed to them having a fairly massive library. And since almost every Harpell was a mage, so was the majority of the library.

Authrar hadn't been too interested in reading before. She always preferred to be out doing things. Pharaxes changed that. For as long as she could remember he was fascinated with books. Whenever she was reading he would shift so he could stare at the turning pages.

Now she loved to read. She would place Pharaxes in her lap and read to him books on spell theory and the latest treatises. He was endlessly curious, always asking questions about things which she loved to answer.

When she was busy she found she could just prop open a book and Pharaxes would sit quietly and read it. It was an adorable sight, him next to a book almost as large he was, carefully turning pages with his chubby hands. She couldn't have been prouder of him. He was definitely going to be a great mage.

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In the end I loved growing up in Longsaddle. For a medieval society the Harpells had a positively enormous library. Even better most of it dealt with magic. And most importantly I was allowed to read them all.

Growing up in the middle of a family full of wild mages means personal eccentricities are usually ignored. For me it meant I didn't have to hide. I developed at a positively unnatural rate, at least if this was my first life. And everyone just accepted it.

I can see how they turn out so eccentrically. Given all the quirks and odd personalities I was subjected to while growing up it would be hard not too. Anything unusual was curiously poked, but then accepted.

That attitude would have made them fantastic scientists if they were logical. Or even just disciplined. Instead they were spontaneous and dramatic. Almost as mad as many considered them. Of course I fit right in with my abnormal intelligence.

And it was abnormal. I remember reading about learning rates versus age before. Babies were supposed to be mentally more powerful then the best supercomputer. Now that I experienced it I can confirm that as fact.

It was like the world moved in slow motion, giving me ample time to consider everything. It was an odd experience thinking so much faster. Everything was so easy to understand. I wasn't sure how much of it was due to being so young or from my my 20 intelligence.

Either way I took ruthless advantage of it. I was determined to be the youngest archmage in history. Not for the recognition but because I finally learned the date and I knew what was coming.

I was born in the year 1337. I don't remember most of the dates from the books I read but I remember one of the most important ones. 1358. The Time of Troubles or the Godswar. A time when magic fails and gods walk the world, fight each other and die.

I had about two decades to get ready. So I threw myself into training. I cast my first cantrip almost as soon as I could speak. A large part of that was due to my mother.

Some of my earliest memories are being cradled by her in one arm while she studied a spellbook in the other. Given how I was already learning a new language it wasn't any problem learning a second. Of course everyone that it hilarious that my my first halting sentences were in a mixture of common and draconic.

My family never really registered my age when they were considering what to teach me. As long as I could demonstrate sufficient knowledge no one cared what I wanted to learn. In fact they all delighted in teaching, spouting out entire lectures on their specialties at the drop of a hat.

So I started my lessons on the different fields of magic before I was two. Of course my mom had been teaching me long before that. Everyone seemed to enjoy teaching me. God bless my 18 charisma.

Not to say that I abused their trust. I paid rapt attention. After all I was learning magic. Actual reality bending magic. My enthusiasm was entirely real.

I might have progressed even faster but I was limited by my physical development. Thankfully my mother didn't mind reading to me or it would have been even worse. Even years later I still crave hearing the sound of her heartbeat.

At least I wasn't hampered by my need to sleep. In my past life I had hated sleeping. I always felt like I was losing precious chunks of time. Now with a deadline it would have been worse. Except I don't need to sleep.

Elves don't sleep. They enter a state called reverie which acts like meditation. And they only need four hours of it a day.

Of course my mom couldn't keep up that kind of schedule. Not to mention she has her own life. But that was what books were for. And later on there was always someone who was up for me to study with. Or at least borrow more books from.

I'm not sure if it from how seriously I studied, the blessing of my unknown deity or just the rules being that different from the game but I leveled up rapidly. No need to kill anything or barely survive some kind of challenge. Just steady work and a lots of practice.

Of course my practice wasn't normal. I used scenario's.

I would get Uncle Matherly to set up illusions of a fake dungeon. Iy would be filled with illusionary enemies and traps. There would also be random rules like being forced to ride a tenser's floating disc the entire time or rescuing hostages. I drew extensively from my video game and Dming experiences for ideas.

It actually became rather popular once word spread. Soon enough other wanted to try it out. So I told mu mom and she worked with uncle matherly to set up a full complex next to her festhall. It had multiple levels and movable walls to make it easier to set up.

Illusions allowed people eating inside the festhall to watch anyone using the Ivy Dungeon. It was very popular. Yep, I had essentially invented the sports bar.

Before when I mentioned leveling up I had meant that literally. Several spells actually are specifically level dependent and the exact level of an individual can even be researched. Let me tell you, the first time I managed to cast a flaming sphere and was congratulated on reaching third level I froze in shock.

Not because I thought he was reading my mind. Well not much. After all I did have the same thought. No it was because he actually said it at all. Out loud. In public. Like it's most normal thing in the world.

It was enough to make me wonder if the Harpells are actually insane are just way too intelligent.

Despite the existence of levels it seems that actual character classes don't exist. It's because they aren't nearly as neatly defined as they are in the game. Which makes sense. Life is infinitely more complex and messy then any game, no matter how elaborate. The same seemed to hold true for feats and skill points.

Which worked for me. It meant I started as a blood magus, something which I loved being. When I studied I could hear the slow steady beat of my heart. When I cast spells I felt it as energy surging through my veins. And as I became stronger I could literally feel the magic flowing in my blood.

It was the latter that drove home that point. Blood Component was a class ability for a blood magus and I already possessed it. Or maybe I should say I started with it. Not that it was much use yet. A child's body does not have much in the way of excess blood. Which just meant I needed another way of satisfying my obsession.

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For Harkle Harpell, his cousin Pharaxes was weird. Not because he was an elf. Everyone had their own theories on it and enjoyed debating them. He had even made a few of his own and been allowed to join in. No, he was weird because he never went outside!

All he did was spend all day reading! How can someone not like to play? To let the sun warm you and let the wind cool you. To listen to the river. That was just dumb.

Actually Pharaxes was really smart. Harkle knew because everyone said so. Well that and Pharaxes could cast spells already. He actually showed him sometimes. Which was nice. But he never wanted to try something new! Like throw random stuff in the cauldron to see if they can make something new. Or try saying a spell backwards.

Still Harkle kept talking to him because he could explain things really good. He'd bring up some questions and Pharaxes would start talking and everything just made sense. Sometimes when they talked long enough he'd start giving out really crazy ideas too.

Then he'd go back to reading and being boring. Still he did have some good ideas. As soon as he advanced enough he was going to pester his uncle Bidderdoo to teach him more about transmutation. Turning yourself into a giant shapeshifting monster and beating up all the bad guys sounded awesome!

Actually Pharaxes was his uncle too, but it felt it tended to confuse people when he called him that since they were the same age. He still wasn't sure why it confused most people. Maybe he should try to get his dad to marry Pharaxes' mom. Then he'd just be his brother.

Sometimes it seems like everyone except his family was hung up on weird rules only they understood. And then they wouldn't explain them!

Just like they got annoyed when they tried to say Bella wasn't his sister. She was too! They were family and she stayed over all the time since her dad traveled all the time. So they grew up together. So that makes her his sister.

Bella was really nice too! Sure she was clumsy, but she never cried when she tripped. It wasn't like she was a baby. She was just short. He really liked playing with her.

Which was good since most parents wouldn't his friends come over to his home. He wasn't sure and when he asked his dad just said people get scared of silly things. Like accidents. Which was dumb, since they were accidents. It's not like anyone was trying to be mean.

The way the made fun of his sister was way worse. So what if Bella's eyes were different colors. He thought they were neat. They even looked in different directions!

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To distract myself from blood magic I threw myself into my studies. Eventually and hopefully soon I want to start crafting. My goal was to eventually study under Malchor Harpell and learn how to forge my own version of Staff of the Magi. I already know after the Godswar and Mystra's replacement no one is able to make any more.

Of course crafting costs money which is distinctively short of. I'm also much too young to hold any kind of job even if I am a halfway decent mage. And of course actually trying to be an adventurer is much too risky.

Especially since I don't have a real spellbook yet.

As part of their library the Harpells actually have a section devoted to actual spells. They have entire shelves full of them. And not just the standard spells. The Harpells loved to innovate. For every well known spell there must have been at least three variations. Several, such as magic missile, had as many as a dozen.

The problem is one of cost. Arcane ink is incredibly valuable. It takes roughly an ounce of ink to pen a first level spell. And the cost only goes up. An ounce of arcane ink is worth 100 gold. We get discounts from buying in bulk, but not that much. So all the books are actually donated grimoires. Which means they aren't organized in any fashion at all.

As part of my studies I started actually cataloging the spells. Actually organizing it would take tearing apart the books and hiring someone to rebind them. Making an index on the other hand was much easier. My progress was very slow since I was forced to use Read Magic on everything.

The few times I've found more then three copies of a spell Old Auglyth lets me carefully remove it to eventually make up my own started spellbook. Well, more like he removed the pages. Prodigy or not he doesn't really trust any kid around the spellbooks. I'm lucky he gives me access at all really.

Of course Auglyth isn't all bad. Sure he's all gruff and stiff, but that's probably more from being old then being mean. Although none of the other children agree with me.

One of the reasons he likely doesn't mind me is the fact I don't use candles or even lanterns around his precious books. Ever since I summoned an owl familiar my night vision has been amazing. I can easily read just from the light of a few stars.

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My owl familiar, which I couldn't resist naming Hedwig, was not my only magical companion. I also fashioned a homunculus. My mom was proud enough that I had successfully summoned a familiar that she paid for all the materials I needed. It was an odd looking thing, resembling a leathery winged cross between a cat and squirrel. My friends all loved him and after an accidental bite named him Sleepy.

If you could call them friends. Harkle and Bella were more like bratty younger siblings with me acting as the older responsible brother. They pestered me frequently about magic and anything else they were curious about.

Truthfully I didn't mind their presence. Their enthusiasm was refreshing and I've always liked little kids. If only they weren't so distracting. At least I had both a familiar and a homunculus to distract them in turn whenever I wanted to be left alone.

And I needed to be left alone more and more often. I had recently taken up the study of necromancy. For such an extensive library there is surprisingly little available on the subject. A bit disappointing.

Still, there is enough to get me started on the basics. Best of all thanks to being a blood magus I can ignore all the costly components normally required. Of course that doesn't get around the most common material needed, Bodies.

So I started my own farm.

It turns out the idea to magically shrink animals down hasn't popped up yet. I'm not sure when it does, but I do know it never succeeds. Most likely because the remaking of the Weave changes things enough that its no longer feasible. Well if things go right I'll have my own up long before that.

It actually doesn't take nearly as long to research the appropriate spell and then build a magical item to shrink animals down. Considering how easy it was I'm betting the Harpells had used something like a ward. It makes sense. A ward could affect everything that passes through it.

An item though would remain functional even after the Godswar. From what I remember items made before the Weave changed still used their original rules. You just couldn't make new ones.

So now I have a rod that shrinks animals with a touch. I wish I could have made it small enough for my homunculus to wield, but that just makes it way too expensive to be worth it.

I went with rabbits. They were fairly easy to get, bred fast and grew quickly. Best of all they ate grass. A single casting of Create Food and Water could feed hundreds of them while miniaturized. Of course I had no intention of being tied down so another item was needed.

I have never been more thankful that my mom runs the Ivy Festhall. Sure she was very generous since I had come up with the idea for the Ivy Dungeon, but I needed a fairly consistent income, especially to make magic items. So I cooked.

It wasn't until I had actually tried listing them that I realized just how many different recipes I knew. The Ivy Festhall originally had a few dozen different dishes. After I started cooking the menu quickly turned into a small book.

Even simple things like adding toppings to pancakes or preserves in porridge was wildly popular. We didn't add everything at once. No, it was limited to at most a single new item every season. While that may not seem that fast, considering the time I spent researching the new spells and then crafting new items, it was actually more then generous.

The first year after I convinced my mom to try it I introduced pancakes with toppings. Light fluffy delicious pancakes drowning in syrup or preserves. A few variations of porridge and my reputation was golden.

A large part of the spell creation process was the caster's own experience. I had an enormous advantage and made full use of it. Sure investment costs were pretty high, but mom was feeling generous given the popularity of my recipes. She provided all the funds I needed.

It's not like I needed that much. I mostly had her build me small bunker. Since she had never rebuilt her basement labs, instead just building them on top of her festhall, she placed my set up their. It was basically just a decent sized pair of rooms.

I paid a few of the town guards, called Longriders, to catch a half dozen rabbits and I was ready. For some reason rabbits weren't raised anywhere in town. Maybe it was because they were so plentiful?

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Raising rabbits is incredibly easy. They breed quickly and only need shallow burrows. A few crates with a few inches of dirt in them was enough to house them. Thanks to my item feeding and watering them wasn't a problem and my homunculus cleaned up after them.

Provided with abundant food and without any predators their population exploded. Well, they did once I realized that pregnancy causes issues. Thankfully it wasn't too complicated to modify the spell, even if I did have to make a new item. So now the rod doesn't have to actually the animal. Passing through their space was enough to count and it affected all the animals in the area.

Finally I could experiment with undead rabbits! Yeah, that didn't happen. Have you ever smelled a rotting corpse? Well that's what a zombie is.

So no zombies. Seems simple. Nope. Making a skeleton causes the flesh to fall off and liquefy into this putrid goo. Intellectually it was fascinating to consider the effects of negative energy. My first impression though was to gag and run away.

Cleaning out an underground area with no windows was horrible. Hell necromancy may have a bad reputation just because everyone who practices it doesn't have a sense of smell and reeks.

So more research was needed. And since I was only going to use the bones I need to do something about the rest of the rabbit. Well waste not, want not. So a spell to skin and tan the hide, then a spell to clean the rabbit and finally a spell to turn to meat into pemmican.

Sure pemmican wasn't high in demand but at least it could be stored. I'll eventually find a use for it. The hides at least provided me with some income.

Despite my best efforts processing all the rabbits I used in my experiments still fouled the air. It was worries over getting sick that caused me to spend a hefty chunk of money on a few intact shelves of ripplebark.

The fungus is incredibly hardy and grows on almost anything. It's also highly nutritious and cleans the air. It's exactly what I needed for my lab. Thematically it even fits since the fungus resembles rotting flesh, thankfully without the smell.

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Sometimes I look at all the work I've sunk into just getting started on my experiments and I wonder if it's worth it. Then I cast a spell and feel the familiar rush of energy. And I have my answer.

Necromancy was by far the closest in feel to blood magic. Just casting Larloch's Minor Drain was enough to ease the ache inside me. Death Knell in particular was plain addictive.

Conversely creating an undead numbed my craving. It didn't remove it, but it was like morphine. You could feel it but it didn't bother you or even factor into any decisions you made. The numbness lasted for hours and ever since I got my own bedroom I started animating a rabbit just before going to sleep.

Since I was concentrating on rabbits I felt like I had to chance to perfect it. I mixed and matched bones, tried positioning the bones or casting while touching different places on the skeleton. I even tried preparing the bones in various ways to see what difference it made. And every time I focused on my sense of energy and how it flowed out.

Without real words to describe it, it was as much art as science. As I had thought it took hundreds of tests to make even the slightest replicatable difference.

I had long since come up with a measurement for health. My homunculus under the effects of a Ray of Enfeeblement dealt only a single point of damage. Then it would hack the animated skeleton apart.

It was so useful having Blood Component. It let me roughly quantify a single point of damage. Larger amounts of damage and relative heath for creatures didn't fit in quite so neatly. I would never be to the point where everything boiled down to a numbers game, but I was determined to get as close as possible.

Health wasn't the only improvement I worked on. Strength was another ability that I could specifically gauge. There were other areas I worked on as well. Anything that I could specifically measure and test I at least attempted.

In this I had a distinct advantage over any other budding necromancer. I had the greatest gift of all. I had foreknowledge of what specifically was possible or at least likely to work. Unfortunately by this point it has been years since I cracked open a DnD manual and I only remember a few of the corpsecrafter feat tree.

What I do remember is very helpful. I didn't endlessly strive to improve my undead. I set as specific benchmarks as I could. I wanted to balance what was feasible, possible and attainable. Feats like skills were a combination of knowledge and practice. I didn't want to slave away to attain ridiculous goals. I already had one obsession, I didn't need more.

Corpsecrafter itself I figure I've mastered. A boost to strength and hp. I don't remember the others but I also managed to increase the speed of my skeletons as well as make them more flexible and agile. I finally managed to slightly toughen the bones themselves so that it takes more force to damage them.

Of course all these insights were only usable to myself. And I didn't want that. I wanted to make sure even if I died that my family benefited. It felt right. After all they did shelter and provide for me. They also accepted me completely. So I would leave them a legacy beyond bread and circuses.

It was definitely the hardest thing I have ever done, but I succeeded. I created a ritual to prepare a skeleton and guide it's animation process to take advantage of my insights.

Of course it's not complete. It works perfectly with rabbit skeletons. Other skeletons only receive a lesser boost and zombies aren't improved at all. Still, it's a good start even if not one that I will finish.

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Given how much work is involved in improving my undead I can see why feats were given so rarely. They really are an accumulation of an enormous amount of effort. And I just can't afford to spend that much time on it.

My solution to this is Geth. He's a quiet lad a few years older than me that my family took in. His family died when their caravan was attacked. He's also intelligent and studious if the time he spends reading is any indication.

My family is not a charity despite being nice. Sure they took him in, but without anywhere to go he'll be stuck here as just another servant. They even changed his last name to Ivy when they took him in. Without anyone to support him he's pretty much trapped. Especially since he has a sister to take care of. At best he'll be a scribe.

Which is a waste. I've watched all the Ivy children and he's by far the best. When doing his chores he's methodical and thorough. He also is efficient and curious. And like all children fascinated with magic.

I test him by having him work at the butchers for a few months and he is thankfully not squeamish. So I take him on. I think technically he's considered my valet or scribe. What I had him doing for me though was study magic and specifically necromancy.

I cheated with him. While I could just order him to study necromancy I wanted him to really try. So I charmed him. Befriend, Charm, Suggestion, I used ever enchantment I could to mold his personality.

It worked perfectly. No one knew him enough to see how quickly he was changing besides his sister and I just charmed her as well. Besides it wasn't like I wasn't paying him. My allowance was easily enough to afford a servant.

He didn't have my advantages so progress was much slower. I had to 'borrow' the Ivy Dungeon several times to give him enough experience to progress his studies. Even then he still isn't nearly as powerful as I am.

Sometime in the future I'm going to have to test why killing things levels you up. Is it the adrenaline? Some kind of subtle vampiric effect? That'll have to wait for the future.

My immediate problem was Geth's sister. She wasn't bright enough to be trained as another mage. My first impulse was to kill her but that would cause problems. I couldn't afford any suspicions. Besides that the idea felt a bit wrong since Geth worked for me.

It wasn't until I saw her dancing that I realized I knew exactly what to do. Kethra had to have a fairly high dexterity. The sheer grace, now that I was paying attention, in her movements made that clear.

So I had her train to be a rogue. Or a thief since it was still before the Time of Troubles and third edition.

It wasn't too hard. Kethra was often bored since I had her brother studying to often. Persuading her to enjoy sneaking around and pranking people didn't take more than an a few comments and a bribe of candy. To get her to pursue throwing weapons with the same zeal took a decent amount of magic.

I even paid a few Longriders to teach her how to sneak, spot and set traps and throw darts which kept her busy. Although I did see her every day. Since hiring eth they had moved into a guest room at the festhall and we often ate together.

Despite everything Kethra is cheerful, bubbly and exhausting to deal with. Even her stint at the butcher's didn't depress her.

She's the direct opposite of her brother. I'm not certain, but I suspect my spells have squashed the last bits of personality Geth had left. He's practically a robot by this point.

Kethra of course doesn't hold it against him. No she started bugging me since it was so hard to get a response from him. And possibly out of guilt I just put up with it. Of course it's hard not to like her.

It seems without really trying I acquired another little sister. At least all of my semi-siblings get along. Most of the time one of them wants to play games I can just direct them to each other.

It was all worth it though. Already my future party was shaping up pretty well. A rogue (Kethra), a pair of mages (Harkle, Geth and I) and undead for meat shields courtesy of Geth. We only lacked a healer and items will hopefully be able to cover that.

I planned to go adventuring eventually. There was just too many things out there I wanted. I probably forgot way too many but the few I still remembered were still more then enough justification.

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Pharaxes Harpell – Wizard 3 / Blood Magus 3

Harkle Harpell – Transmuter 3

Geth Ivy – Necromancer 3

Kethra Ivy – Rogue 1 / Fighter 2