Wilf Badderwell

Wilf Badderwell was a High Sorcerer of the early 12th century.

Background
In 1132, Badderwell fought a duel with a nonmagical swordsman. Despite his skills as a mage, he was slain by his opponent before he could cast a spell in his own defense. Mages' postmortems of this event led to the realization of the "one-step, one-spell distance": a radius within which a weapon can strike any mage faster than they can cast a conventional spell. This in turn led to the invention of sword arts.