Al’Kabor

The search for immortality

No wizard on Norrath wields the power he does, Al’Kabor notes at the start of his own journal, and he must keep researching to be protected from the evil beyond Norrath. Others agree: Realla Segoan calls him “the most powerful living wizard on Norrath.” He is an arrogant Erudite of great power, and no friend to the Erudite heretics. Yet all of it is “for naught,” Verant’s Search for Immortality says, unless he achieves what he wants most: power over death itself.

That search took him far. Crossing the frigid plains of the barbarians, he found ice crystals with a strange glistening glow and carried them back to his laboratory in Erudin to study.

The journals and the spells

His journals double as spell research. In Journal III he combines his Rune with a Lexicon to make spells that spread blasting winds of ice, fire and magic over great distances, and admits he cannot remember how he first made the Frost Spiral. Journal IV mixes the Rune of the Helix and the Rune of Infraction into a Force Spiral “ideal for wizards of rank 39,” and the Rune of Concussion into a freezing Wrath not for any wizard below the 49th rank. Journal V records a return to Kunark and the fiery Inferno Shock. He also wrote a three-part Fusibility Study on the melting points of minerals, and his assistant Makil Rargon follows up its findings in the Western Wastes while Al’Kabor returns to his research on the Combine Empire.

The Hole Uncovered

Verant’s stories caught him at work. In The Hole Uncovered he is researching near Qeynos, where locals run his errands for a handful of coins, when a gang of upstart earth elementals ruins a week of work, expensive components and a favourite robe. He walks into the hills outside Qeynos and finds Ognit the gnome behind it, and nearly kills him (“Now I shall end your miserable gnomish life!”) while Dagda Icefury reaches for her sword. In a later chapter he tells Dagda that Dartain was one of the heretics of old, among those who put the Hatch in place to repair the Wall of Living Stone.

Kedge Keep and other quests

His errands reached the sea floor. In The Relic of Brell Serilis he finally obtains the scroll he sought and learns the truth about the kedge: Phinigel Autropos, the last surviving kedge, had condemned his own people to permanent undeath with a powerful spell, and armed with that knowledge Al’Kabor confronts him. In The Swashbuckler’s Homecoming he hunts a scroll of great power lost at sea, which he needs to recreate “a most heinous ceremony” in his quest for immortality.

Not everyone liked working for him. Terblyn Zelbus, a merchant at the Temple of Solusek Ro, quit as his assistant and calls him “an old fogey” who does not like short people.

The road to the moon

His greatest discovery changed the world. After countless years of Luclin’s isolation, Al’Kabor found a permanent route between Norrath and the moon. The old wizard spires of Norrath were converted into transportation devices, and ordinary adventurers began visiting Luclin in great numbers. Some say his experiments tore a rift across time and space that lets explorers use ancient Combine magic. When he later vanished, the High Council of Erudin sent Realla Segoan to Firiona Vie to investigate.

A goddess’s patience

Luclin was not pleased. Her tolerance was already worn thin, but she saw no way to drive the visitors off her moon without angering the other gods and ending her isolation. So she waits, knowing the moon will eventually drift away from Norrath, perhaps closing the gates and stranding thousands. The visitors, meanwhile, have enthusiastically taken sides in every conflict on the moon.

Al’Kabor’s Nightmare

Years later he was given a nightmare of his own. In House of Thule in 2010, adventurers of level 90 explored “the deepest fears of the greatest wizard Norrath has ever known,” and were asked what makes him so great when “he never uses the nearly infinite power at his disposal.”