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delve into darker and more serious areas. They made considerable
progress in witchcraft and necromancy. Their major area of
concentration, however, lay in the field of alchemy. It is surprising to note
that some Melcene alchemists were actually successful in converting
base metals into gold - although the effort and expenditure involved
made the process monumentally unprofitable. It was, however, a
Melcene alchemist, Senji the Clubfooted, who inadvertently
stumbled over the secret of the Will and the Word during one of his
experiments. Senji, a 15th century practitioner at the University in
the Imperial city was notorious for his ineptitude. To be quite frank
about it, Senji's experiments more often turned gold into lead than
the reverse. In a fit of colossal frustration at the failure of his most
recent experiment, Senji inadvertently converted'a half-ton of brass
plumbing into solid gold. An immediate debate arose among the
Bureau of Currency, the Bureau of Mines, the Department of
Sanitation, the faculty of the College of Alchemy and the faculty of
the College of Comparative Theology about which organization
should have control of Senji's discovery. After about three hundred
years of argumentation, it suddenly occurred to the disputants that
Senji was not merely talented, but also appeared to be immortal. In
the name of scientific experimentation, the varying Bureaus,
Departments and faculties agreed that an effort should be made to
have him assassinated.
A well-known defenestrator was retained to throw the irascible
old alchemist from a high.window in one of the towers of the
University. The experiment had a three-fold purpose. What the
various Departments wished to find out was: (a) If Senji was in fact
unkillable, (b) what means he would take to save his life while
plummeting toward the pavement, and (c) if it might be possible to
discover the secret of flight by giving him no other alternative. What
they actually found out was that it is extremely dangerous to threaten
the life of a sorcerer - even one as inept as Senji. The defenestrator
found himself translocated to a position some fifteen hundred meters
above the harbor, five miles distant. At one instant he had been
wrestling Senji toward the window; at the next, he found himself
standing on insubstantial air high above a fishing fleet. His demise
occasioned no particular sorrow - except among the fishermen,
whose nets were badly damaged by his rapid descent. In an outburst
of righteous indignation, Senji then proceeded to chastise the
was finally only a personal appeal from the Emperor himself that
persuaded the old man to desist from some fairly exotic punishments.
(Senji's penchant for the scatological had led him rather
naturally into interfering with normal excretory functions as a means of
chastisement.) Following the epidemic of mass constipation, the
Departments were more than happy to allow Senji to go his own way
unmolested.
On his own, Senji established a private academy and advertised
for students. While his pupils never became sorcerers of the
magnitude of Belgarath, Polgara, Ctuchik or Zedar, they were able to
perform some rudimentary applications of the Will and the Word
which immediately elevated them far above the magicians and
witches practicing their art forms within the confines of the
University'
It was during this period of peace and tranquillity that the first
encounter with the Angaraks took place. Although they were
victorious in that first meeting, the pragmatic Melcenes realized that
eventually the Angaraks could overwhelm them by sheer weight of
numbers.