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The words of Etag the Drow before his death by the Black Curse:

"The Telling of the Three is an ancient fable, but like many fables, it is rooted in truth.  The 'Three' are Fate, Time, and Will.  Eons ago, the gods decided that their will is an absolute and should guide the universe.  They call their will 'Fate' because it is what must happen absent interference of the other two.  They put Fate like boat in a river called Time, for it to flow with a current and ensure Fate reaches its destination.  But to their creations they granted free will.  This is Will, and it can be rocks in the river, dams that stop the flow, or even tributaries leading to different branches of Fate.  The gods were pleased by this unpredictability."

"Some of the gods began to gamble and create various fates to place bets on, each wanting Will and Time to push the boat of fate in their direction.  But this created wrath, dissention, and a divide among the gods.  They each became ruler of their own domains--the planes, the hells, the heavens."

"One of the less noble gods, whose name varies depending on the person telling the tale, determined another way to make Fate go his way.  He created the Gates of Time.  Through this, the boat of Fate could be put back up the river and futures could be changed.  But it had an undesired effect.  The Fates were never meant to exist simultaneously.  Changing that boat -- what you would call The Present -- brings with it changes.  The gods forever banned the use of the Gates of Time but could not destroy them since they were created by a god.  The gods obeyed this law, but not so their creations.  The wizard Azaron Ashe, my mentor, obeyed this law, but his other pupil, Tarimar, did not.  He went through the Gates, disrupting the world at the last Marker before I could devise a way to close them more permanently.  And now you will see things in this world that were never meant to be."

"Knowing of this folly, and yet of their promise to allow free will, the gods devised the Reckoning, known among these gnomes and their dwarf cousins as the 'Kuvlah Tah.'  It is a function of destruction and rebirth, and we mortals are caught in its stream.  There is a force created by the gods; it is a force that can overcome all other forces and laws; it is the primary force of creation and destruction; it is the force created for the gods to put the Kuvlah Tah into effect, and it resonates through our worlds, Tienna and Allevia.  We call this force ‘magic,’ and it is meant to be in balance – what is called the Kish Gilah -- but when it is not, it is destructive.  It mars the membranes of realities and of the planes.  When you saw Tienna destroyed, it was because the rush of magic created a Kuvlah Tah so strong that it destroyed the entire world, and sucked the magic dry from this world, Allevia.  That was pure Kuvlah Tah, but what happened when Tarimar went through the Gates of Time is that it formed a warped and mutated magic upon the land.  It will kill Allevia if not stopped, much more slowly – but just as surely – as it destroyed Tienna.  But it makes the world a sick and unnatural place.”

“To keep the Kuvlah Tah in balance, the Five Pillars were created by the gods.  Each has two incarnations imbued in objects--artifacts.  And you carry at least two of them that I have seen.  You have heard of the Five Pillars, yes?”