The work contained on this page has been penned over time by the creator of the Forgotten Realms - Ed Greenwood, and kindly provided to us here at Candlekeep by The Hooded One on the Candlekeep Forum. The collection presented here is a digest version which has been collated by Scott Kujawa, presenting all Ed's responses and omitting other posters discussions which followed.

(Answers from Ed Greenwood)

Apr - Jun 2006

Ed tackles Bendal's question: "A general question about the Silver Marches geography. How wide is the Surbrin River downstream of Silverymoon? Is it narrow enough that a giant on one of the banks could throw a boulder and hit a barge anywhere in the river?" which he restated as: "How wide is the Surbrin River between Silverymoon and Yartar, in general? Is it narrow enough that a giant on one bank could hit a barge anywhere in the river with a boulder?"

Ed replies:

Below Silverymoon, the Surbrin is generally sixty to eighty feet wide. Ninety in a very few places, but none of the gorges one can find well upstream of Everlund. The river is cold, steadily fast-flowing, and boulder-scoured for centuries so that it now has a rock-and-pebble bottom (very few sandbars, no oxbows, back swamps, and not all that many "lazy" curves; it's flowing through hard rock and so isn't meandering all that much). So, yes, a giant could certainly hurl a boulder far enough to hit a barge anywhere in the flow (the DM would have to judge the accuracy), and there are boulders in plenty available near the banks and in the river for most of its flow. A sixty-to-seventy-foot-width will be more often encountered than other widths.

So saith Ed.

Chief Surveyor and Navigator of the Surbrin. Who will pop on another hat and return tomorrow with Realmslore on a different topic.

love to all,
THO

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On April 4, 2006 THO said: Charles, this one of yours I can answer:

"You know, I always wonder what Eds original idea for what the Realms would be like in terms of sexual content and violence."

In Ed's original Realms, sex, violence, nudity, so-called sexual deviance (S&M, homosexuality, bisexuality, different family groupings than the North American Christian social 'norm'... and so on) were and are all present.

However, with the exception of the gossipy social climbers (like the ladies seen talking in the early present-day chapters of CORMYR: A NOVEL) in the setting, there was no gasping at such things, no pointing and shouting with alarm.

None of the attention paid to such details, except when plots turned on them, that certain gamers seemed to give them, going on and on about Ed the lecher and nude woodchopping scenes and the like.

Ed was a little astonished at how much TSR (and many American gamers) reacted to the sex, but at the same time seemed to see nothing wrong with graphic, sadistic, and "how-to" violence. Ed was a child of the sixties, and sex was "everywhere but not talked about all that much by non-participants in a particular act or encounter, because, hey, it wasn't their business." It was a pre-AIDS world, remember.

And the Realms wasn't, and isn't, a Christian modern-world North American setting - - or even, despite the attempts of many to portray or understand it as such, a medieveal or Renaissance historical real-world setting, with magic tacked on.

That isn't to say issues of jealousy, love gone wrong, sexual competition, moral disapproval, and other "human nature" issues didn't and don't feature in the Realms. Ed's just a lot more casual about such things than the worried-about-angry-mothers-from-Heck publishers (TSR and now WotC) have ever been able to afford to be.

I once asked Ed, in the presence of Peter Archer at GenCon, what an uncensored Ed Greenwood Realms novel would be like, by asking him to compare what he'd be aiming for to a published fantasy author, and he replied: Guy Gavriel Kay in TIGANA or A SONG FOR ARBONNE: present when necessary, used to give us insight into the characters and make them seem more real, but not dwelt upon.

It should always be remembered that Ed has been edited and toned down a lot, but also asked to "sex things up" on more than one occasion, and told "we're aiming for the twelve-year-old American male, so you can go as far as you like with violence, and give us lots of TITillation, but not much more than titillation." (yes, that's a direct quote, but I'll protect the identity of the TSR staffer who uttered it).

So there you are.

love,
THO

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April 5, 2006: Why, thank you. Alaundo, don't hide that whip behind your back; use it!

Right here! And (ahh) here! And over here, too!

That's better. Purr.....

Ahem. Hello again, fellow scribes. This time Ed answers Wooly Rupert's query: "Menus in taverns. We know that some places have multiple items on the menu; there's a nice one for the Inn of the Dripping Dagger in Volo's Guide to Waterdeep. My question is, what form do these menus take? Are they actually printed, or are they painted on a big sign, or do the tavern lasses simply remember it all, or what?"

Ed replies:

It varies. Small wayside inns and taverns who are the only 'public dining' in town don't bother with menus: whatever's "On" tonight is whatever's "on," and the choices are usually so simple that the platter-maid just verbally imparts them ("What'll it be, goodsirs? The fish or the joint?" or "Full meat or the stew?") and outlines the drinkable and dessert - - the REAL "treat worth paying for" for most commoners and farmers in the Realms - - choices.

Most feasthouses and feast halls in inns and taverns located where there's 'real' competition (that is, all 'market towns' and cities; I'm distinguishing real-competition situations from locales where there's a temple that serves food only to pilgrims and night guests, an inn that serves different sort of fare only to guests, and a tavern that serves only sausages, cheese, and hot hardbread with lot and lots of ale to everyone who comes in the door and pays: three different food sources, but they are NOT competing with each other), and all places where food sources change often (fresh fish landed at ports, for example) chalk up their menus, typically on a board beside the bar, and another on a pillar not far inside the front door.

However, royalty, nobility, and wealthy wannabe-nobles have always regarded beautiful printed menus (often taken home as "remembrances") as a mark of "proper" or "superior" dining, and as a result all "highnose" feasting halls (what we real-worlders might call "fine dining restaurants") and inns who have haughty feastchambers (again, what we might call "fine dining restaurants") or agreements with feasthouses and dining clubs, tend to prepare handsomely calligraphic "provender bills" (both sides of one sheet of heavy paper; menus are a field in which exotic papers are the rage, not parchment). In Waterdeep, darn near every eatery in North Ward, Sea Ward, Castle Ward, and Trades Ward west and north of the City of the Dead has such printed menus. Even some of the more exclusive "upstairs clubs" in Dock Ward, frequented by young nobles, use either printed menus (done by the broadsheets printers) or handwritten calligraphic cards.

There are also a very few establishments (mainly in Calimshan and the Tashalar, but in a few places in Amn, coastal Tethyr, and the Vilhon, too) that do what we would recognize as "coated paper, multi-panel foldout menus." (The coating is wax, to keep stains from curries and sauces off the paper, and the paper is usually shield-shaped rather than rectangular.)

The old tradition around the shores of the Shining Sea (still seen in some places there, and flourishing in Var the Golden) is to have a "banner maid" - - a provocatively or grandly-dressed lass or pair of lasses who comes to a table of diners with the platter-maid for that table. The banner maid is literally wearing the menu, as a fore-and-aft stiffened fabric, close-in-to-the-body (rather than jutting out sideways much) variant of our real-world "sandwich boards." She stands and moves as diners direct, they choose, the platter-maid records the orders, and off they go to the next table (good-looking or very scantily-dressed banner maids often get called back several times throughout a meal). It's considered good fun and perfectly acceptable to "call out" the banner maid once or even several times as one eats, but NOT considered good form to dally over the initial order, or call her back multiple times immediately after making that order. Some restaurants also use their banner-maids for rowdy-diner-patrol: they have bulbs of sleep gas or liquid drugs that act as sedatives when mixed with wine or ale hidden within their boards (or, in certain Calishite establishments, even magic wands!).

So saith Ed.

A gourmet (oh, all right: glutton) of the first order.

love to all,
THO

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April 6, 2006: Hi, all!

Just for the record, none of the Seven is based on me (or on any of the rest of us, including Ed).

In March of last year, Skeptic asked: "I've read somewhere that there is a Gargauth temple somewhere under Waterdeep, where I should place it?"

Ed delayed replying to avoid conflicting with Eric Boyd's superb Waterdeep update lorebook and its web enhancements, but can now reply, thus:

Right underneath Malather's Fine Wheels and Axles (All Sizes, All Kinds), a four-storey shop - - the upper floors are a workshop and two 'warehouse' floors of stock, crammed with wheels that go right down to tiny carved wooden ones for toys and for making serving "boats" (miniature carved wooden ships loaded with bottles of condiments and sprinkle-spices, that some nobles like to push across their dining-tables to each other), and the cellar is rented out for "small storage" to individual Waterdhavians (i.e. you pay by the strongchest you put down there, in the damp) - - that stands on west-front The Way of the Dragon, four doors north of Simples Street [for those with access only to the most recent (and superb) CITY OF SPLENDORS: WATERDEEP hardcover lorebook by Eric Boyd, Simples Street is the cross-street that runs through the "bottom" (southernmost tip) of Virgin's Square] in Trades Ward.

The temple is formally known as the House of Hidden Watchfulness (faithful just call it "the House"). It's a small, simple subterranean complex of four rooms: a 'robing room' (where worshippers set aside outer clothing and carried items), that opens into an approach hall with flanking pairs of torch-brackets and braziers, which leads into the holy sanctum or main worship area (which has curtains at its entrance, a raised chancel with altar at its far end, and curtains at the back of the chancel that conceal two doors into the last room: a vestry for the priests to store offerings, temple regalia, their own robes, sacrificial materials, spare braziers and fuel, and so on).

The temple has three entrances: two worshippers know about, that reach the robing room from different directions, and a third known only to the priests, that connects with the vestry.

The east-side robing room entrance is a stair down through the NE corner of the (hollow at that point only) front wall of Malather's shop, that opens out into the floor above the shop (one of the warehouse levels; Hardro Malather [owner of the building and a LE male Chondathan human Exp2 who sometimes worships in the temple himself] lets worshippers access it for a 1 cp/person fee that is turned over to the priests to defray running costs of the temple).

The west-side robing room entrance connects with the cellar of the notorious Bowels of the Earth tavern [location T36 in the hardcover sourcebook]; specifically, a sliding wall panel in the mens' jakes in the cellar; the priests like to inform female worshippers only of this entrance, to humiliate them - - and force them to make the long, chilly, damp walk through the connecting tunnel to the robing room in the dark.

The vestry entrance runs northeast (crossing under The Way of the Dragon) to reach the second floor of a building in a very similar manner to the connection with Malather's shop. The building is Saraera's Fresh Loaves and Handpies (a bakery of buns, small round loaves, and hand-pies [we real-world moderns would say "meat pies;" most of Saraera's are stuffed with highly-spiced mashed fish that we would call "curried fish," but sometimes she buys old, strong-flavored cheese or 'past-it' sausage, which she slices into medallions and fries in oil with her own spice mixtures, and uses them for filling, instead]). The three-storey bakery is locally very popular, floods the area with pleasant baking smells every morning, and stands on the SE corner of the moot of The Way of the Dragon and Blackhorn Alley.

Saraera lives on the upper floor, rents the middle floor out as offices to two mysterious companies: Red Anchor Importing and Elraen Investments (neither really exists; they're just fronts for the priest who owns the entire building), has her shop on the ground floor, and has her ovens and supplies in the cellar. Ilmarara Saeraera is a fat, short, wheezing, sharp-tongued and beady-black-eyed malicious little matron who takes in young lasses as her staff, slaps and whips them if they misbehave or displease her, but loyally stands up for them otherwise. She's a CE female Calishite human Exp1 who has no idea that one of her tenants is actually her landlord, too (the rent she pays is collected monthly by a hired bailiff), or about the hidden stair inside the SE corner of the bakery wall, or about the temple. She worships Loviatar, and every third day spends a morning going outside the city to a patch of stinging nettles, cutting them, stuffing them inside her clothes next to her skin so she'll feel appropriate pain, and praying all the way back to the bakery, where she disrobes, climbs into a waiting cold bath to wash away the nettles so she can bear to work again, and returns to her baking.

(I've left the clergy of this temple mysterious so DMs can insert their own NPCs tailor-matched to their campaign.)

So saith Ed.

Revealing hidden temples upon request (one at a time, ONE at a time...).

love to all,
THO

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April 7, 2006: Hello again, fellow scribes. Ed makes reply to createvmind AND Lauzoril, to whit:

Ed responds to Lauzoril's snipped comments on the Finnish translation of Elminster in Myth Drannor, and his queries: "Has the exact circumstances been told or will they be told when and why Elminster stumbled into the spell trap which immobilised him for years, resulting him not being present in Myth Drannor's fall? Particularly how soon after leaving Drannor he did it?" and "How do Drow handle the waste disposal, generally?"

and to the first of createvmind's March 15th flood of questions (leaving the spell queries for later): "Rereading "Temptation of Elminster" I was curious as to whether Mystra caused his whole stasis thing so that he wouldn't have gone down trying to prevent the various events that occured, Fall of Myth Drannor in particular. Since all it took was adventurers to stumble upon him, surely Mystra could have "guided" others to where El was as well, was this her way of keeping him safe till he could mature into the Chosen we have currently?"

Ed replies:

Lauzoril, glad to hear you and your mother liked ELMINSTER IN MYTH DRANNOR. And I'm glad the translation was "perfect," too! No, the exact circumstances haven't yet been told when and why Elminster stumbled into the spell trap - - and I'm not sure if I'll get the chance to tell them in print, or when. I can tell you and createvmind this much: Bingo!

createvmind, your speculations are EXACTLY right. It was indeed Mystra's "trap" and subterfuge; she knew he'd throw his own life away in the fighting, spilling her silver fire (forever), and didn't want that to happen. We don't yet know how soon it befell him after departing Myth Drannor [ahem: meaning there's an NDA regarding El and Alais], but we DO know that this is something Mystra arranged. I was WONDERING when someone would think about that and wonder why the all-powerful goddess of magic couldn't just spring Elminster by ordering and guiding one of her Chosen or the nearest wizard or sorcerer to go and free him. :}

Now, as to drow and waste disposal: "junk" wastes often just get dumped in the Underdark to attract monsters for drow to hunt and slay or for scavengers to pick up; drow bodies tend to get fed to beasts or burned to ash in Lolth-worshipping cities to eliminate evidence, or fed to spiders (sometimes while alive, and immobilized) as punishment; and kitchen scraps and excrement get fed to the right sorts of fungi, that consume them while growing more of themselves, that either (depending on the type) glow brightly as lamps for the drow, or shoot forth edible growths that the drow harvest for their dinner tables (some fungi have "blooms" like broccoli, and some grow "caps" like mushrooms; either sort can be severed, sliced and fried with spices, or boiled to mush in stews).

So saith Ed.

Who's never felt very hungry while visiting drow cities anyway.

love to all,
THO

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April 8, 2006: Hi, all. Ed tackles some more of createvmind's questions: "Does a magic user notice when a wild magic area is possibly manifesting (weave seems more concentrated, sporadic, porous, not continously even or flowing like outside of spawning wild magic area) can they notice when a dead magic area is manifesting such as a "thinning of the weave" or do dead magic areas occur instantly from whatever previously named reasons?"

Ed replies:

Generally, no: magic users can't see or feel that a wild magic or a dead magic area is manifesting. There are certain 'homespun' spells that try to examine and make visible Weave flows, but these are VERY short-range and unreliable (it's like thrusting your head into the full glare of an overhead streetlight from about a foot away and trying to see the pattern of the joining filaments at the back of the bulb). Spellfire users, some sensitive people and sorcerers employing certain spells, CAN feel Weave flows (as tinglings or even shudderings), but that doesn't mean they'll "guess right" as to the reasons for flow fluctuations (there are many), unless they already know a wild or dead magic area exists in the locale, and they're just trying to find its precise location. Both sorts of magic areas usually come into existence violently and spectacularly (that is, as a result of causes or effects that a magic user can readily see and in fact would find it very hard to ignore), but if they are already in existence, they're usually invisible and found only "the hard way" (for example, a hurled spell suddenly stops in midair, or twists into something unexpected).

So saith Ed.

Who of course created wild magic AND dead magic areas in the Realms before there was a D&D game.

love to all,
THO

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April 9, 2006: Geez, way to make a lass feel old. (Looks down.)

Yep. Once pert and proud, but pretty soon my knees'll have company...

Ahem.

Hi again, all. Kuje has been very patiently waiting for some private lore from Ed, and is going to have to wait a little longer, I'm afraid - - wherefore Ed guiltily turns to answering these questions of his: "I'm curious, Ed, about make-up and other beauty products. I can't recall any references to such things in published lore, or maybe there's some in passing but, those references don't give enough details. So, where is make-up made? What cities import and or export these types of products? What kinds of make-up are there? What are they made out of? Hmmm, lets see...what else. How much do they cost? How are they sold? Are there shops/stores that sell them? Who uses them the most? I figured that nobles and other...carnal workers, shall we say?, would use them. And, anything else you might think is relevant to the topic."

Ed replies:

Faraer is right; we haven't dwelt on details of cosmetics yet. I was waiting for the great caravan and merchant book that will never come. :}

This is a very broad topic, so I'm going to restrict my reply to "fleshpaint" makeup: substances painted, smeared, or rubbed onto skin, either to cover blemishes or introduce artificial colours or both. I'm also going to restrict it to those substances used by what 2nd Edition D&D called "humans, demihumans, and humanoids," leaving out the dyes and such that, say, yuan-ti use.

There are literally thousands of "secret recipes" for making fleshpaint (also known as adratha in Calimshan and dardarra in the Vilhon, but never "blush" or "rouge" or "makeup," for that matter) in the Realms, but in general, they can all be broken down to this:

A particular mud or chalk base is gathered, dried, and pulverized into powder. To it are added powdered natural ingredients (boiled essences of bark, reptile hide, plant roots or leaves or sap, and so on) that impart both colours and scents (NOT perfumes or scents, but something to stop the mud and the next ingredient [grease] from stinking). This mixture is then mixed with grease (usually animal fat, but sometimes oils from certain crushed seeds), and the resulting glop is usually simmered over heat. Various additional colour agents and scent agents may be added and the mixture treated again in various ways; many of the most popular cosmetics are kept from separating, "going bad" (rancid), losing their hues, or turning into something that irritates or even consumes skin by applications of particular (secret) cantrips.

In general, fleshpaint making takes place in southern Tethyr, the Vilhon, Chessenta, and locations to the south of that, being most popular in rural Calimshan, Mulhorand, and Var the Golden (though the witches of Rashemen have long practiced these arts, using material brought from the east through the Great Dale). Ormpur and Sheirtalar are just two of many cities that have local fleshpaint crafters. (The reason for this geographical 'range' is that most of the best natural ingredients for colouration are found in southern climes.)

It should be noted that all across the North, barbarian women and "old wives" who live close to the land know well temporary cosmetics (which berries can be rubbed into the skin, etc.); I'm speaking now of the making of goo in little jars (or large casks, that are emptied into little jars when they reach a market like Waterdeep or Athkatla) that can be transported great distances, stored on shop shelves, and sold to folk over a season or three.

So fleshpaint is made in thousands of rural and urban kitchens, generally but not exclusively in the south. Much of the rural stuff is sold or bartered to passing peddlers, or just used locally (sold in the village tavern or square or out of the home, or taken on muleback or sack-over-shoulder once a tenday to the market in town). The urban stuff is made in bulk, often by guilded workers (and sometimes as a daytime sideline by, to use your term, "carnal workers"), and is sold in shops, from street vendors, and at markets.

The cities that export these products are: every port and crossroads caravan trading-center in the Realms south of the places I mentioned. The cities that import them are all those same places (fleshpaint's a very "personal tastes" thing, with those who use it trying and swearing by substances made by particular people, or from a specific area, and so on), plus everywhere else in the Realms (large population centers in particular, so important ports with large local consuming populations or lots of other populations to serve, like Waterdeep, Baldur's Gate, Athkatla, and so on).

Like collectibles and fine wine, fleshpaint costs whatever the market will bear. Scent, hue, and properties (does it cover warts, scars, or other bad skin flaws? or conceal distinctive tattoos? does it match my skin? does it stay supple, or start to crack and flake, or come off onto other things I touch, if I sweat excessively while wearing it, or wear it for long periods, or rub my bare skin ardently and rhythmically against someone else's?) all affect price. Like everything else: cheaper in the market or on the street, and more expensive in a shop, particularly one that carries a larger selection. A glass "two thumbs" jar (widemouth glass jar large enough in diameter for a merchant to thrust both his thumbs into at once, and deep enough when empty for his thumbs to easily touch the bottom) will cost a minimum of 4 sp for the very worst stuff, 4 to 8 gp for most cheap, everyday stuff (so, a median price of 6 gp/jar), and good stuff: 20 or 25 gp/jar or even more. Sometimes a LOT more (this one contains flecks of gold, or the blood of this elf maiden prince so-and-so killed, or a love spell, or...) 50 gp to 75 gp.

Who buys fleshpaint? Actors, prostitutes, and anyone wanting to cover skin blemishes (male and female) or even their identity. The heaviest users are fat, aging women trying to look more attractive or exotic or both - - and of that group, the heaviest users are nobles and especially wealthy wannabe-nobles, who may have closets full of a wide selection of scents, fleshpaints, specialized lip-paints, and so on. They'll rub a foundation onto themselves, add eyeshadow and reddeners to make highlights and shadows, paint their lips and nails (with quite different things), and sometimes also paint adornments - - by which I mean: on one's cheek or under the eyes or upper breast (or around nipples) or palm, with henna or fleshpaint of a contrasting hue to the foundation, applied with a needle under the skin, or onto the skin with a shaped thin stick or wooden tool cut on an angle like a quill pen, draw a symbol or an illustration of a flower head or a staring eye or star or whatever, as a "beauty spot."

So saith Ed.

Whew. I'd say that more than covers it, Kuje.

love to all,
THO

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On April 9, 2006 THO said: Nope. D&D didn't come along until 1974, and Ed didn't encounter it until 1975.

In 1966, Ed was writing Mirt the Moneylender fantasy stories (yes, he was born in 1959, and yes, that makes him young - - but the man IS a genius, and was a child prodigy). In 1967, he mapped the Sword Coast, coined the name "Forgotten Realms," and started writing more ambitious stories, that explored his unfolding world. Which, yes, makes the Realms older than the D&D game.

Since then, Ed has written or contributed to more than 180 books and game products. Wince.

love to all,
THO

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April 10, 2006: Hi, all! A mundane technical reply this time, from me to this from Dargoth: "Hooded One: Do you and Ed have Excel? (Or a means of viewing Excel Spreadsheets?)"

Sorry, no. Ed primarily works in Word (not Office) on old (pre-OS 9) Macs, and for security reasons I can't touch anything Microsoft. We can both read anything made into a .pdf in older versions of Adobe Acrobat, but not if they require Reader 6 or up.

No, we're not Luddites; I in fact customarily work in betas and proprietary applications and operating system variants that haven't yet been (or will never be) released to the public. We both deliberately prevent cross-contamination, viruses, etc. by working with Mac-only software too old and simple to permit most problems from occurring.

Ed tells me that many Word tables I send him leap off his monitor (columns of cells placing themselves to the right of his scrollable margins), and he can only read them by selecting the text and "squashing" the table into incoherence, and then trying to sort it out by context.

So whatever you were going to try to send him, Dargoth, it's probably simpler not to. Please remember our Ed is perhaps the busiest writer alive; I feel guilty enough about how much of his time answering scribes' Realmslore queries that I pass on to him is taking, already.

And to Julian Grimm, who asked "... I was wondering how close the original Undermountain boxed set was to your home Undermountain," Ed and I have recently answered this exact query, here at Candlekeep.

love to all,
THO

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April 10, 2006: Ed Comes Through!

Kuje, please forward this to Purple Dragon Knight, hot off Ed's keyboard:

Sentencing depends on PC's contrition (or lack thereof) in court. Here's the best possible outcome: guilty on three counts of Murder With Justification, and three counts of Magical Assault. Result: exile from Waterdeep for 10 years total for the first three, and damages of 2000gp payable by the PC wizard to the kin/survivors of the three dead circus folk (payable to the circus in lieu, if no kin or can't easily be found). So, 2000 times three. If the PC can't pay, forfeiture of all goods to kin (failing that: circus), plus a year of (supervised) spellcasting in service to Waterdeep (in effect, PC becomes unpaid employee/servant, does some adventuring/monster cleanup in Undermountain, and casts spells for coin, coin then turned over to kin/circus (full year, coin in excess of 2000 each is considered interest on delayed payment of court fine).

If PC behaves just right, impresses Palace official, can be parlayed into real job (rest of PCs allowed to tag along IF they behave).

Good luck!

Ed

And there you have it. More Realmslore as usual, later...

love to all,
THO

Kuje, a postscript: Ed didn't mention it, but it's obvious to me as a player in his campaign: the exile would begin after the other punishments (so after the fine payments or the year of service). And if the Palace officials Ed mentions are pleased enough with the PC wizard, the exile would just be quietly forgotten (assuming the aggrieved kin and/or the circus aren't dwelling in Waterdeep). He did just this once, with a PC from the Company of Crazed Venturers.

love,
THO

Oh, Rory, you're right, but this is rich! I handed it on to Ed, who also roared with laughter and said:

Go for it. Who knows which Black Robe is on the bench this night? Wait, I've got it: the ten years of exile is WITH THE CIRCUS. Yesss!

So saith Ed.

Giggling here, too.

love,
THO

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April 11, 2006: Hi, all. This arrived in my e-inbox from Ed, so I'm turning the floor (or table, or wherever he prefers - - purr - - over to him):

To Rowan and Faraer: well, yes, we are celebrating those anniversaries: by finally writing and releasing what should have been the very first published Realms novel, way back when. Actually, that's what I'm hoping all readers of SWORDS OF EVENINGSTAR do: pretend as they open the book that it's their first glimpse of the Realms, with what we now call the Old Gray Box promised at their local hobby store one week from now...

(ripple of harp strings)

And I was still young and slender, my hair dark, my smile bright, comely lasses flocking to me...

(twanging cacophony of breaking strings)

As the Lovely Lady Hooded would say: Ahem.

To Kuje: Sorry. Please hang in there. Things are so busy on the writing front right now that the impending visit of family at Easter and the looming, many-clawed darkness of Taxes are going to hit me unexpectedly - - even though I'm expecting them. Sigh. I want to do a proper job with what you've sent me, so I need to carve out at least two days to deal with that - - and there are three different parties who've been waiting for me to deal with THEM for far longer than you have. I need clones; WHERE ARE MY CLONES? (Send in the clones...)

Well before GenCon. Promise.

Which reminds me: Spin A Yarn needs to be written, too. Gulp.

To Dargoth: that's a good idea (plotting the relationships between the various noble houses of Waterdeep on an X and Y axis), but I'm afraid it just wouldn't work. You're oversimplifying, I'm afraid, because only a very few houses have such a strong leader that they speak and act with one voice (in Oz, despite having various autocrats as prime ministers, you never seem to get governments that always speak calmly with one unified voice, right?). Most Waterhavian noble families have a dominant matriarch or patriarch who speaks for the house and swaggers in public, but if that head of the house doesn't reach agreement in private with spouse, a dowager mom if one exists, and any number of uncles, aunts, brothers, and sisters, all of those other family members are going to "do their own thing," often spending family money or wielding family investments as part of it. It's the norm for there to be money and policy struggles behind closed doors - - and for the losers to just become more covert in their defiance of the winners. So almost NO family can be plotted neatly in one place or position on such a spreadsheet: individual family members will be scattered (e.g. a brother having a deadly feud with a man of family X, whilst his older sister is having an affair with that man's mother - - and his younger sister is having an affair with that man). It's also oversimplifying, as you did with the Cassalanters and Cragsmeres, to assume that two families sharing the same fields of activity are necessarily Business Rivals. In many cases, they drew up private pacts, sometimes over a century ago, to geographically (or by specific product) divide the field between them, to co-exist rather than compete (remember: unlike our modern real world, there are no laws against such practices - - and despite the laws, such behaviour happens all the time in our modern real world). And a last kick at your idea: any such chart would be at best a snapshot of a moment in time, out of date the moment it was done.

Most of the adventuring and roleplaying fun of a Waterdeep-based campaign is the everchanging, sometimes swiftly-shifting nature of alliances, positions, viewpoints, and attitudes among the nobles and the wealthiest wannabe-noble merchant families, and you can REALLY entertain your players by having their characters groping around trying to learn who's friends with who, who's lying about their deals and alliances, and who's changing sides today. Nobles have a hard time keeping score, and outsiders can be utterly bewildered.

Let me paint you an example. A PC thief sneaks into noble revel, and late at night discovers the matriarch of noble house X and the patriarch of noble house Y making energetic love in the gardens. The PC is bewildered, because he had thought these two people hated each other fervently, and their families were coldly formal to each other at best. So he sneaks away, and a day later slips a truth drug into the glass of the matriarch when he catches her alone, and asks her if she and the patriarch of Y are friends - - and she honestly spits, "No. I hate the very ground he walks on! I despise Y, and house Y, and Y's little dog, too!"

The PC thief blinks at her, and says, "But - - forgive me - - you were with him in the gardens, at the Z's revel just the other night..."

And the matriarch blinks back at HIM. "Yes - - so? I hate and despise the man, but he's one of the most handsome beasts in all the city! We see each other often, and hold several joint shipping investments, as it happens. That was just rutting - - 'Tis not like I TRUST him, man!"

Now, imagine every noble house being a collection of such strong-willed, self-absorbed hedonists, who hunger more for personal freedom than they respect any authority or agreement (remember the behaviour of the nobles Elaine and I showed you in CITY OF SPLENDORS 'the novel, not the game book'), and the impracticality of such a chart should be clear.

P.S. I am not unmindful of your Thorp family request.

So saith Ed.

And as a well-scratched and bitten veteran of Waterdhavian revels (some of those nobles play rough, dear), I fervently concur. Trying to learn who was up to what really is the roleplaying heart and soul of Ed-as-DM Waterdeep campaigns.

love to all,
THO

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April 12, 2006: Hi again, fellow scribes! Feanor very recently posted (as part of a much longer and more detailed question that Ed intends to properly answer later) this: "So, at what age do elves reach adulthood or, to be more specific, at what age an elf would be physically capable of becoming an adventurer?"

Ed replies:

To address (at the moment) only the second half of your question, elves are physically capable of adventuring at around age 33 or so. However, that's just like saying, "Yonder kid who's gawky and in the middle of a growth spurt and accident-prone due to clumsiness with his extremities - - banging things with his elbows because he didn't think they protruded so far, and so on - - is ready to drive this truck."

In other words, elves at age 33 are neither physically or emotionally mature. The latter is often exhibited by behaviour that more dour individuals see as "whimsically inane" or "silly" or "gigglingly reckless" (or "suicidal" or "dangerous" in stealth or combat situations), and the former may well mean clumsiness, a pronounced tendency to drop things, and a lack of anything close to full mature upper body strength. Immature elves tend to take far too little seriously, see far too few consequences until hit by them, and to have attention spans that make butterflies look like deep thinkers. (I am speaking in gross generalizations here, please remember.)

Yet none of this stops them from functioning as adventurers. Compared to some characters as portrayed by apparently intelligent human real-world gamers who've played in GenCon tournaments I've DMed down the years, such immature elves may even seem like stalwart veterans. :}

That DOESN'T mean they would normally want to go adventuring, or that their families would normally let them leave parental supervision to go and indulge in such suicidal activities at such ages. However, in an emergency (for example: where elves fleeing from a ruined tree-village or something of the sort attached themselves to an adventuring band), it could happen.

This would not mean that such elves would step onto the stage as adventurers with any skill at all at archery or anything else, or much worldly wisdom at all (even pertaining to elven society beyond their immediate family groupings). Nor are they necessarily ready to face the world and stay sane. Balanced reasoning, cause-and-effect perceptions, and other judgemental faculties just Aren't Yet Ready For Prime Time - - in part because the hormones inside their bodies are dedicated to physical growth at this stage in their lives, above all else (note to some of the younger scribes who may read this: despite the loose way in which "hormones" are often linked only to matters of puberty, sex, and reproduction, the term really refers to the naturally-generated substances within a living body that control ALL of its growth and processes, "turning on" and "turning off" and "regulating" various glands and organs throughout life).

In short, most elves at age 33 or so are like inquisitive, innocently-wandering children (which is why elf societies DO tend to isolate them from the wider, crueler world), who have progressed beyond incoherent crying and unstable "toddling" far enough to master speech and engage in simple acrobatics. As Steven Schend said, it's around age 50 before they're physically mature (enough to deftly and reliably control their own physical movements, and learn "motor skills" like aimed weapon use), and they're adolescents for what seems a very long time for humans (able to, for instance, engage in sex without conceiving - - although, again, please remember I'm speaking in generalizations rather than about every last specific individual).

So saith Ed.

Who will wade into the weightier "decide this for us" part of your question later, when he's polished off his taxes and at least two novels, two dozen web columns, three magazine columns, and a game product more than he has right now. (Whew!)

love to all,
THO

*************************************************************************************

April 13, 2006: Hi, all. Nynshari recently posted a series of deity-related Realmslore questions, and Ed replies hereafter (Nynshari's queries interleaved in double square brackets):

Ed speaks:

Nynshari, I hope I can be of help here. However, I'm afraid I largely disagree with what seems to be your root thesis: that Realmsian elements are modeled on the specific real-world mythic or historical elements you believe them to be.

When reading these replies, please remember that over seventy writers that I know of have "touched" the gods in significant ways, and that some of them may have taken very different approaches than I did.

My original approach to creating the Realms pantheon (complete with "placeholder" gods, awaiting what Gary Gygax was going to do with, for example, the elemental gods) can be found in issue 54 of DRAGON Magazine (or "The Dragon," as it was then). Most of my 300,000 words or so of notes on the gods, their priesthoods, and the creeds and rituals of their faiths became "base source material" for the 2nd edition sourcebooks FAITHS AND AVATARS tome and its sequel, POWERS AND PANTHEONS. Eric Boyd and Julia Martin did a lot of work giving the deities life, detail, and color, but (aside from "killing off" deities on several occasions) there have been very few wholesale changes in my original pantheon in which I wasn't involved.

[[Many of the countries in the realms resemble earth cultures either directly from history or from mythology. Was this modeling intentional or accidental regarding the following places:

Vaasa - Vikings]]

Vaasa wasn't in my original Realms; it's entirely a TSR creation, and I have no idea whether it was intentionally modeled on anything or not.

[[Netheril and Thultanthar - ancient Greece and Rome/Plato's Republic (respectfully)]]

The Netheril you saw in print differed in fine detail from my original, and Thultanthar was developed by others. So for the published Thultanthar, again I can't answer as to the intent behind its detailing.

Netheril certainly wasn't modeled on ancient real-world anything, and attempts to draw parallels between real-world places and Netheril are tenuous at best. In Netheril I intended to show the decadence of humans consumed by the desire to "master" magic, and achieve immortality or godhood (or the ability to reshape the world like gods, at a whim), and the contrast between their created worlds (not all floating cities, by the way), with altered gravity and such, and the "other" Netherese living like hardy hunters in the forests, ignored or considered beasts by the archwizards.

This doesn't resemble either "real" or mythological ancient Greece at all. Not in society, climate, history, warfare, world-beliefs, presence or absence of magic, religious beliefs or divine influence - - sorry, no correspondence at all. Imperial Rome could be said to have a similar "we're the greatest, the ultimate, and our might makes right; it's morally right to do to the rest of the world just what we want to do" attitude as Netheril, but it's important to remember that attitude only 'comes down to us' (except as fancifully amplified by Hollywood) in the fragmentarily surviving writings and proclamations of a few rulers, who were politicians attempting to justify their actions and positions. It's highly unlikely the "average" Roman citizen (or legionary) held such views, considering what various Roman plays reveal of public attitudes, and what Juvenal says in his SATIRES. That megalomaniacs or persuasive politicians want (and profess to believe they deserve to wield) power is hardly something distinctive to either Rome or Netheril - - something so universal hardly establishes a parallel.

[[Cormyr - Imperial Britain]]

I created Cormyr to have the Sherwood Forest/Arthur and his galloping knights of the Table Round "feel," but to be a distinct kingdom with quite a different history. Imagine the fictional court of Camelot - - all the bickering knights, that is - - and see what happens if a royal line manages to hold the throne for centuries. Quite different from all of the fictional depictions of Arthur, who creates his own great kingdom, far more powerful than what existed before him - - a kingdom that either declines (through Constantine) or is swept away entirely after his death or departure, depending on which sources or versions of the Arthurian mythos one embraces most closely.

The various approaches to Arthur (the Christian king; the Celtic or Welsh king of England repelling or withstanding Germanic foreigners; the Celt holding together civilization after the departure of the Romans; the predestined king who fulfills his destiny, and so on) are all quite different from the concept of the Dragon Throne of Cormyr and the Obarskyrs who've held it. (Elves take land from dragons, arriving human settling family manages to establish a settlement, and holds it almost continuously for over a thousand years, withstanding all challenges in various ways and in the process building a strong kingdom.)

The term "Imperial Britain" of course refers to the far more recent, historical British empire (wherein the English sailed wooden ships all over the world to conquer, occupy, and exploit distant territories such as India, Canada, the colonies that later became the United States, and so on), and of course Cormyr has never had imperial ambitions. Its armies stay at home, beyond temporary occupations of pirate ports such as Teziir, patrols along its fringes (Tunland, the West Reaches, the Stonelands), and naval skirmishes with Westgate and Sembia that arise only when Cormyr is trying to keep those two rivals from cutting off access to Marsember and Suzail. So Cormyr has no correspondence whatsoever to "Imperial Britain." Sorry.

[[Mulhorand - Egypt (actually, I think this one is obvious, but I have to ask as part of the class research)]]

Correct. I wanted Mulhorand to be a land of dusky-skinned Set worshippers, because I postulated the worship of Set to have spread through the planar links from earth. When it was developed in print by other designers than me, it had become "Egyptians from our real-world Earth resettle in the Realms, and bring all their gods and worship with them," so there is direct modeling. Not by me, and it's not how I would have handled Mulhorand, but that's what other designers did, and they did it well.

[[Unther - Mesopotamia (ditto as above for Mulhorand)]]

I wanted to "echo" or "suggest" the concept of god-kings from the real-world Sumerian myths of Gilgamesh, and create a place where nagas (the game monster, drawn of course from real-world mythology) could rule or at least be venerated in cults - - and go no closer to real-world beliefs and matters than that.

Again, the Unther that was published wasn't designed by me, and it's not how I would have handled it.

Several senior TSR designers were former history teachers, and the Realms was seen by TSR as a vast tapestry that was to be the "home" for all sorts of D&D roleplaying, from Hollywood pirate movies through Viking raids and sword-and-sandal movie epics, so TSR added many real-world elements to the Realms - - such as Mongol hordes, an overt version of the Orient, and in one real blunder, the Dalai Lama. (No kidding.)

Again, this is NOT what I intended for the Realms.

[[Calimshan - Arabia]]

Correct. TSR had an "Arabian Adventures" sourcebook planned, and I pointed to Calimshan and said: "Turbans and veils and sand and camels, bare-bellied dancers and pointy-bearded men, slaves and gold and souks, ruled by viziers and satraps." TSR promptly did the historical thing and put in pashas and all the rest. Again, they did it very well and gave a historical 'home' to the geniekind D&D game monsters.

[[Evermeet - Atlantis]]

Nope. If you see Evermeet as Atlantis, you're completely misreading it. Evermeet is an unspoiled forest isle that the elves long ago took over and defended as their own kingdom, keeping other non-sylvan races out - - and in particular keeping humans, dwarves, and orcs out (being as said other races were, in the elven view, "despoiling and ruining" the mainland, and swamping the elves in their attempts to hold onto the forests there.)

Whatever the truth about the historical Atlantis (Thera or any of the many other candidates), the mythological Atlantis is a great, advanced (and in some sources, decadent, with its fate self-inflicted or at least deserved) human city swallowed by the sea.

Again, I don't see any connection whatsoever. Evermeet's never been human, never been a city or "advanced" in terms of wealth or settlement or structures, and has never been drowned. It's not "lost" and not a treasure-trove: it's a chunk of forest very like much of the mainland used to be, that was maintained as forest and 'gardened' by the elves to keep it vigorous and prevent erosion, blights, land-clearances, and so on. Atlantis in all of its folklore versions is a great, grand city of advanced technology (in the view of the day), not unspoiled nature at all.

[[Cormanthor - Camelot]]

I can see how someone examining Myth Drannor and Camelot could draw a parallel between them (both were great shining cities, and were lost), but I certainly didn't model one on the other, and both history and mythology are FULL of proud cities that are now lost (I can think of twenty right off the top of my head).

When you think about the two for a moment, that parallel breaks down. Camelot is a castle, and a city that develops around it, built by one human, that fades from view after his death, location now lost or disputed (i.e. no extensive ruins).

Cormanthor is a city built by many elves, and inhabited for generations before being "opened to other races" as a place for traditionally warring or at least rival races to dwell together in harmony - - a city that exists still, in recent years as an extensive ruin occupied by devils and demons, visited by a "gold rush" of adventurers when those fiends are largely eliminated, and now seen as something that could be reoccupied again.

So again, the comparison is tenuous. It looks good until you glance at history, both real and mythological, and seen just how darn many cities were lost and are longed-for in memory (of someone, at some time). This is, yes, a universal theme, rooted in the human dislike of change, and nostalgia ("Oh, it was golden in the old days, when fair Freedonia's towers still soared into the sky, and folk - -"). If your idea of Camelot is only the musical, wherein Arthur sings sadly "don't let it be forgot," charging the audience to Remember the Dream, then yes, Myth Drannor represented a Dream that some desire to be revived. Again, that's hardly an original concept, and I certainly wasn't thinking of Camelot when I created Myth Drannor - - I was thinking more of "backward humans are allowed into the bright, gleaming city, and allowed a brief glimpse of wonder that they fight alongside the elves to try to keep, but fail gloriously."

So saith Ed.

THO here, splitting Ed's post so as not to run into the post-limit lengths; I'll send the second half right away!

love,
THO

Hi, all. The promised second half, beginning with Nynshari's next question (in double square brackets):

[[Many of the 'hero myths' associated with the above places also resemble the hero myths in their earth counterparts. Was this modeling intentional or accidental regarding the following stories:

Vaasa - (I haven't decided on one yet)]]

Obviously not; see my answer for Vaasa, above.

[[Netheril/Thultanthar - Ioulaum (Brutus), Karsus (Julius Caesar), Telamont (Augustus Caesar,'The philosopher king' of Plato's Republic)]]

Wow, you're REALLY stretching here. Ioulaum is a trickster "I'm cleverer than everyone else, and will foresee the peckadilloes of my fellow ambitious archwizards, and craft spells that will give me escape hatches beforehand" loner wizard. Brutus has no magic, is a scheming politician, and in the most famous accounts had a hand in murdering Caesar.

Karsus is a wizard obsessed with power, intent on joining or defeating and replacing the gods. Gods he KNOWS to be real, remember, no faith necessary. He cares very little about, and pays very little attention to, the affairs and interests of others, except as they exist as obstacles to what he wants to do. His attention is bent on personal magical power, in the end attempting to transcend mortality. Julius Caesar, if you do any extensive studying of the historical character, was a very pragmatic politician (and war leader), concerned with social power: getting to the top of the Roman Empire and staying there. Both were powerful schemers, but that's about the extent of their resemblance to each other.

Telamont as published is the work of others, so I can't say whether they intentionally modeled the character on a mythic hero or not. It doesn't look like it to me.

[[Cormyr - King Azoun (Richard the Lionheart)]]

This connection puzzles me. Do you see it because of the "Crusade" against the Tuigan Horde that TSR designers (not me) grafted onto his life story? The historical Richard is an absent-from-his-realm king (Azoun is almost always "at home" in Cormyr), probably homosexual (Azoun is aggressively heterosexual), both are seen in folklore as bearded crowned men good in battle (though Richard was defeated, imprisoned, and ransomed, whereas Azoun was not) - - but then, history, folklore, and modern fantasy literature (from Dunsany, Morris, Eddison, Cabell, and other writers before Tolkien) is full of bearded warrior-kings. We really don't have a consistent folk representation of Richard; from THE LION IN WINTER to his various depictions in various versions of the Robin Hood tales, Richard is "all over the place" as a hero (or not so hero) king.

I certainly never saw King Azoun IV as Richard the Lionheart, King Arthur, John F Kennedy, or any of the other real, historical, or folklore characters various commentators down the years have tried to compare him to. However, I haven't had the chance to paint as vivid a living, breathing picture of him as I wanted to - - which is why you'll see more of him in SWORDS OF EVENINGSTAR and in my current Realmslore columns on the Wizards website.

[[Unther - Gilgeam (Gilgamesh, Tiamat and Marduk)]]

Correct. Yes, deliberately modeled. See my Unther answer above.

[[Calimshan - (I haven't decided on one yet)]]

Sorry. None. See my Calimshan answer above.

[[Evermeet - (I haven't decided on one yet)]]

Sorry. None. See my Evermeet answer above.

[[Cormanthor - Shevarash (the goddeses Sekhmet and Durga) and Starbrow (King Arthur)]]

Nope. However, the characters you mention were brought to life by others, and I can't speak for their motivations or modeling, if any.

[[Some questions about deities as well. I've been told that Eric Boyd did most of the work on the deity end, and I'm going to ask him as well, but I wanted to see if you had anything to say about it. Some of the deities are intentional copies of earth deities, in that they came from earth to Faerun, while others appear to be copies but are not said to have come from earth but rather have their home cosmology as that of Toril (please excuse my terminology if it is wrong). Regarding the latter group, were they intentionally modeled or was their similarity accidental, in general, but especially regarding the following deities:

Mask/Vhaeraun/Lolth - Loki]]

Sorry, Nynshari, but no. You're stretching again. Let's look very quickly at the three "Realmsian" deities:

Mask is my creation, the god of thieves, and envisaged by me as the sidling, soft-spoken, almost meek master manipulator, good at slipping away, who regards being caught or taunting victims or openly stepping into conflict as clumsy, distasteful, and not 'his way' at all. A thief and schemer, yes.

Vhaeraun is my creation, a deity primarily concerned with drow males returning to the surface world and succeeding there. Through murder (poison, for instance: assassins), thievery, and evil. A thief and schemer, yes.

Lolth is not my creation; she's the spider-goddess who seeks to become the sole deity of the drow (a goal she might very well achieve), who both schemes and uses brute force. She wants to be the only goddess for "her" race. I can't speak for either her creators or those who've handled her since, aside from my brief handling of her in DROW OF THE UNDERDARK and MENZOBERRANZAN.

And now let's look at Loki: the Norse trickster god. A schemer, yes - - but if you read widely in the various writings, stepping back from modern comics interpretations and the Eddas, Loki burns to do harm to the other gods and win more power and favor. (So in this he's somewhat like Lolth.) However, in many of the writings, he craves Odin's favor and/or wants to be respected and obeyed by the other deities. This is unlike Lolth; she just wants to destroy the other drow deities.

Loki delights in scheming (so in this he's like all three of the Realmsian deities you cite). However, Loki often schemes quite openly, setting the other gods at odds with each other by lies and engaging in both gloating and taunting (and in this, he and Mask could not be more un-alike, and he lacks Vhaeraun's subtlety and shows far more glee and humor than Lolth ever has). Your problem here is taking two Realmsian gods of deceit and one evil goddess who sometimes engages in deception and trying to equate them with a Norse god of deception who is THE trickster of his mythos.

In other Norse or Teutonic sources, Loki is the god of fire, or (as the son of the giant Farbauti and of Laufey, not a god at all - - though he's certainly powerful enough to slay gods, and give birth to gods (such as Hel). What IS constant in the depictions of Loki is his hatred of the gods and determination to destroy them all. In this, he is similar to Lolth (though you can hardly make a convincing case for this being modeling, as Lolth first came on the scene as the only drow deity, with no other drow deities existing to destroy except the already-vanquished "Elder Elemental God," and because I've told you her deity-destroying aims more bluntly than the published Realms canon yet has) but not at all similar to Mask (who doesn't want any deity dead, and only wants specific mortals dead who can expose his faithful; otherwise, every dead god or mortal is one less potential victim, and therefore a Bad Thing). Vhaeraun delights in evil, and won't hesitate to kill for personal gain (assassins), but seeks to avoid notice of other gods rather than taking any of them on - - and doesn't hate them.

So I don't see any strong parallels at all, and certainly no modeling (and to argue that I was "unconsciously" or "accidentally" modeling a Realms deity on anything, when the creation of a deity in an attemptedly-balanced pantheon is such a complicated process, is the very height of academic arrogance, ranking right up there with professors who tell authors that they can't possibly understand what they've written because they're only writers, and not scholars).

[[Umberlee - Poseidon/Neptune]]

Nope. Every seafaring or shore culture down through history has had gods of the sea. Most deities are seen as humans (albeit sometimes with beast-parts grafted on), so most sea-deities end up with scales, fish tales, seaweed hair, and so on.

However, you've chosen the two "classical" faces of the bearded crowned king of the sea and tried to draw a parallel between them and Umberlee, whom I created and deliberately depicted as the personification of human male sailors seeing the capricious, cruel sea as a bitchy female. Their histories, characters, and aims differ sharply - - so I'm sorry, but I don't see any modeling.

Poseidon is lord not just of the sea but of rivers and fountains, and (leaving aside his wife and offspring), he's only one of many Greek sea deities, such as the titan Oceanus, Pontus, Nereus (and his wife and all of HIS offspring); in short, a much different concept than I've created with Umberlee.

[[Eilistraee - Artemis]]

Nope. I was asked to create a "good drow deity" for DROW OF THE UNDERDARK, pertaining to surface-dwelling drow, and I did, deciding to depict her as nurturing mother goddess worshipped through dancing nude under the moonlight (echoing British faery traditions, but seeking to make her seem not capricious, as the faeries are depicted, but non-warlike, non-violent except when protecting "her" mortals). Through her priestesses, Eilistraee aids her faithful in hunting and swordcraft as a way of helping them to survive and flourish in a hostile surface world. She's not HERSELF depicted as any sort of a huntress; she's the force that brings a stag into the reach of hungry drow, not the slayer-by-arrows of drow foes.

She can personally be an avenger or protectress, yes (an aspect strengthened in 3rd Edition, not by me), fearsomely wielding the sword she dances with, but owes more to the bard than the huntress.

So you've turned to a classical goddess depicted as the huntress, a peerless archer whose shafts never miss (or almost never miss, depending on the tale). This puzzles me; I certainly wouldn't equate a benevolent nurturing (and fertility, though thanks to the TSR Code of Ethics you have to read between the lines to see this in DROW OF THE UNDERDARK and SILVERFALL, where I certainly wasn't very subtle about it) goddess with the Queen of the Hunt, the virgin Greek goddess of chastity.

Let's look more closely at Artemis. In her Roman derivation (Diana), it's death to a mortal man to see her nude - - but he sees her bathing; she isn't in that tradition depicted as normally racing about the forests bareskinned. (Some writers do depict all of the classical deities so, which probably has much to do with many of the real-life mortal cities of worshippers having few nudity taboos.) She's the moon goddess, also goddess of childbirth, wild life, domestic animals, and infants (children just after they are born), as well as being goddess of flocks, and of the chase.

So there are a lot of possible portfolios here that someone TRYING to draw a parallel could catch onto, to try to make their case, but none of them really fit: I created Eilistraee as worshipped under the moon because that's when she appears, NOT a moon goddess; her only connection to the moon was because drow (who had to stay in the dark to keep any power, in that edition of the D&D game) on the surface could see the moon but Underdark drow could not. Eilistraee has nothing to do with domestic animals or wild life, and her mothering is not of childbirth or the young, but of the whole race (to sustain and strengthen them in their return to the surface). Eilistraee has nothing to do with flocks or the chase, is not virginal, and has nothing to do with chastity.

Hmmm, looks like you've got the wrong gal. :}

[[Erevan Ilesere - Hermes]]

Here you're speaking of a god not of my creation, an elf god of the D&D game put into the Realms with the rest of the elven pantheon, who is the deity of bards, revelers, rogues, sorcerers, and tricksters (fickle, changeable, a jester).

And you're trying to equate him with Hermes, the messenger and herald of the Greek gods, who is also the god of eloquence, speech, roads, protector of travellers, prudence, cunning (fraud, perjury, and theft), commerce, good luck, crops, patron and guardian of athletic contests, god of mining, treasure-diggers, sleep and dreams, and (in Arcadia) of the fertility of the soil and of animals. He invented numbers, the alphabet, astronomy, weights and measures, sacrifices (and so was the patron of sacrificial animals) and so on and on and on.

Well, they're both gods of rogues, but otherwise, they couldn't be more unalike. One delights in mischief, and promotes elves - - the other has never heard of elves, and is interested in getting his own way through cunning, not spreading mischief.

Again, I think you're really stretching.

[[For any of the above that were intentionally modeled, in terms of culture, hero myths, and deities separately, were they modeled due to:

the popularity of the culture/place/histories/deities with the public, or
because those cultures/places/histories/deities were common knowledge, or
because those cultures/places/histories/deities were obscure knowledge, or
any combination of the above?

If not any of the above, can you offer a different explanation?]]

Mulhorand: Egyptian due to the popularity of Set-worshipping with gamers at the time, including my PCs (so as to establish an ongoing conflict: PCs versus the evil cult of Set-worshippers, with no intention to include the rest of the pantheon or closely model Egyptian life; that was the doing of others).

Unther: Nothing to do with popularity; I wanted to explore what apparently immortal god-kings would DO, and what effect their rule would have, on a fantasy society.

Calimshan: Arabian because of the popularity of "exploring the exotic" culture (my version of it, that is) with my PCs; its inner workings and world-views.

[[Is there a significance to cultures/places/histories which were not chosen to be modeled, for example:

because they were not popular with the public, or
because they were too common knowledge, or
because they were too obscure knowledge, or
any combination of the above?

If not any of the above, can you offer a different explanation?]]

As I've said, Nynshari, with the three exceptions noted above, and the individual deities noted in DRAGON 54 (such as Tyr and Tyche), I wasn't trying to borrow or model real-world historical or mythic anything. I was creating my own fantasy world for my personal writing pleasure and DMing enjoyment, so public tastes and degree of knowledge played no part in it.

I'm sorry if I've shattered your academic work (I hope I haven't), but I'm NOT going to accept anyone, for any reason, just assuming this part of the Realm is real-world this, and that element of the Realms is real-world that, and asking why I chose to model this or copy that. I imported a few real-world deities, with explanations, I "echoed" some real-world fantasy and folk settings I wanted to write about or play in (and TSR designers and other writers went down this road much, much farther), and otherwise I tried to craft and flesh out the Realms with reference to the Realms (and what I saw as human nature, elven nature, dwarvish nature, draconic nature, and so on). It had to be self-consistent, but it didn't have to correspond to anything else (TSR's needs were, of course, different).

I'm quite willing to discuss this farther, elaborating on anything you'd care to ask, but please don't promote any thesis based on my 'obviously being influenced by this or that' - - because as you can see from my answers above, you drew the wrong lines and conclusions far more often than not.

Sorry, and thanks for the interest. I hope you can salvage something from this, really I do. (I rushed to answer your questions so as to give you time - - before the two weeks is up - - to try a different approach or hypothesis.)

So saith Ed.

Who DOES mean it, so post again on this if you'd like, Nynshari. I'm enjoying the glimpses of "why Ed made this design choice, what he intended with that deity" I'm getting.

love to all,
THO

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On April 13, 2006 THO said: No, authors don't have veto power. WotC editors do. :}

"In the old days" (when TSR's published Realms began), Jeff Grubb was the "traffic cop" of the Realms, and established the "gentlemens' agreement" of asking permission to use the characters of others.

Some played by the rules, some didn't, and there arose a tradition of Books and Games departments fighting for control. I know Ed didn't know anything about Doug Niles using El or Flamsterd in FR2 Moonshaes until he bought a copy, and several Troy Denning books had character uses that were surprises. On the other hand, Ed and Jeff worked closely together when using "each other's" characters, and Bob Salvatore asked Ed about using Alustriel and the Harpells at an early GenCon, in his early Drizzt novels.

I know Ed wouldn't dream of using, say, Erevis Cale unless his creator OR Books editors asked him to.

love,
THO

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April 14, 2006: Hello again, all.

Ed's family is descending on him for Easter, so he's rushing to get some replies in, just in case his postings get interrupted by having a nine-year-old granddaughter who thinks computers were created to be her personal toys crawling all over him.

First, to Lord Rad, Ed says thus:

THANK you. I love that scene. One of my little whimsical asides, a moment of "meanwhile" off to the side of all the action and frenetic intrigue and word-fencing that dominates that novel. I love doing these, and they often get amputated by editors, but - - if not overdone - - to me they seem like the rewards of reading, the little moments of reflection and seeing things from unusual angles, eavesdropping on offbeat events (and making the night forest seem just a little more real). I'm very glad you like it.

Secondly, to David Lázaro, Ed speaks:

David, I'll reply properly to you (re. themes) the moment I have the time, but two swift notes: no, Silverymoon and the Silver Marches aren't yet out of NDA (sigh). As for the Arcane Brotherhood introducing drugs: they are conveyed to Brotherhood agents in the city, and introduced into specific food and drink consumed by particular individuals, to make them forget having ever met particular Brotherhood agents before, and forget what befell during those encounters (so they won't raise the alarm or launch attacks when said agents [not the same ones doing the cooking and pouring, of course] encounter the drug-affected individuals again.

The widespread smuggling and selling "to all" (in powdered spices, wines, and sauces, so as to affect those who consume them) is to spread the memory-loss effects randomly around the citizenry, in an attempt to "hide" specific sources of memory loss and therefore the Brotherhood's activities.

The drugs are brought into the city mixed into, yes, "legitimate cargoes" of powdered spices, wines, and sauces. The spiked stuff goes to Brotherhood agents, the unadulterated spices, wines, and sauces go to innocent vendors for resale to the citizenry.

Thirdly, to Nynshari, Ed responds:

Goodness, no, you didn't upset me, Nynshari; no apologies necessary. I just wanted to make it very clear that I wasn't deriving things directly, so that no scribe reading your questions and my responses could take it as "proof" that I borrowed X from here and Y from there.

I know all about professorial "suggestions." :} Years ago, I even had one prof who used to wink, grin, and mime bringing a lash down on our behinds when she sweetly issued her "just a suggestion - -" epistles.

One of the most fascinating aspects of building the pantheon, for me, was to have it more or less balanced between power levels and the various alignments, but in constant flux, with events "really happening" to the gods, and their power directly related to the in-Toril power and influence (not quite the same thing as numerical strength of, but related) of their worshippers. This of course makes tinkering with the deities a neverending, "living" part of any ongoing Realms campaign.

And lastly, Ed responds to Faraer's query: ""Hey, 'Feasthouse' median Realmsian for 'restaurant'? What's Realmsian for 'doggerel'?"

Ed speaks:

In the Realms, the most popular term for restaurant (there are local variants) is either "feast hall" or more often "feasting hall" (to avoid confusion with "festhall") or "feasthouse" in Common, but "skaethar" in Chondathan, a word that has crept into Common to serve as the 'formal' word as opposed to the everyday slang term (I suppose, to put things in Modern English terms, "skaethar" would correspond to "dining establishment" and "feasthouse" to "eatery").

And "doggerel" in the perjorative sense is either "horoloro" (pronounced "HAUR-oh-LORE-oh"), formally, or "bardspit" ("bardsquall" is bad, usually off-key or even tone-deaf, singing). Doggerel in the affectionate, "Oh, this isn't really worthy poetry, but it's catchy and witty and serves the need of the moment" sense is "bright-words" or more formally (only if it follows a rhyming scheme), "tarnrhyme" (after a long-ago bard called Tarn, who's remembered for little four-line ditties like: "Wind and rain before highsun/Will clear before the day is done/Love that presses hot and swift/Will fall away like a lover's shift").

So saith Ed, Grand Linguist of the Realms.

(I'm trying hard to resist saying most cunning...)

Ahem. (Wooly, get busy! I'm a busy woman, and that's a LOT of whipped cream. Next time don't order the family-sized dessert! And take the darned stems off the cherries next time!)

love to all,
THO

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April 15, 2006: Hi again, fellow scribes. First, a quick note to The Sage, about how soon the state visits Realmslore columns may appear on the WotC website from Ed:

You're very welcome, Sage, and here's the situation: how quickly and in what order the columns appear is up to Wizards, of course, but there SHOULD be 9 columns between the end of The Lost Ship 2-parter and the first of the two State Visits duo.

So saith Ed.

Secondly: on March 30th, Jamallo Kreen asked Ed "a heap o' questions about architecture which may well have been answered previously. If so, I would appreciate being directed to those answers, please."

Well, Ed hath detected several questions in your heap that deserve his own, direct answers (in the fullness of time), but in the meantime, Jamallo, I'm going to happily refer you to Ed's many extant detailings of Realms architecture, which (outside of the Volo's Guides and other TSR/WotC sourcebooks, include: the recent 4-part Realms Architecture columns in Ed's "Realmslore" series on the Wizards website, plus the earlier 8-part Sembian merchant "Realmslore" columns, AND his architecture answers here at Candlekeep: in the 2004 thread (page 2 of the Chamber of Sages), page 16, page 62, and (Northkeep) p74; and in the 2005 thread, page 56. Happy reading!

And now, the Bearded One tackles this, from Lord Rad, about The Pride of the Lion: "I know that he didn't have time in his schedule to write this concluding novel to the Sembia series, but did he get as far as to have any ideas of what the novel would cover and what it would be about? I don't know if he had to pull out in the early stages before the preceeding novels had been written and therefore the overall flow not been established."

Ed replies:

The series was about half-written, as I recall. After a hilarious conference call or two involving various writers and WotC editors, Dave Gross handled the subject matter that would have been the backbone of my concluding book in his preceding novel. Here's my brief synopsis of what PRIDE would have been about:

"Thamalon is going to die, and knows it. The book will explore what it is to grow old, with failing personal abilities, and face death. What foes should be reconciled with, or taken down with oneself? What debts should be paid, what legacies established or grand last gestures made? What sort of peace can Thamalon make with various members of his own family (especially his wife and his eldest son)? We'll watch him try, with varying degrees of success; the Old Lion fighting his last fights. And then he'll die, and I want to leave every last damned reader of the book in tears as they close it."

So saith Ed.

Makes you wish he had written it, doesn't it? By the way, as someone in the book industry who has access to BookScan and some warehouse shipping sales figures, I suspect the reason Pride got cancelled was as much a function of WotC looking at sliding sales on later books in the series as it was Ed being too busy, although Ed's never so much as hinted at that.

love,
THO

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April 16, 2006: Hello again, fellow scribes of the Realms. This time, Ed replies to this from Asgetrion: "I have some questions about four obscure military/Purple Dragon ranks that have been featured in your novels. Namely, Lancelord, Swordlord, Warcaptain and Boldshield (the first three in Death of the dragon and the last one in Stormlight). I have assumed that Boldshield might be a "unique" rank, and that the others are "battlefield ranks" granted when a more complex command structure (such as during a war) is needed? Am I wrong here?" (a query that was promptly seconded by Sanishiver).

Ed makes reply:

Lancelord: This title, still in current use, doesn't appear in the POWER OF FAERUN table because it doesn't 'fit' as a strict rank. It means "messenger" or "envoy" of a battlefield commander (of the rank of Oversword or higher, plus any royal, or any War Wizard assigned to serve with a military unit). Some real-world armies would use the term "aide-de-camp" for a lancelord. In short, it's a temporary service rank that trumps the holder's everyday rank (or lack of military rank), and puts them a shade below the rank of the person they're speaking (or running errands) for. So the Lancelord of an Oversword outranks any Constal, but is outranked by any Oversword.

Swordlord: This title, still in current use, also doesn't appear in the POWER OF FAERUN table because it doesn't 'fit' as a strict rank. "Swordlord" is a title that means "unit commander," but where it falls in the rank hierarchy varies with the size of the unit, from patrol to army. In other words, Swordlord Heldrar Aeron may be Swordlord of a small local militia patrol and be outranked by a First Sword, but Swordlord Jaeroevan Blackfeather may command a hastily-mustered (in the face of an orc horde attack) Army of the West Reaches, and be more or less equivalent to a Battlemaster.

Warcaptain: "War captains" (as two words) is a collective term for officers, really meaning "battlefield unit commanders, acting and permanent, plus their lancelords, here in this location [usually: at a battle or a meeting] at this time."

Warcaptain as a single word is the title given to any acting commander, serving because of the death or incapacity (due to wounding, disease, captivity, or magical affliction or curse) of the "real" commander. By "commander" I mean the leader of any official military unit or force (aside from patrols and other usual divisions of an army).

For example, if a large cavalry unit is assembled and dubbed the Riders of High Horn, it will be commanded by an Oversword (or higher rank) who will be known as Swordlord of the Riders of High Horn. If that Swordlord falls in battle, and his Lancelord finds himself the highest-ranking surviving officer of the Riders, the Lancelord will take the title Warcaptain (and instantly cease to be known as a Lancelord; he probably still has a "real" rank, remember), and go on leading the unit. Even if he's confirmed as the commander by other Purple Dragon commanders, it's customary for him to continue to be called "Warcaptain" until an Obarskyr officially bestows a new rank on him. Commoners, adventurers, or War Wizards who "step into the breach" and rally leaderless Dragons, give them orders, and so lead them in battle, are by tradition called Warcaptain. If they so serve with distinction, they are given (afterwards) the pay of an Oversword for the day, and either offered a position in the ranks, or knighted.

Boldshield: This title, still in current use, doesn't appear in the POWER OF FAERUN table because the other militaries compared in that table don't have an equivalent rank. A boldshield is ranked just above a Lionar, while in his or her district ONLY (and is otherwise just beneath a Lionar in the chain of command). Boldshields are wardens: officers stationed in districts or regions of the realm (usually on the frontiers) that require some military oversight but lack garrisons - - and therefore lack any nearby Purple Dragon officers. Their job is to observe events (including the arrivals and departures of "persons of interest") in their assigned territory; maintain up-to-date maps (right down to the "game trails" level) of the territory; report anything suspicious or of note to superior Purple Dragon officers elsewhere; brief (and pass on standing orders, sealed orders, and commands from on high) and act as liaison for any War Wizards and Purple Dragon units and personnel entering the territory; and act as a temporary bailiff, lawsword (police), and spokesman for Crown law in the territory, until higher-ranking or properly appointed individuals holding such duties can be summoned. They are regularly (and often: at least once a tenday, and usually twice a tenday, or more when "known trouble" is afoot) visited by lancelords, Highknights, and other Court envoys or Purple Dragon officers to receive their reports, check if they need aid or messages or items sent, and so on. There are only a dozen to sixteen boldshields, and they tend to be stationed in the household of local nobility (to keep an eye on said nobles, whose wealth and activities tend to be magnets for a lot of shady business in frontier locales, even if they aren't themselves disloyal to the Crown or dismissive of Crown law).

So saith Ed.

Who does have things pretty well worked out after forty years, as you can see.

love to all,
THO

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April 17, 2006: Hi again, fellow scribes. Ed replies to this, from Taelohn: "... While Midnight's ascension to become (the second) Mystra is well documented, most mentions of the death of Mystryl say that she was "reborn" or "reincarnated" as (the first) Mystra. I suppose I always just assumed that Mystra sort of "sprung into existence" as a new deity.

Does this instead imply that Mystryl bestowed her powers onto a mortal woman, just as she sacrificed herself? Perhaps someone she had vested powers in (like a Chosen)? If so, who was (the first) Mystra in her mortal life?"

Ed speaks:

Taelohn, Rory Weston is quite correct; most of the gods of the Realms were indeed "at one time mortal & "ascended" to the position." And yes, "forgotten" gods dwindle to demigod status, and can in some cases be eliminated (killed, AND their worship wrested away/portfolios subsumed by other deities) by mortals or by other deities.

In the case of Mystryl, she sacrificed herself, not foreseeing that she'd be reborn. She had no Chosen or preselected mortal vessel, and did not know or intend that she'd "live on." She simply did what she believed she had to do, to end a threat to the world she loved.

However, the circumstances of her passing prevented other deities from snaring her divine power, and largely prevented its dispersal, and it "fell like a dying star" to earth (or so the priests of Mystra say) to at random strike and "go into" a mindless, drooling mortal woman and infuse her with Mystryl's divinity, so that she became Mystra. (Of course, clergy of Mystra speak of the woman being present and selected as "divine fate" and not random at all, but this is one of the Holy Mysteries of the Lady of Mysteries that only high-ranking clergy are allowed to discuss in detail; lay worshippers and non-believers won't get much more out of a priest of Mystra than this: "When Mystryl made the ultimate and most holy sacrifice that defended Toril itself, that which was best of her fell to earth, and struck a mortal woman, and went into her, and Mystryl was reborn as Mystra, as she was fated to do, that we may all have magic that serves us and not the howling chaos of wild magic spellstorms."

We don't know anything about the mortal woman who became Mystra other than these things: she was young, she was "mindless" (for reasons unknown; it may have been a birth defect or a later affliction), she was a poor rural unknown somewhere in the northern, western Heartlands being cared for by kin, and she was changed in looks and stature by Mystryl's "going in" to her. I'd say more, but NDAs forbid.

So saith Ed, Creator of All (The Realms).

love to all,
THO

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April 18, 2006: Hello again, all. This time Ed happened to be at work on something that enabled him to very swiftly tackle this question, from Charles Phipps: "Ed, do the Chosen of Mystra have any tactical or military skill? Would you say they could lead armies and if so, would they lead them well?"'

Ed replies:

The short, flippant answers are yes, yes, and yes. :}

My more responsible response will begin by limiting my reply, for NDA reasons, to Elminster and the Seven Sisters (not just Khelben is "tied up" by future plans or projects), and to explain that it's hard for many Realms scribes to get a proper picture of the Seven, even if they read the published fiction and game products exhaustively, because there's so much of the early personal histories of the Chosen that we haven't had proper opportunities to present yet. I'm going to go one step farther, and drop Qilué out of this, also for NDA reasons.

Which leaves us with Elminster, Alustriel, Dove, Laeral, Alassra (The Simbul), Storm, and Syluné. All of them are servants of Mystra, and therefore can, through the Weave, consult with Mystra, Azuth, and all of Mystra's servants (and so call on nigh-countless experience). Most of them hate doing so, because it strips them of personal freedom and claws at what's left of their sanity. Oh, yes: most of them are, it must be remembered, no longer sane as most humans in the Realms would think of sanity. Moreover, increased contact with Mystra and her guidance pulls them ever-closer to her aims (the spreading of the use of magic). Those aims, by the way, are a large part of the reason why all of the Chosen seem concerned with promoting peace in the larger scale (keeping countries from going to war), even if they employ much violence on a personal level. It's why Laeral, Alassra, and Alustriel, in their various ways and styles, are currently ruling or assisting in government, and why ALL of the Chosen (even those NDA'd and thus not discussed here) have in the past either tried their hand in ruling, or acted as "powers behind thrones" to support and guide rulers they liked or wanted to see reigning. Folk who've only read Realms novels (or a subset of Realms novels) or who have only "come to the Realms" recently have often missed the references to Stornanter and other now-vanished realms and city-states ruled by various Chosen.

All of the Chosen I'm discussing here have lived for centuries (far longer than most military individuals they will work with or against), and hence have more experience than almost any mortal foe in grand strategy, propaganda and morale, long-term manipulations, supply and foraging, living through both victory and defeat, dealing with the "fog of war," and battlefield tactics. Most mortals who have contact with a Chosen on more than a few occasions pass from awe to disappointment or contempt (they're human after all, and pretty wilfull, have-their-own-way-or-else humans at that), then to wariness (they're crazy, and unsafe to be noticed by, and really powerful) to respect (they're geniuses after all).

Now, the term "genius" is one I tend to avoid, because it means something slightly different to almost every speaker who employs it. I cleave to the view that a genius is someone who can see things others can't (when given the same information), who can create things or arrive at conclusions or new processes or views that others can't reach (so there are superbly skilled forgers who can paint a painting or carve a relief-carving every bit as well as the genius who created the original, but couldn't "see" and thus create that original in the first place to save their lives; they are always followers). There is also a genius in being able to handle more complexities (tasks, information) than others can, and still "see how it all fits together" and strive for a goal or visualized end result rather than just reacting to crisis after crisis and "surviving." It's hardly fair to non-Chosen to label any Chosen a "genius" at magic, because their access to the Weave allows them to manage magical effects and see (and therefore learn and understand) things about magic that mortal non-Chosen can only dimly perceive or grope at mastering, reaching accomplishments by luck or unseen Mystra-servant aid or just plain dogged hard work and repeated experimentation as often as by correctly "leaping ahead to what only they can see, but in doing so perceive how to get there."

Please note that the Chosen ARE humans (yes, less than demigods), and are faltering in their faculties (though some of the Seven are still increasing their skills, particularly at rulership, and have a few centuries to go before they begin to decline as swiftly as, say, Elminster is now). They do make mistakes, and they can't personally prevail against overwhelming odds or motivate fighting forces that don't want to be motivated (they can magically overwhelm and control individuals, yes, but in the Realms turning military leaders or even rulers into your own mind-controlled robots doesn't usually translate into anything close to precise command and control of lower-ranking forces).

This sort of personal control is all that is really left to Syluné now, and she is beloved in Shadowdale but has only a "Wise Witch but dead and gone now" reputation in the northern Dales, and no public profile to speak of, elsewhere. So she can hardly inspire or lead troops, beyond "whispering in the ear" of someone ELSE who's trying to do so.

So now we're down to Elminster, Alustriel, Dove, Laeral, The Simbul, and Storm.

All of the Chosen left on our list have had Harper involvement, and thus experience in spying, manipulating, behind-the-throne intrigue, and judging military strength and deployments (in many lands, over many years). Dove is the one who's had an extensive military career (both mercenary and in the more-or-less disciplined forces of several realms), largely eschewing magic. The Simbul is the least stable and self-controlled (apt to "cut loose with spells"), and Elminster is the most experienced and wily. Alustriel, Laeral, and Storm display a marked preference for the soft word and superb acting to manipulate folk, rather than lashing out with swords and spells - - but, please note, they are thus manipulating those who DO lash out with swords and spells, and therefore commanding military forces, even if they don't put on uniforms, get on horses, and ride out into "bloody-bannered fields" to do so. However, all of the Chosen listed here have in the past done all of those things, and fought both hand-to-hand and spell-to-spell, faced down foes and slaughtered foes, and commanded military forces. So, yes, they all can "lead armies." And HAVE led armies in the past, though tactics and real-world situations change over time; we don't know if they would, but it seems likely, given how much better informed about life in the Realms they are than most mortals. The real meat of your questions is: "... would they lead them well?"

Again, the answer depends on who's doing the judging. A bored, mad, or weary-of-life commander (like all of the Chosen are, or can very easily be) can achieve both disasters and brilliant victories, exhibiting what some observers call "fearless" or "heroic" battlefield performances, and motivating troops to lay down their lives eagerly in the heat of battle. Is that "well"?

What's kept most of the Chosen going for such long lives is their obsessive pursuit of some goals in the service of Mystra. This service and those goals hamper them in ways other mortal commanders aren't trammeled (leading them to prefer peace over warfare, for instance), and may well weaken them in some military situations - - when compared to other mortal commanders.

THO has passed on to me some of the postings in the Heroes In Novels thread, and among them were some posts belittling Alustriel's military leadership because she hasn't launched a preemptive strike on Obould and his forces. This points out differing viewpoints once again: in many real-world modern-day countries such preemptive behaviour is seen as criminal lack of military discipline, clear court-martial offenses if not done with full government sanction beforehand (not wise tactics or military leadership at all) - - and a proper reading of SILVER MARCHES shows us that Alustriel (even though she may have established the confederation) really can't act militarily on her own without endangering the unity of the Marches: she will be establishing the very precedent that she's seeking to avoid, to keep Harbromm and Warcrown from doing just the same thing, and picking fights they're not militarily ready to win. She also can't act preemptively except by doing so without government sanction (in effect, "going rogue"). It might be smart tactics to clobber Obould before he can gather and consolidate his strength, but it's very bad grand strategy - - IF you can see the "bigger picture."

The very strength of the Chosen is also their weakness, to those who view military matters as "success here and now, and let others worry about tomorrow or down-the-road consequences." The Chosen can see those down-the-road consequences all too clearly in most cases, and so seek to avoid many military confrontations that will result in disaster: you can't promote the widespread public use of magic if most of your magic-using individuals are dead, and the rest are strictly controlled by military authority or church dictates.

So we'll just have to see (and continue to debate) how "well" the Chosen perform, as the great tapestry that is the Realms unfolds before us. However, if you're asking me are these Chosen I've discussed here capable of out-commanding in the field darn near every mortal leader I can see alive and on the scene in the Realms right now, the answer is a resounding YES. However, it must come with this caution attached: BUT THEY REALLY DON'T WANT TO, and may avoid doing so even when the result is disaster for a particular realm or city.

So saith Ed.

Who can see the Realms more clearly than all of the rest of us, remember. (And spare me, please, all the ignorant moans about "Elminster being Ed's favourite" or "the Chosen are all Mary Sues," because such views are simply uninformed and wrong, and wilfully ignore the fact that the entire Realms is "Ed's favourite," and he's given us thousands of characters in various shades of gray, good sides to all villains and vice versa.)

love to all,
THO

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On April 18, 2006 THO said: Ed actually left out more than half a dozen Chosen (The Srinshee being one of them, yes), all for NDA reasons.

[insert diabolical laughter here]

love,
THO

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April 18, 2006: Hi, Faraer. I sent this off to Ed, and his response follows:

No, of course not. WotC authors are often asked to provide "sell copy" for book jackets, though it NEVER reaches print un-tinkered-with, but in the old TSR days, writers were rarely invited to do so. I had never seen that blurb until a copy of the book was brought to me for signing at a convention, and I certainly never wrote a word of it. No, I have never said Elminster is my "alter ego." TSR has, many times; a practice that began in GenCon pre-registration blurb booklets, describing the seminars I did in costume, acting the part of Elminster - - ALSO a practice TSR asked me to begin and carry on. When they, many years later, asked me to leave the costume at home, I happily did so. Those robes are hot. :}

To reiterate: I have never, ever said that Elminster is my alter ego or wish fulfillment character, or thought that way for one minute. I will never use any Realms characters in that manner, because doing so would ruin the whole fun of creating the world and its characters, and watching what happens and how they evolve. Just as all of the gamers who have played various PC adventurers in my Realms sessions over the years are playing roles, not themselves.

So saith Ed.

Who will return with regular Realmslore about ten hours from now, if he stays on schedule.

love,
THO

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April 19, 2006: Hello again, all. This time, for reasons he states hereafter, Ed deals with this recent question from RodOdom: "Dear Ed, In the Realms you introduced a number of very long-lived characters. Besides the Chosen of Mystra, hidden here and there are mortals who've lived thousands of years, such as the survivors of Netheril. What drives these people to live on? Why haven't they succumbed to ennui?"

Ed replies:

My previous lore reply (to Charles Phipps, about the Chosen) provides some illustrations of the reasons why certain individuals (who have the magical power, or have magic "done to them," such as being put into stasis or a sleep of ages by someone else, to "last" for thousands of years) desire to continue to exist.

Most such individuals are obsessed with reaching various goals, or completing unfinished tasks. Sometimes it's prolonging and defending a kingdom, or one's own descendants, or conversely destroying a foe (or the foe's kin or organization or kingdom). Sometimes it's cheating mortality, living on as a lich or prolonging life indefinitely by some other means - - and sometimes it's perfecting some other sort of magic entirely, or founding a faith, or... any number of aims that may seem strange or puny or futile to us, but that provide a drive and reason for the existence of someone. In some cases it's trying to craft a replacement body for oneself or a dying (frozen in stasis, or dead and "living on" as some sort of phantom) loved one; in others, it's putting one's own descendants on a throne, or at the head of a guild, or completing some magical experiment or other. Driving, all-consuming obsession seems to be the key, and those who fulfill or lose it often fail and die swiftly, or seek to die by suicide or by plunging into a fight that's almost certain death.

So saith Ed.

Who once told me that love is the strongest force of all, and was why certain undead that my character was encountering existed.

So, with more feeling than usual:
love to all,
THO

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April 20, 2006: Hi, all. This time, Ed tackles this, from Scarabeus: "In D&D the rules are pretty clear about how a wizard might learn his spells. Such was not the case for clerics, who we assumed could learn every spell availlable in their sphere (now spell-list 3E+). When Prayers from the Faithfull came out I was quite pleased to see a new twist whith the fact that a cleric must dig through sacred tomes, work his way to access them and ever wonder if one of his spell might hold a surprise (pleasant or not) for him. This point of view felt more real, more alive that the simple morning prayers where spells are always taken for granted. I used this principle, which also have the advantage of controling what spells PC clerics might have. Looking through Prayers of the Faithfull though it feels like some informations are missing about how sacred tome are used and how clerics can learn their prayers and rituals. And in the same subject I like to learn more about how you view the role of divine intermediaires (sp?) in relation the clerics (spell learning, spell granting and behavior correction). Thanks for you time, your writtings are always inspriring and I need a little boost on the subject, with no specific faith in mind."

Ed replies:

When writing PRAYERS FROM THE FAITHFUL, I did not intend to make clerics follow the same "find, or create, and practice" spells that arcane spellcasters do (except for rare instances of discovering long-lost holy items and books while adventuring). Instead, I wanted to control their spell access by their behaviour (holy devotions, obedience, undertaking of missions requiring more spell "muscle," and so on).

Everyone can get first and second level spells (and orisons) "automatically," but use of more powerful prayers require that either a higher-ranking priest teaches or gives the precise wording of the prayer to you-the-cleric-character ("here's HOW to pray for that flame strike"), or that your own performance in the service of the deity attracts the attention of one of the god's servitors (divine intermediaries, who may be creatures or "spirits," seen or unseen), who gives you guidance through dream-visions or visions imparted to you in your mind during rituals or even "made manifest to all" (everyone can see them), at crucial moments or during rituals - - and in the same manner "inspires" you by giving you that same "here's HOW to pray for that flame strike" information, directly into your mind (in other words, you suddenly see how to pray for this or that magical effect, as a reward for your sufficiently attentive and faithful worship and holy service). Divine manifestations (a rosy glow for Lathander, for example) can also serve to give spiritual or literal guidance ("it's hovering above that stone: move the stone!").

Moreover, if you displease the deity by straying from the deity's outlook, flouting holy rules, or harming the larger priesthood while pursuing your personal ambitions, your prayers may be answered by a lesser or markedly different spell from the one you prayed for, or you may be given nothing (prayers unanswered by anything except stony silence), or you may be given a penance (punishment or task) or a stern lecture (with or without the desired spells being granted).

I originally wanted to take this approach because of the many instances I encountered at GenCon and other "tournament" play of what I view as sloppy clerical roleplaying: "My priest is a fighter who can't used edged weapons, and you'd better obey me or suck up to me because I'm your only healing. I can do pretty much as I please, 'in the name of the god,' as long as my DM doesn't give me alignment grief, but I can lecture everybody else on THEIR behaviour because of my interpretation of the god's views - - and luckily this game [or this tournament round] doesn't have superior priests telling me what to do, a set creed for my religion, or the god directly and constantly telling me what to do!" (Some DMs laid on superior priests requiring services and missions pretty heavily when PCs came asking for raise deads for their fallen fellows, but that was about it.) I wanted to put into the Realms those religious creeds, those higher-ranking priests, and some degree of attention on the part of the deity (or divine servant creatures) so that the player of a cleric would have to roleplay properly. Years later, it's a task I'm still hard at work on. :}

So saith Ed.

Who HAS made playing clerics meaningful in the home Realms campaign, I must say.

love to all,
THO

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April 21, 2006: Well, at least that question's BaeraubleXXX oog! Sorry.

Hi again, fellow scribes of the Realms. You know, Ed just returned from a convention that had coffee tastings, cheese tastings, beer tastings, scotch tastings, and chocolate tastings

... so I'm sure he's up for breast tastings.

So I'll offer mine (ahem, not for the first time) and see what happens...

Now, as for Realmslore, thom asked several questions back on March 10th, but Ed has plucked one of them out to answer right now (the others won't be forgotten): "... I was perusing the OGB again and I noticed that "Jelde Asturien" got his name at 3rd level, THO can you or Ed elucidate on the why of this requirement?"

Ed speaks:

Every member of the clergy of Lathander takes a new name in the service of the deity, usually at around 3rd level ("when they are ready;" i.e. it varies for each individual), to signify that Lathander has personally noticed and accepted them. In the case of Jelde, he "laid aside" his birth name of Semoor Wolftooth.

In some cases, the person uses their new name only inside the faith (when speaking to other priests, or participating in solitary prayers or temple rituals), but in most cases they use it openly, in place of their former name (note: it doesn't invalidate contracts, remove them legally from inheritances, debts, or obligations, or free them of secular laws and real-life local requirements).

The name is either communicated to them in dreams, or dreams or a holy ritual informs them they must undertake a holy vigil (usually when the individual has profaned Lathander's name, strayed from his teachings, or not caused or aided any new beginnings).

The vigil is this: the individual must first collect some of their own tears, shed when genuinely moved (though it can be happiness as well as sadness, and need not be a religious occasion). This is usually done in a consecrated glass vial, provided free by any church of the Morninglord. Collecting these tears is the only delay acceptable between learning of the need for the vigil and undertaking it. If the individual is in a monastery or in service at a temple, other priests may slap or spank the individual to bring on tears right away.

The individual then goes alone by night to "a high place of stone" (usually a rocky tor, but sometimes a building roof or castle battlements), disrobes, and lies down, spreadeagled on their back on the bare rock, in a location where the rising sun will strike them.

They then cut, prick, bite, or gash themselves enough to draw a few drops of blood, smear the blood in a hollow of their body (the navel is usually used), and shake the drops of their tears into it.

Taking care not to spill it, they put on a blindfold (again, temples provide them but the individual's only discarded clothing may serve), and lie still.

The sunrise must touch them, but the individual is to remain lying on the rock (baking in the sun if necessary) until their new name is communicated to them. It may come to them in their dreams if they fall asleep, may be ANYTHING (sound like any language, though it will always be two words, corresponding to a given name and a surname), and once it appears in their mind, they will NEVER forget it, even through death and rebirth, turning away from the faith, or anything else.

Some individuals see the god walking across the sky to them, to touch them and smilingly utter their name; some see it written across their minds in swirling letters of rosy fire, and some see the smiling forms of dead clerics or faithful lay worshippers of Lathander who were personally known to them in life, who come to them, kiss them, and whisper the name in their ear.

By tradition, an individual receiving his or her "name in the faith" is to go to the head of a temple of the Morninglord (failing that, any Consecrated priest of Lathander), whisper the name to him or her, and kiss him or her. Thereafter, within the faith, they are known as "Consecrated" and referred to as "a named priest of the god." Some temples keep the names semi-secret, using them only in rituals and in private temple talk, and others use them openly, every day.

So saith Ed.

So there you have it, Lathanderites!

love to all,
THO

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April 22, 2006: Hi again, all. Ed tackles this, from dearest Wooly Rupert: "In the fourth footnote of part six of the Uthmere column [[THO note: in Ed's Realmslore web columns, on the Wizards website]], you say that: "One of the Ladies, Asmra Laelock (known to all as Blacktresses for her long, dyed hair) has three removable artificial limbs that she can replace with rather astonishing attachments."

I'd like more information on these limbs: their function(s), how she replaces them and stores the not-in-use ones, and how she got these limbs. As always, thanks!

Ed speaks:

I feel as if I should be calling you Wooly dearest. :}

Asmra got those limbs for loving (both emotionally and physically, beginning as a paying client but ending as a firm friend) a very ugly wizard, one Thaskalos of Alaghôn, who was a wart-covered, hunchbacked "toad" of a man with oversized eyes and lips, and a hooked nose (no affliction, just the way he was born and developed). He was lonely, shunned, and often reviled for his fearsome looks, but Blacktresses regarded herself as a professional, and pitied him for his loneliness; she greeted him in as friendly and ardent a manner as if he'd been young and handsome. He was suspicious of her at first, but came to enjoy not just her charms but her genuine, easy friendship - - and visited her about once a month once he gained mastery of teleport spells.

Asmra was then a tall, very thin Illuskan lass, with raven-black hair and milk-white skin, a graceful dancer and singer, and an acrobatic lover. On her left flank is a line of dark blue birthmarks that look for all the world like small, discreet tattoos: characters in some unknown language.

However, one night she got caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, and was on a balcony that got blasted to shards by a spell intended to slay the wizard who'd hired her that night, and was embracing her on it. He escaped, the balcony and Asmra did not - - and she ended up lying shattered in the street far below (both her legs and her right arm broken in many places, the ends of bone protruding from the crushed and twisted limbs).

She was taken to an Uth temple for healing, but when the priests saw the tattoos on the unconscious woman, they literally threw her out of the doors (refusing, then and later, to say why).

A Harper found her, took her to his rented rooms on an improvised litter (she was alive, though still senseless, and burning hot from a fever, her open wounds having become infected), and went to try to find potions of healing. He managed to procure one, and it kept her alive until Thaskalos arrived that sundown, ready for a night of love - - and started to turn Uthmere upside down in an increasingly-frantic search for her.

Asmra was slipping towards death again by the time he found her, following wild tales of spell-duels and flying balconies and temple curses. Thaskalos had very few friends, but he called in all the favours he knew and help he could hire, and managed to nurse Asmra back to health, though her three shattered limbs had to be amputated.

He magically "floated" her back to her own rooms, and nursed her for months - - at the end of which she was as healthy as before her accident, except for having stumps where her right arm and both legs should be.

Thaskalos had used the time spent away from her bedside well, crafting all manner of limbs to go onto her stumps (and harnesses to keep them there): shapely legs that end in feet, and skis, skates, and climbing picks, arms that end in pincers, a swordblade, a pot, and a skillet, a shapely arm that looks real but can't hold or manipulate anything (the hand is "frozen"), and various pleasure-use attachments that I'm sure you can imagine. :} (The "leg of many phalluses" is a particular favourite of her fellow Ladies of the Stars.)

Thaskalos gifted Asmra with these attachments, and wed her, but insisted that she continue her life as a coinlass of the evening, and he resumed his life of wandering adventuring and spell-experimentation. He "drops in" on her every tenday or so, and even has a rented suite of rooms at another upper-floor location in Uthmere to take her to, if they desire it - - but Asmra is happiest entertaining customers just as she did before her accident, and of course has acquired a stranger and more avid clientele as a result of her "extras." :}

She seldom leaves her rooms because of the difficult she has in negotiating steps with legs that don't bend at the knees; these also give her a distinctive walk. Thaskalos has offered to take her to temples of various faiths outside Uthmere, to get her missing limbs regenerated, but Asmra has refused, saying she's now comfortable with her attachments and life (this may be true, but Thaskalos suspects she's also afraid of what she might learn about her "tattoos" from other priests spurning her; as far as she knows, they're just birthmarks and nothing more, BUT...

So saith Ed.

Whose heart is in the right place, and whose other bodily features also have their rightful places. Ahem. (Seriously: these sorts of little stories about so many, many NPCS are the true backbone and life-force of the Realms, and Ed has, and can concoct, hundreds of them.)

love to all,
THO

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April 23, 2006: Hello again, scribes. This time, Ed deals with Dargoth's "CSI Waterdeep" queries: "What methods and how much time would the Waterdeep watch spend trying to solve a crime ie Murder/rape/theft etc

As a rule are the watch willing to commit resources depending on the social status of the victim ie a commoner vs merchant vs a guildmaster vs a Noble vs a Lord of Waterdeep etc?

The D&D has a number of spells that could help solve a case (assume there wasnt a conventional witness to the crime) such as Locate Object, Speak with Dead, Speak with Animals, Speak with plants, Stone tell etc do the Watch regularly use these spells to solve a case?

If someone wanted for a crime escapes Waterdeep before they can be punished do the Watch try and track them down and bring them back? (I note that Duke Inselm Hhune and Lucia Thione have not been punished for the Torture and the attempted murder of 2 Lords of Waterdeep)If so do the Waterdeep watch employ bounty hunters to bring back wanted felons?"

Ed replies:

The Watch generally operate on a "keep the peace, lock up the drunks overnight" level, but quickly refer murders, kidnappings, and any crime or problem they see as having wider repercussions (and they're pretty shrewd) the like to the Palace and the Guard, who call in the Watchful Order of Magists right away (in addition to the Order mages who accompany Watch patrols). The Order members do regularly use the spells you cite, and others, to help solve crimes, and do so with the Watch observing.

Piergeiron and Khelben have made it clear that discouraging and solving ALL crimes is vital to Waterdeep's continuing popularity (and thus, prosperity) as a trade-center, and push for the Watch to diligently aid all persons, and solve all crimes.

However, three sorts of victims have different rights: visiting outlanders, citizens, and nobles, and this is subtly reflected in how energetically most crimesolving and crime prevention is enacted. There's also an unspoken "what do you expect if you go drinking and brawling in Dock Ward by night?" attitude that allows more leeway in Dock Ward (and to some extent South Ward) than in other areas of the city.

And no, criminals who flee Waterdeep generally aren't pursued (though they may be exiled in absentia, or tried, sentenced, and have that sentence instantly imposed on them if they're found in the city, even decades later). The city doesn't employ or encourage bounty hunters, but many guildmasters, nobles, and individual wealthy merchants do.

It should also be remembered that many noble families (or their factors, working on their behalf) employ agents or short-term-hire adventurers to find miscreants, recover stolen goods, and enact punishments - - as do guilds.

So saith Ed, THE Masked Lord of Waterdeep.

love to all,
THO

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April 24, 2006: Well met again, all. This time Ed turns to some queries from Asgetrion: "Hello Ed and Lady Hooded One, and many thanks once again for all the Realmslore you provide us here!

I was wondering if Ed could give us a glimpse at dwarven grammar and vocabulary beyond what was in 'Dwarves Deep'? For example, such as how possessive/genetive case works in dwarven. Would 'Durlik's axe' be 'Durlikuld' or 'Durlikkuld'?

Maybe Ed has also written dwarven battle songs he would share with us? (would they prefer horns or drums, or perhaps some other instrument when marching to battle?)

Then I would like to ask some details about mines... are the mines railed in the Realms, and is there any difference between how dwarven mines differ from those of the other races? If the mines are not commonly 'railed', are elevators used to travel between 'levels'?"

Ed speaks:

Asgetrion, you're very welcome. I love doing this, despite the time it devours. I have written dwarven battle-songs, but they're NDA'd right now because someone else may soon have a use for them. Dwarves prefer to trudge into battle in grim silence, breaking into deep, mass roars when they charge (and bellowing war-cries when enraged). They occasionally use horns, drums and "talk-blocks" (hand-held hollowed-out stones struck with wooden sticks, akin in use and sound to the so-called "Chinese blocks" of modern real-world orchestras) for signalling (troop movements) in battle, both above and below ground - - and because of that, rarely use them in music. Dwarves when singing often sit and stamp their boots rhythmically or use (sparse) strokes on a single talk-block for emphasis or to establish a beat.

I'm going to leave dwarven grammar for a later, longer reply (except to tell you to watch my Realmslore columns on the Wizards website for an upcoming entry on "Dwarf Common"), and move to your questions about mines. Dwarves have experimented with everything over the years, from levels and stopes to vertical shafts that descend to a seam which is then followed, other shafts being dug down to intersect with the seam farther along, and the shafts being filled with winch-cable-wooden-platform elevators. However, MOST dwarven mines favour a series of ramps, so ore and tailings can be dragged out by crawling or trudging miners to natural caverns (if they can find such), which are used for smelting and crushing, and which are gradually "filled up" with loose tailings and then abandoned (except for locales near to large human cities where the crushed tailings can be used by wizards (in combination with the right spells) to craft concrete and asphalt equivalents ("installed" by dwarves, of course). Some mines are railed and use ore-cars or skips (sometimes hauled by pack lizards or mules), and others are not. Simply put, the dwarves have tried everything. In ancient days, when they were more numerous, it was a common practice to enlarge worked-out mines (or sections of mines) into dwarven dwellings.

So saith Ed.

Expert on all things dwarvish (including the practice of carrying pets and future snacks in one's own beard).

love to all,
THO

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On April 24, 2006 THO said: Ah, George, don't forget you'll get to see Khelben (however briefly) in Ed's SWORDS OF EVENINGSTAR, too...

Oh, AND Blackstaff Tower and a few apprentices and ex-apprentices.