Maxwell's Grand Treatise on the Workings of Space Astral has recently become a part of the Library of Throal's permanent collection. Unfortunately, it has not yet been fully read by our staff theorist, so I am unable to record an official stance on the validity of his arguments. in any case, the writing is at the least grammatically sound.

Something of the writings of Maxwell Highcliffe...

Greetings. My Name is Maxwell Highcliffe, Wizard of the Coil River. No, no - there is no need to bow and scrape. Truly, Sanjuro, stop your family from groveling. Although most of you have heard of my fabulous exploits with the Bearers of Akasha, doubtless none of you can tell what really goes on inside my brilliant mind. This book will scratch the surface of that and touch on other topics as well, such as the nature of Horrors, intricacies of Pattern magic, meditations on the Great Pattern, and other sundries.

Originally this work was supposed to consist of twelve volumes, each one thousand five hundred pages in length. Because of complaint from my copy assistants, however, I have pared the length down to twelve volumes of one thousand three hundred and fifteen pages each. This was a heart-wracking decision, and I fear that the great knowledge that may have been in those missing pages may one day be crucially needed. . .

[Volume Three, page six hundred and twelve] . . . and with those words I complete my introduction to this wondrous work. I shall begin by describing the nature of astral space. This is most difficult, as I am writing for both adepts and non-adepts, and astral space is something that must be perceived. I will do my best, though rest assured there will be many . . .

[Volume Three, page six hundred and thirty] . . . astral space can best be likened to a large room in a pyramidical shape. Now, this pyramid is slightly warped, in that the angles of the three corners of each side add up to 360.02 degrees. My original analogy involved a pyramid, also warped, but the angles of each side totaled to 359.98 degrees, but I have since found this incorrect. You see, the variation is extended outwards (although perceptually the variation seems to extend inwards, a mistake many wizards [including myself] have made, largely due to the fact that at early Circles we must rely on our Astral Sense spell, which is not true Astral Sight, but instead impresses upon our psyches an insinuation of astral space, which can lead to a wizard over-correcting in perception of Space Astral) because of the volume of astral water one could fit into such a room is larger than a similarly sized room on the physical plane, assuming that 1) there was such a thing as astral water, and 2) that said astral water could exist on the physical plane. Said assumptions are acceptable because, since astral space is not pyramidical at all, any calculations stemming from an analogy stating such must be corrected with Wisnerm's Astral-Pyramid-To-Three-Dimensional-Space Conversion equation. . .

[Volume Five, page eight-five> . . . and the fight broke out. The wyverns tore into the crew, and the Corinthian attained his true form (I suspect he did this through pure physical alteration, because his pattern remained powerful and unchanged even while in child-form leading me to conclude that powerful metamorphic magic was not involved, but rather metamorphic magic of the more conventional persuasion, and my astral sight would have detected the tell-tale "yellow thread-sheet" [as I am fond of calling it, see Vol. 6 Ch. 5] of illusion magic were phantasms the cause). I drew back my arm and summoned forth the energy for a Mind Dagger. My astral sight perceived the pure yellow-white enegy of the astral plane swirl about my matrix, pouring through the magical construct and being filtered of black filaments of corruption. I used my talents to shape the purified magic into an astral knife of mystical power, coaxing it from the mold of a matrix and drawing an astral line between myself and the target. As my friends screamed in pain around me, I carefully checked and rechecked my figures for distance, range, astral wind, physical corpus itch, and the probable mass and density of the Corinthian's current form. Triangulating one last time, I sent the missile flickering towards the Horror's pattern.

Now it matters not whether I hit or missed, because everything in this scenario is principle anyway. Be assured that even the most skilled magician cannot always predict the success of his magic. Many factors that seem trivial to other adepts can come into play when casting spells, especially difficult ones such as Mind Dagger: astral wind, the amount of weig in a target's mind, the amount and substance of food or waste in a subject's stomach and/or bowels, current ratio of sand grains per square foor per square mile of wind (as scouring of the epidermis can alter a target's pattern minutely), current degree of cleanliness of a target's trousers, handkerchief, or thoughts, number of years of non-physical trigonometry absorbed by the subject (note that theoretical elemental trigonometry does not count toward this, although primitive food-gathering instinctual trigonometry does). . .

An interview with Maxwell Highcliffe

The Lying Tome of Maxwell

The Lost Journal of Maxwell

The folly of travelling with Sanjuro

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Last Updated 03/27/98 by John/Paul

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