Mythal
Mythal is a term originating in the Forgotten Realms setting for Dungeons & Dragons. It refers to a powerful magical effect, created by a group of spellcasters to protect and ward a large area with numerous powerful enchantments. The earliest known creators of mythals were, of course, the elves, although epic type magics invented by other races could also be used to produce mythal-like wards.
Mythals are so important to the elves of the Forgotten Realms that a minor Seldarine deity exists literally under the role of "God of Mythals"; Mythrien Sarath.
Powers of a Mythal[edit | edit source]
A typical mythal prevent certain schools of magic from being employed while empowering others, and/or serves to restrict access to the warded area to certain classes of beings. Mightier effects than that are known to exist; the Dracorage, for example, was a mythal bound to a comet that would drive all of the dragons of the Forgotten Realms into a mindless berserker frenzy when the comet entered Toril's orbit and thus brought them within its area of effect.
Types of Mythal[edit | edit source]
While any epic magic "field or ward" could be considered a mythal, and the differences were often semantics or traditions, scholars in the Forgotten Realms have often used the following distinctions to describe various mythals:
- High Mythal or True Mythal
- The first, great elven mythals.
- Wizard Mythal
- Those mythals created later but with similar power and often by/including non-elves.
- Near-Mythal
- Others
Part of the confusion comes from the fact that, previous to Mystra's Ban, mythals could be created by both high level (10+) spells and Epic magic. After Mystra's Ban only the Epic magic option remained.
As you can probably guess, the elves are most behind this category of naming schemes.