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A mixture of stark terror and painful extasy clawed at Darian's sanity. Tendrils of cold magickal fire arced from his body high into the air. Shrieking madly he bent the flames of blackness to his will. The black fire of the other world curled and writhed about the staff that lay on the heavy marble table before him. The magick seemed alive, twisting and turning it sought freedom from his thoughts. Sweat trickled from Darian's brow, his spine arched in agony as a jolt of arcane force ripped through him. His body twisted into a harlot's posture, drenched in his sweat, Darian screamed his last breath in defiance of the gods as he poured out his very essence to maintain his hold on the powerful magicks he had unleashed, yes... he had unleased this power, he laughed manically as blood errupted from his eyes, cracks appeared in his skin, his flesh began hardening, taking on an un-naturally pale hue, bright light riped from the cracks in his arms, then he fell forward, his spell finished, a smile touched his already dead lips, Darian had succeeded, his staff was complete.

An artefact is usually created by a mage who expends part of himself in order to imbue the item with his power. This expenditure comes from one of two sources; either the mage spends experience points or he expends magickal power points. The expenditure in both cases is permanent irrespective of success or failure to create the new item.

All magi except wizards create magickal items in the following manner. Firstly the mage must know the correct spell in order to prepare his would-be artefact to accept the power he's about to bestow upon it. This "spell" is called "Imbue". The Imbue spell gives an artefact part of the casters life force so that the item can contain and wield magick. The prepared item is then ensorcelled with the desired effect which once again costs the mage in life force so that the effect can take on a life of it's own.

In game terms the mage loses a number of experience points equal to double the cost of the ensorcelments cast on the item; half to prepare it using the imbue spell and half to actually ensorcel it.

NOTE: the cost to create the item in experience is permanent, if any roll during the item creation is unsuccessfull then the creation process fails and the experience is still spent. The experience spent need not come from the experience gained pool, it is perfectly legal for a mage to loose an abillity score point and gain some two thirds of the experience back for it, this can be ANY abillity but NOT skills thus a mage with a strength of six who was prepared to drop the score to five could gain 40 experience points (60 / 3) * 2. Experience gained in this way CANNOT be used for anything other than item manufacturing.

Once the item is created the magick's upon it are locked in place by casting a binding spell, the difficulty of the binding spell is modified by the sum of the effects (spell levels) cast upon the item. Many binding spells exist, finding them is often the key to making awesome magickal artefacts as some binding spells have bonuses to difficulty!