The Black Diamond Sphere--a magical, wish-granting orb; however, this was not always so. Many mysteries surround this rare object--such as how it chooses whose wish it will grant, for it does not always grant wishes of those who ask--but the story of its origin is told with something very much like certainty…

As the Black Diamond Sphere was rare even before it was magical, it was jealously guarded in a museum of giant proportions somewhere in the northern part of the continent Plyphon. If you had inquired about the Sphere, anyone--from the curator down to the lowliest janitor--would have told you that it was the most protected thing in the world. The closest any of the museum's visitors were allowed to get was ten feet. It was untouchable…or so they thought.

A man, a master in the art of thieving, one day got wind of this top-security item. Considering it as a personal challenge, he set out to steal it for his own. He began to make regular trips to the museum, under the pretext of being a traveling history fanatic, and studied the layout of the building and the securities of the Black Diamond Sphere bit by bit. It took him the estimated amount of two to three years to gather the needed information and conceive a plan.

No one really knows what was involved in the plan, only that the next morning when the curator arrived, the Sphere was gone. At this point, our thief was already well away from the scene of the crime and congratulating himself on a job well done. His plan, however, had one flaw; one security he had not checked for.

You see, in this world--on these continents--there were people who could do magic by calling on the mystical elements--Fire, Water, Air, Earth, Lightning, Ice, Light, and Dark. Nearly everyone you could encounter in the streets of the towns and cities of this world could perform elemental magic, though some were more powerful at it then others. The most powerful were called Mystics.

This is what the museum owners had done that our thief did not think to check: They had summoned the most powerful Mystic they could find and had this person use the powers of the Elements to bestow the Black Diamond Sphere with a divine guardian. He found out the night after he had stolen the Sphere as he lay sleeping.

A tall woman, robed in black with hair like an untamed wildfire and eyes like glowing embers in the hearth, came to him in his dreams. She said to him, her voice like the sweetest music--but edged with fire, "Return the Sphere, my darling. Return it or pay the price."

Our foolish thief awoke the next day, dismissing the dream as something from within his imagination. He traveled on for days with each night, as he slept, the dream coming back to him. Each time he dismissed it as imagination. Then one night he arrived at a small cave. Deciding to give the authorities time to try and find him--to make the game more interesting, he mounted torches on the walls and settled down. He had planned to hide out here for a few days, never knowing he would never leave this cave again.

The thief pulled out the Black Diamond Sphere, intending to gloat over it, when it suddenly did something very strange. It flew out of his hands and embedded itself, as if a chandelier, in the cave's ceiling.

"What in the--?" the thief gasped, looking up at it.

"I told you to return it," said a voice the thief found all too familiar.

He turned. The red-haired woman was standing in the mouth of the cave. The thief was quite sure he was awake, but yet there this mysterious woman stood.

"Who are you?!" the thief shouted.

"I am the guardian of the Sphere. You did not return it. Now pay the price," the woman stated in a toneless voice.

She raised her hands high above her head. The thief fell to his knees, yelling, "Have mercy! Please! I didn't know!"

The woman took no notice. She mumbled a few mystical words, and the thief vanished from sight. The woman stared up at the Sphere and said, "You have been eternally trapped, thief. Try to make the best of it."

She left. The thief, trapped within the Sphere, wondered for some time what she meant by "make the best of it." Until one day he found she had given him powerful magic. Not powerful enough to release himself, of course, but power enough to perhaps do something else. He did decide to make the best of it. He decided to use his newfound power to grant the wishes of those who heard the Legend of the Black Diamond Sphere and sought it out. But on one condition. Exactly what this is, no one knows.

The thief remains trapped in the Sphere--in a cave, somewhere in the north of Plyphon--to this very day.