Research notes of Keli'vant and Quar'ikar, on the subject of artifacts.

Chapter X: To Steal a Life

The art of stealing a life, is naut a simple art, to be sure. Firstly stealing a life requires a great amount of understanding in regards to the great art. So far I have only found 2 incantations that can effectively steal a life. The normal function of these incantations is to rip the soul out of an enemy, rendering the lump of flesh that remains, lifeless. Primarily such is the greater focus of necromancy, and one of the primary goals of those who study it. With all my work in gem cutting and such though, I became fascinated about the idea of trapping a soul in a gem to increase it's overall magical capacity. So far the results have been rather intriguing. Please note, that if you wish to attempt this, make sure the gem you are using is suitable to hold the soul in question. Also make sure that you have a full understanding of the incantation that steals the soul of another from your body, mistakes...can lead to your own death.

That said the process so far has proved rather successfull. Initial tests have resulted in gems with exponentially powerful innate attributes. The process of trapping a soul is as simple as channelling the spell which takes a soul, through the gem with the following moderations to the incantation:

"soul ekess clax, waph ekess iwisur, bound persvek yobolat vur form unreel. breath thric gocahel, waph undone, ssifisv jaka vur malrak, douta existence ui won."

Replace with:

"soul ekess clax, waph ekess iwisur, bound persvek yobolat vur form unreel. breath thric gocahel, waph undone, douta soul jaka sini, bound malrak lae ir."

This modification to the words keeps the primary incantation intact, while changing the final purpose of what happens to the soul. Channelled through a gem with the modified words the spell pulls the soul back towards you, and as it enters the gem, is held there indefinetly unless the gem is of insufficient quality to hold such.

In my tests a cut garnet did naut manage to hold the soul of a Claddath wizard, and simply shattered when the soul entered it. However, I ran the same test with some emeralds I had been given to cut and the soul remained trapped inside.

A gem with a bound soul has it's innate properties boosted to roughly 5x the standard power of said gem. In general this increase in power can be attributed to an array that yeilds roughly that same increase in power. Tests with topaz arrays have yeilded promising results. Should you be interested in creating extremely powerful artifacts and equipment using the gem array technique outlined here, it is recommended that you fill the gems involved with the souls of your enemies, prior to doing so. This will result in much stronger end artifacts, as well as having the added bonus of forcing your enemies to fight for you, against their will, for all time.