LOST LORE OF THE REALMS #18

Real-life medical matters (nothing serious; it seems I still have a heart) delayed this by a day, but once more down passages unmapped, through cobwebs unhinged, have I fared, scrabbling through yet more dusty lore to bring you yet another grab bag of Realmslore!

What The Written Script Of The Common Tongue Looks Like

According to the published Realms game books, for practical convenience, just like modern North American English.

In the Realms, think of modern English written or engraved in a font that features lots of close-together vertical strokes, with modifying strokes bisecting the verticals, or running off them to the right (in center of stroke).

An example: picture the letter “k” (lowercase). Extend its vertical stroke (on the left) twice as high and twice as low as you usually see it typed or written—and that’s how folk in Toril will see the written Common Tongue. (The letter “o” is a circle with a long vertical stroke running right down the center of it.)

One Wandering Bladesinger Master in the Realms

There are at least a dozen wandering bladesinger masters. Most are loners, but a few (Laethra Longtresses comes to mind) are gregarious and might take on an apprentice. Laethra’s quirks include a love of swimming down raging whitewater rivers, and an itch to climb high spires and roofs. She has caches and tiny hidehold refuges in ruins all over the Sword Coast and Moonsea Norths.

Does Waterdeep have Good Samaritan laws?

One DM’s campaign situation: a Player Character collapsed four floors of Castle Waterdeep while fighting evil—and a scullery maid died.

 Waterdeep has no formal laws of that sort, but does by custom (case law precedent, to use real world terms) have a policy of enforcement (laying charges in the first place), and sentencing (Magisters or the Open Lord) that take into account intent and situation.

In this case, if the PC wasn’t loudly and clearly reckless or engaging in indiscriminate violence before the collapse, that PC might be let off with a “pay for the maid’s funeral or resurrection, plus damages to family” behind-closed-doors agreement (i.e. no trial). Or might not, depending on the Player Character’s character and behaviour, the kin of the maid, and the testimony of any witnesses.

How Red Wizards Outside Thay (In Trading Enclave Remnants) Are Seen By Locals Circa 1486 DR

These wizards are still seen as evil by many: slavers, arms of an “evil empire,” and so on. They are mistrusted by many more (thanks to sinister mercantile methods that have caused widespread suspicion that they coerce, bribe, or deceive many rulers). The precise opinion varies by individual; many merchants will trade with someone “evil,” but watch their backs like the proverbial hawks whilst doing so.

Most outlanders will be unaware of friction between natives of Thay under Szass Tam and enclave Thayans, but astute traders and envoys (diplomats) who deal with Thayans would. Yet seeing it and knowing how to exploit it, or knowing its shifting intrigues and intricacies, are very different things. In the Star Trek setting, it’s no secret Klingons are warlike and aggressive, and most non-Klingons know Klingon houses have deep rivalries, but making practical use of that can be hard, tricky, and very dangerous. Same as with Thayans.

How Non-Drow Regard Eilistraee

Clergy should be well aware of the true nature of all deities. All lay folk might know is that Eilistraee is good, but those who don’t venerate her personally would likely be uneasy regarding her means. As in, “she may work and stand for good, but are the ways she does it safe for the rest of us?”

All sentient folk in the Realms believe in, and at least appease-worship, all deities who come to mind, but tend to have favourites. They often, however, disagree with the deeds and beliefs of mortal followers (from clergy to “the guy next door”).

Spellcasting In Athkatla

The authorities—who were too few to begin with—are so overwhelmed with false reports of this or that person hurling spells, that they have no time or resources to monitor more than the insides of specific important buildings, at specific times (like feasts, revels, trials, and ceremonies).

So the laws against spellcasters who aren’t members of the Cowled Wizards hurling spells are only enforced against those “caught in the act.”

How Volo Is Still Alive After All These Passing Years

Volo has been a published writer for almost a hundred and fifty years—yet seems like a vigorous man in the middling years of his life.

This is partly because he was trapped in magical stasis (in statue form) for nigh a century, thanks to Elminster getting exasperated with him and trying to keep him alive.

The larger reason why Volothamp Geddarm has survived, despite being a rude dolt and swindler with a talent for angering many people, is because the goddess Mystra safeguards Toril from the chaos of an utterly destroyed Weave (and herself, as she IS the Weave) by investing some of her divine essence in many mortals, notably her Chosen (Elminster, Storm and the other Seven Sisters, and others.)

Surprising as it may seem, Volo is one such mortal (he’s not a Chosen, but he is a living Weave anchor, as opposed to a stationary Weave anchor like the Athora, or other natural feature. There are other Weave anchors, most of them as unwitting of their status as Volo is—they just happen to have some of Mystra’s divine essence within themselves).

That’s why Volo has been so improbably lucky at staying alive for so many years, despite being a cocky, smart-mouthed idiot. (In fact, El and the other Chosen are under instructions to see to his survival when they can.)

Volo doesn’t know about this. He believes he was thrust into another form as yet another punishment from a spellcaster he’d offended, not that he was being kept alive to allow Mystra to more easily return after the Spellplague. Sometimes, keeping Volo ignorant of things is best for the Realms. :}

The Whale’s Flukes Islets

Named for the fins of a whale that catch watcher’s eyes when it lunges high half-out of the waters (sporting), the Flukes are a maze of small islets and “wash rocks” (rocks that just break the surface, and so are “awash”) that are mainly home to seals and seabirds.

The Flukes have claimed many ships over the years, and their wrecks lie thick in the shallows, which teem with fish, shellfish, sharks, and sea-turtles. Like Mother-of-Mists, the Flukes are volcanic in origin, and undersea vents warm them and their waters; a handful of shipwreck survivors, down the years, have managed to cling to life on the Flukes for many seasons. With that said, only the largest westernmost Flukes offer what might be called a “jungle forest.” One of them, the isle of Armret, was home to a mage who fled the dynastic troubles in Tethyr and made her hidden home here for the rest of her life, devising many new spells and items—and using most of them in defenses and traps to protect her against anyone who came looking for her (no one did).

By now, she’s either long dead or undead. Mahaera Harlator was her name, she’d married two nobles (one after the other died), and mobs came for her. In her paranoia, she thought other wizards were directing them in their hunts for her, and so ran.

The Flukes haven’t been volcanically active for centuries, but that may be changing; no eruptions yet, but several tremors.

Zoos In Waterdeep (And Elsewhere)

Certain nobility and wealthy non-nobles assemble private collections of living beasts, often dominated by “monsters,” that are known not as zoos, but as “menageries.” Many owners offer viewings (usually for a fee, to pay for food for the beasts).

Nobles and wannabe nobles show off prized curios/collectibles of all sorts to guests they want to impress. Monsters and monster trophies procured for them by adventurers, among many other things (adventure hooks galore!).

Slavery Now In The Realms

Thay was built on slavery, but Szass Tam’s use of undead (who don’t have to be fed, watered, or allowed rest or sleep) has made slaves “luxury items” for Thayan nobility, and little more.

Slavery has become increasingly rare elsewhere in Faerûn, and is illegal in most “civilized” places (many orc tribes take slaves, but many humans don’t think of orcs are civilized). Drow are involved in an extensive Underdark slave trade involving slave-snatching surface raids.

In Chult, the yuan-ti took and kept both human and ophidian slaves in earlier centuries, but few are now left to enslave.

Calimshan has had lots of slaves or relatively few, depending on when in its history we’re considering, but slavery has always been present and legal there (one can’t enslave a citizen, but by definition a slave isn’t a citizen—even if they were before being enslaved).

The Mountain Ride and the Moonsea Ride Roads

“Mountain Ride” is local Cormyrean terminology for the overland road running west from High Horn. (A different road from the “Moonsea Ride,” which runs from Tilverton east.) In the early 1300s DR, “Mountain Ride” was also a name for the never-built western leg of road continuing the Moonsea Ride west from Tilverton through the Stonelands. It was a marked trail, but no wagons or riding animals could use it (its route was studded with many steep rocks to scramble up and down). The Zhents attacked all non-Zhents trying to use it, to keep the Stonelands “theirs.”

For some time, the Crown of Cormyr offered adventurers the “Dukedom of the Stonelands” if they could occupy and hold the Stonelands for Cormyr. No one succeeded in doing this.

Halfling Dwellings In The Realms

What a hin home looks like largely depends on the local terrain, but they all have at least root cellar tunnels, if not the entire home dug into a hillside, or inside a halfling-made artificial hill.

Constants include: there are always windows and halfling-sized (not larger) doors; big furniture is made in pieces that fit through doorways and are assembled inside.

However, halflings inhabit narrow, low-ceilinged homes like human homes when living in human cities (they subdivide human buildings between several halfling families, or an owning family and renters who are also halflings).

And in forests, they construct log homes by joining living trees with felled trunks of other trees, to make a “ringwall,” then weave a living-branches-plus-dead-ones net for the roof, then cover it with a thatch of grasses, then cover that with earth, then plant it with herbs and flowers and greenleaf plants (all edible).

In mountainous regions, they will use caves but fit them with weir-like (wattle) walls and traps and “runs” to make them too small for anything larger than a halfling, and these sharpened-stake constructions will be sturdy enough to stop (and kill, if the invader is persistent) a bear, owlbear, etc. So the answer is “it depends” on terrain, climate, and so on.

I did an adventure back in 1978 set on an island in the Nelanther wherein a town of halflings lived in the tunneled-through and joined-together hulks of many wrecked ships that had run aground on a notorious “Wreck Beach.” The halflings gleaned gear, food, and goods from all the pirates and adventurers who came to plunder the wrecks, over the years.

...And the "wouldn't fit" tags for this time around are:

#Tethyr

#Thay

#Thayans

#Tilverton

#Toril

#traps

#trophies

#volcanic

#Volo

#Waterdeep

#wattle

#Weave

#Weave Anchor

#Whale’s Flukes (islets)

#wizards

#Wreck Beach

#Zhentarim

#zoos