“The first thing you must understand about the Wizards of the First Age is this: the Wizards of the Second Age dubbed themselves ‘wizards’ after painstakingly assembling half-understood fragments of their art; the Wizards of the Third Age inherited the barest slivers of surviving knowledge from the Second Age, and called themselves ‘wizards’ in turn; and so it goes. Though we of the Sixth Age have seen fit to adopt the same title, we must not imagine ourselves the equals of our forebears. If the greatest and most learned among us were to seek to comprehend the magics of the First Age, they would be as an ant contemplating the gulf between galaxies.
“The second thing you must understand is that the Wizards of the First Age are not dead. The very concept may well be meaningless to them. They linger on, dormant – asleep in the deepest oceans, adrift among the stars, latent even in pattern and language. I do not believe we will ever understand by what means the Wizards of the First Age drove each other into this slumber, or how the Wizards of the Second Age created tighter seals to keep them there. What we do know is that when those seals began to falter with time, the Wizards of the Third Age designed failsafe mechanisms on absurd scales – their craft extended to the motions of the heavens, and the workings of fate itself. Every 121 years, Akwel’s Comet returns to our skies, perfectly timed to confuse the return journey of the Blue Wizard and send it wandering the far reaches of the cosmos once more. In every 72nd generation, a new Sacred Archer is born, chosen by the Bow of Ym to slay the Supplicant Titan before it can reawaken the Green Wizard on Mount Olo. The Wizards of the Third Age constructed vast cycles to perpetually forestall the return of the First, time and time again. These cycles are older than any language still spoken, and have maintained their delicate balance without fail from the Third Age until now.
“There is, however, one Wizard of the First Age who proved to be beyond the grasp of such artifice. The Violet Wizard, it is written, sleeps beneath the earth in an exile of its own devising, awakening every 13,831 years. A timescale too vast even for the arts of the Third Age, and indivisible into any more practical cycle of destiny. The Wizards of the Third Age prevented its awakening twice, with more improvised measures; the Wizards of the Fourth Age faced it but once, in the last days of their Age, and forestalled its return at the cost of their downfall. The Fifth Age began and ended within the span of the Violet Wizard’s slumber; and so we come to the present.
“Ih Volan University, on whose grounds you now stand, was founded over one thousand years ago with a singular purpose: to expand the reach of the magics of the Sixth Age, assembling the requisite knowledge and technique to once again prevent the awakening of the Violet Wizard, 1494 years from today. Our founder, Lac Ih Volan, understood that no single program of research would be sufficient to accomplish this task; any line of inquiry we pursue here may one day become part of the edifice of our world’s salvation. I share this history not to narrow your focus, but to impress upon you the gravity of the legacy which you now inherit, and the immeasurable value of what you will accomplish in your time here. Every question asked, every path taken, is priceless, no matter where it leads. Even the exploration of dead ends is a vital and necessary aspect of the search for knowledge. And so, new students, I bid you welcome. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for joining us in the Great Work.”