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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 6749509" data-attributes="member: 6790260">"I believe that Magic is the ultimate tool of good. Yes, it certainly can be used for evil ends; you need only look at most liches, or most chromatic dragons, to see that. But Magic is the ultimate tool for curing the sick, resurrecting the dead, feeding the hungry, sheltering the poor, protecting the weak...all these things are possible through Mystra, because she is Magic. No, I don't mean 'she possesses the attribute of being magical.' She IS Magic, and Magic IS her. Those wizards, out there, who peer through lenses, chart astral motions, blend noxious liquids, draft geometric complexities, and pontificate endlessly on minutiae? Certainly they do her work, because they advance the cause of knowledge, they explain and share and employ her works in our world and beyond."But which is better, or fuller, or truer, you ask: to know the work, or to know the maker? I would argue the question itself is malformed. It presupposes that the two approaches are wholly distinct, for one thing, when they aren't--they, by learning the works, gain insight into their maker, while we, by understanding the maker, gain and grant insight into her works. For another, the motivations of our causes are different--different values which lead to the same desire, and thus express that desire in different ways. The Wizard values this knowledge because it is an achievement, because they consider it the highest of the mental arts, because it grants power to the learned, for words have meaning and names have power. The Cleric values--or, at least, I value--this knowledge because it is transcendent, because I am awed and humbled and transformed through it, because it proves false the claims that building up must always be more difficult than tearing down. And most of all, because it is the most tangible possible link to the divine, at least for those of us not fortunate enough to take (or be taken by) a deity as a lover or to be the offspring of such union."--Rhiannon ta Windrel, Mystran High Priestess of Waterdeep</blockquote>

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