| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| Jeremy Grenemyer |
Posted - 11 Feb 2015 : 07:13:59
In this scroll I intend to exercise my idea muscles every day, by coming up with ten ideas relating to Cormyr: encounters, NPCs, treasure and magic items, titles to novels, sourcebook content, spells, crazy gamer merchandise, hypotheses and questions, etc.
Think of it as a workout room of sorts.
Some--no, a lot--of these ideas are going to be bad. Really bad.
But some of them will be good.
If I miss a day, you get to say mean things to me in this scroll, for which I will thank you.
If you feel like working out here too, by all means join me. There's plenty of room.
If something here inspires you, please leave a comment and let me know!
Edit: and thanks for reading! :) |
| 30 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| Jeremy Grenemyer |
Posted - 28 Nov 2015 : 21:44:41
One of the side effects of writing late at night comes in the form of swapping East for West, Mystra for Tymora, etc.
I found one of those errors while rereading an old entry, and corrected it. I wouldn't be surprised if one of us finds more of them.
If you find an obvious error, Dear Reader, then please point it out and I will fix it.
 |
| Gary Dallison |
Posted - 09 Nov 2015 : 21:12:59
Well they did return my message (it shocked me as well), I just didn't like the answer. |
| Dalor Darden |
Posted - 09 Nov 2015 : 18:07:12
People jumping ship may have a bit to do with WotC not returning some folks messages. |
| Gary Dallison |
Posted - 09 Nov 2015 : 08:52:22
Everybody seems to be jumping ship lately, I wonder why?
I will endeavour to be around from time to time, but work is making that difficult. When I get round to cormyr and detailing the dragon war in cormyr I will make notes here if you like.
I did find something of interest while rebuilding my archive. One of the side bars in the 3e frcs. The dragons of the dragon coast details a number of interesting dragons, one which might help give an approximate date of thauglors birth, the other is larithylar, a lamia sorceress also known as the chameleon dragon who possessed a number dragons including perhaps thauglor.
Might help explain thauglors bizarre actions regarding his domain and his skill at tinkering with the weave (because it wasn't really him, it was the sorceress possessing him) |
| xaeyruudh |
Posted - 09 Nov 2015 : 07:08:02
More than a little, Dalor. 
Have fun Jeremy! I'll try to keep the muahaha to a minimum. |
| Dalor Darden |
Posted - 09 Nov 2015 : 05:43:57
I'm so excited for Jeremy to start flexing his idea muscle with us!
That sounds a little dirty... |
| Jeremy Grenemyer |
Posted - 09 Nov 2015 : 05:38:08
It's time for me to turn my attention to the World of Ark, by Ravenlore Press.
I plan to resume writing entries for this scroll in a month or two.
In the meantime, I hope xaeyruudh and dazzlerdal will drop by from time to time to post their own ideas for the Realms (and not just Cormyr) whenever they like.
That goes for you too, Dear Reader. Thanks for reading!
EDIT: not familiar with the World of Ark? Have a look at their latest offering, Midnight in Mogheim, and be sure to click on the "preview" link beneath the cover image. |
| xaeyruudh |
Posted - 07 Nov 2015 : 18:57:46
Very nice work, as always.
quote:
Originally posted by Jeremy Grenemyer
I like how elements from Volo's Guides find their way into your brain and sit quietly until the time is right for them to quietly percolate into idea stream when you need something good.
So true!
|
| Jeremy Grenemyer |
Posted - 07 Nov 2015 : 18:04:29
Aha! That's the thing I was thinking about. Good find sir!
I like how elements from Volo's Guides find their way into your brain and sit quietly until the time is right for them to quietly percolate into idea stream when you need something good.
I wonder if the description of Mystra and the Simbul consuming magic from items was asked for by WotC, in order to provide an in-world example of how the Realms might become like what's in the new 5E DMG as far as treasure hoards and the lesser amounts of magic items given out as part of them (which appears to be the new norm for D&D).
It alarmed me to see all those old, storied magic items in Cormyr bite the dust. But at least we got to learn about them in the first place, and knowing something about them lets us write the story of the items, if we want.
quote:
Originally posted by xaeyruudh
She might have preserved her own power in this way, allowing her to make a comeback after the Sundering if DMs so desire, but it could also work to help Mystra as you described.
This comment of yours jogged my memory. I remember now why Tsharliira's name seem's familiar. Her entry in Volo's Guide to Cormyr is just above Valantha Shimmerstar's entry, which helped me out something like four or five years ago when I needed a name. I twisted Tsharliira's name around and gave it to Valantha. |
| xaeyruudh |
Posted - 07 Nov 2015 : 04:39:01
quote:
Originally posted by Jeremy Grenemyer
10. Somewhere in Volo’s Guide to Cormyr, there’s mention of a chest or strongbox. I think it’s filled with magical baubles that keep people warm... To what end? Keeping a fragment of Mystra tethered to Cormyr.
I like this. I ranted in another thread about the possibility of WotC using Mystra to remove magic items from the Realms by basically "withdrawing" all the magical energy contained in the magic items and spellcasters of the world to power her own resurrection. That would be another RSE and a terrible position to put Mystra in, but it can work if there are magic items which were specifically created to store energy and Mystra uses *those* and it goes unnoticed by the average adventurer who didn't even know they existed. WotC can explain the disappearance of epic magic items in some other way.
Intrigued, I went digging in VGtCormyr and found this on pg 224:
quote:
Tsharliira is working on several projects of practical magic. One is a chest that drinks energy in a remote spot and emits it as heat and light. When she perfects methods of controlling the heat and light, such chests could be used to light and warm cottages in winter by drawing heat from compost, hot springs, manure piles, and large, communal peat-banked fires.
This could be even better than trinkets in a chest. The text points out that Tsharliira is painstaking and methodical. What if she's not just documenting her process but also inventing a new type of magic item? Part of the reason her progress was slow might be that she --guided by Mystra or Azuth or both-- was making more than "just" a magical heater, but a sort of safe deposit box into which a bit of power (mortal, divine, whatever) can be invested for safekeeping and later recovery. She might have preserved her own power in this way, allowing her to make a comeback after the Sundering if DMs so desire, but it could also work to help Mystra as you described. |
| Jeremy Grenemyer |
Posted - 06 Nov 2015 : 22:31:06
More on Drunn
Topics: Drunn Arngoblet, House Paertrover, spies
I wrote up an NPC description last night. It was inspired by the content in the ideas entry above this one. Thus, Drunn Arngoblet.
1. What are some of the experiences Drunn has had on the roads and trails of the Heartlands? Well if he's carrying books, tomes and other writings exclusively, he probably ought to have a good selection. After all, just about every merchant has a smattering of tomes—usually commonplace books—to sell. So if he's got the good stuff, it stands to reason others might want it.
2. There's also the chance he's carrying books with something like hidden messages in them. Or books that might just be false books, which is to say they're like little boxes, the pages hollowed out in order to carry a valuable object. It's rare, but he could be carrying a spellbook without realizing it. More likely he might have a plain book with a spellscroll or a few pages of spells hidden within.
3. Any of the endless number of merchant cabals that form, die, reform and grow all over the Realms may have noticed Drunn. A successful merchant that refuses offers to join cabals can be seen as a threat. Likewise a tool to be used.
4. Spies for nations of the Realms (like Cormyr's Highknights or operatives of Tethyr reporting to the Head Intelligencer [aka the Arshryke]), for city states (like Westgate or Waterdeep), for powerful merchant families and for noble families (the independent House of Naerhand for the former, and any of Cormyr's powerful noble families, like the Illances), guild houses, the priesthoods of powerful temples, and wizards, not to mention the agents of Beholder hives (like the Xraunrarr), the Tharthrallyd lurking in Arabel, the faceless doppelganger overlords of Waterdeep, and the agents of Dragons, all might find it useful to place hidden messages in the books carried by a reliable merchant with a generally fixed route, who is known for making friends and winning the trust of others, that likes to make personal deliveries, and that also happens to not have an objection to running his sword through somebody's guts if they're trying to kill him.
5. Drunn is not without his protections, though he's never sought to outfit himself with anything more than an old sword and daggers, and a small shield bumping along on the seat next to him. Sometimes he’ll place a loaded crossbow on top of that shield, if he’s expecting trouble. Some of the other means Drunn utilizes to protect himself were found unexpectedly while on the road. Some of them were placed on his wagons by others, and some of those 'others' rent the rooms in the buildings Drunn owns. They make regular reports to their masters after Drunn departs.
6. An example of a found protection might be a book that fell open after Drunn, his wagon and its contents were blown over by a fireball cast to destroy Drunn and his wares all at once. The force of the blast caught Drunn unawares as he rounded a bend, his cart already leaning as it made the turn, and so the blast tipped him over into a field bordering the road. The spell burned through the wagon cover and several tomes, but its fire was quenched as soon as it touched the pages in this particular book. Several more spells were cast when Drunn—burned, dazed and angry—stumbled up out of the wreckage with sword drawn, and the tome ate them all.
7. Drunn marked the face of the wizard that nearly killed him. He’s sworn to put his blade through her if he should ever find her. The three men accompanying the mage all found death when they faced off against the former mercenary.
8. Nowadays Drunn travels with that strange book by his side; it sits on a tray attached to his wagon by an iron pole. All of his wagons are outfitted with this sort of pedestal. Drunn had the tome looked at by sages of the Art in Scornubel (of which there are plenty, let me tell you), and learned the tome would best protect him if it was allowed to lay closed and not packed in with books, that it should never be left open, and should be closed immediately once a threat has passed. He’s observed its cover fly open, and seen strange lights and colors dance across its pages. He doesn’t know what this means, but he assumes magic came and went, and he always hurries up after.
9. Drunn never sought to own warehouses full of books and tomes. He keeps only the tomes he can carry on his wagon, and prefers his wagon houses (as he calls them) remain empty of everything except for one or two wagons in good working order. He’s learned on the job how to make spot repairs, and what parts are worth carrying with him on the road. He has a good relationship with many wagon builders and repairers. He spares no expense on draft horses and will never allow a cow, bull, mule or other beast of burden to sully the space in front of his wagons. He’s unhitched a horse from his wagon to ride down skulking thieves that stole from him by night. He isn’t fond of that particular memory, but the fleeing thieves put up a fight and so they met their deaths on his sword. Slaying from horseback is something he used to do, in his mercenary days. He was pretty good at it. Anyway, to steal a book from Drunn that’s meant for a child is to invite pain, at the minimum.
10. Drunn really does enjoy delivering books to children. It takes him time to get the books they ask for, and when he learns of a child that passed away in the time between when he last saw them and his return with an asked for book, Drunn finds a place to park his wagon, and he cries and cries. Life in the Realms is hard.
11. Drunn does not know how to read. He has others read to him the content of the books he ‘reads out loud’ to children, and he memorizes it. This takes up a good amount of his time in Westgate. An easy way to find yourself on Drunn’s bad side is to insist on trying to teach him how to read. He doesn’t advertize this fact and he hates it when others figure it out about him. The truth is that he can’t read, and cant’ be taught. It’s been this way since he was a child. Drunn has commissioned printings of children’s stories in chapbook form. He keeps them in his wagon and gives them out after reading the stories in them. He determines which stories go with which chapbook by their artful covers.
12. Offers to settle down and retire have been tendered to Drunn. He’s refused them all, thus far. He’s one of a handful of men desired by the last living female of House Paertrover, all of her sons dead, her husband recently passed. Drunn’s reply to her was, “Who will find the children their books?” The Lady Paertrover spends her days among her servants; by night she sleeps alone, the Grinning Ghost never far from her bedside, while the ghosts of Taverton Hall wander the passages and the grounds. The Spellplague woke them all up, and they never quite went back to sleep. Her daughters are all married off, their husbands covetous of the considerable Peartrover assets and holdings. There are others of the Paertrover blood in Cormyr and beyond, but they are common born and their blood diluted by generations. Worse, none of them have done anything meriting elevation to nobility—at least, that’s what the other houses would argue in the case of an oldblood house of the stature of Paertrover.
13. The last Lady Paertrover desires no more children, only someone to love into her dotage and to hold her close at night. She admires Drunn’s commitment and is considering opening up the library to him, to do with as he pleases. She does not look forward to the idea of House Paertrover becoming the de facto arm of another noble house, even if one of her daughters is married to the scion of another noble family who would be required to formally renounce his House before the King of all Cormyr, and then take on the Paertrover name. |
| Jeremy Grenemyer |
Posted - 06 Nov 2015 : 07:49:51
Wintertime in Cormyr is best experienced with a good book and good company.
Topics: merchant routes pre-wintertime, readables, readying for winter, spending time in winter
1. Something adventurers might see on Cormyr’s roads just before or during the first snowfall are carts and wagons laden with books, broadsheets and chapbooks.
2. The winter months are everything you might expect in Cormyr: cold, wet, windy, cold some more. So you’re stuck indoors with whomever you’re fortunate enough to share space with (or cursed to suffer the presence of, depending on one’s situation and point of view) once winter arrives. How to pass the time? Stock up on readables before it becomes impossible to venture out into the cold.
3. Some merchants will stock up on readables to tide themselves over in the wintertime. Not for their own edification, mind, but to use in trade for the cost of a room and a space to park their wagon, for food, and possibly for company—not necessarily amorous, but for a chance at conversation and to spend time in someone else’s presence. It’s easier to be just this side of freezing when you have someone there to share the experience. These are the sort of merchants that live out of their wagons most of the year.
4. I imagine there are warehouses in Arabel where a merchant can rent space to keep his wagon(s) dry through the winter. No doubt the wagons last longer and need fewer repairs. I bet some of these warehouses double as enormous rooming houses too. Now that’s something I’d like to see Ed describe in a novel. Just imagine all the colorful characters, the deal making, the storytelling…
5. Some merchants stock up on readables for one last run before winter hits. Their goal is to sell everything at the stops they make on the way home, and then ride out the winter in a comfortable house or mansion. Special orders, deliveries of entire sets of books, compilations of broadsheets into tomes…all this is done on top of the sale of whatever regular stock the merchant acquired and has for sale.
6. I bet there are more than a few nobles in Cormyr with a thirst for broadsheets out of Waterdeep, Baldur’s Gate and other places. Anyone who can collect such broadsheets and copy them into compilations (say a year’s worth) could do pretty good in Cormyr.
7. If a merchant is considered trustworthy enough, he or she might be carrying correspondence to deliver on his or her route, in addition to readables.
8. I suppose once winter hits the roads will be snowed over and any correspondence will have to be delivered by bird, by creature, by spell or by magic item, so there ought to be some sort of pre-winter rush of final letters, instructions, promises, etc., circulating on Cormyr’s roads and trails as the seasons turn.
9. The winter seems like a good time for children to practice their letters and to learn how to read, and to learn how to read out loud. Plays could be performed by the fire, with the kids and adults both taking on the parts of various characters. They’d probably make up their own, too. So add books of plays to the list of things purchased.
10. Somewhere in Volo’s Guide to Cormyr, there’s mention of a chest or strongbox. I think it’s filled with magical baubles that keep people warm. I need to write the story of where all those baubles ended up. Between the ravages of the Ghazneths (who ate magic aplenty during their reign of terror in Cormyr), the Time of Troubles, the Spellplague and finally the Sundering, a lot of magic items have been destroyed, rendered useless or gone haywire, so any magic items that are simple, forgotten about and still functioning ought to have value. I bet those little baubles survived, and I bet their owners in taking care of them never realized they were supporting a little web of magic across Cormyr fueled by the time and attention given to the baubles (checking on them, keeping them clean, holding them close in the cold, etc.). To what end? Keeping a fragment of Mystra tethered to Cormyr. |
| Jeremy Grenemyer |
Posted - 05 Nov 2015 : 06:43:13
We found It.
Topics: Blustich below ground, portals/gates, Manshoon, Crimmorn
1. Gates and portals are prevalent in the Realms, particularly in Cormyr (thank you, Sword Heralds), but to me they’re overused. I say this as much about the content in sourcebooks and novels as what I’ve used in my own Realms campaigns. Still, the idea of a portal or two below Blustich opens up a lot of possibilities.
2. I don’t think the gates should allow for trade with the Underdark; that’s a little too convenient. The architecture of wherever the gates open up into should limit just how far someone from the village can get. I.e. the architecture is closed off. There are no known tunnels or exits waiting to be explored.
3. What is in the tunnels beyond the gate(s) has had an effect on the village—root mushrooms, for example—and could still serve as a path for adventure if you want to introduce something that finds its way into the Underdark where the gates are. Whatever it is could be a threat to be dealt with, and that threat left a way open behind it that’s waiting to be explored.
4. If there are two gates—one below each run down house—then one could lead to a closed off area (the graveyard) and one to a more open space that’s governed by someone or something. That something doesn’t allow travel beyond its territory, but it does accept visitors and it trains them in the Art. It remembers Vangerdahast and it wonders when his successor will make good on the agreement forged between it and the former Mage Royal, and come to deliver to it the agreed upon payment, in person.
5. What is “it,” exactly? Well it’s not IT, because IT would be nothing but trouble and you need a non-malevolent and not-murderous instructor in the Art. Figure this out later.
6. Travel through the portals is instantaneous and smooth as a whistle. They’re not even really portals in terms of something like an arch or an elaborately engraved thing (like out of the movie/TV series Stargate) you clearly step into to be transported. Instead they’re just spaces, one halfway down a passage or tunnel, at a point where the stone of the floor is colored a little differently, and the other in an alcove that seems more like a gash in a wall than something built on purpose. You step on or in, respectively, and off you go.
7. Maybe all the sarcophagi are full. This could be where the Sword Heralds are buried. Then you could have a normal (for Blustich) above ground graveyard, and still have the below ground wizards school. Either way, you have enough to build rumors and half-truths around, and possibly the means to have adventurers come calling on the current Mage Royal to remind him of something he never knew about in the first place. Tee hee!
8. Surely Manshoon—and others—would wonder about the number of Art-trained mages coming out of Blustich. Up until recently Manshoon let arrogance guide him, so I think it’s safe to assume he would have chalked it up to the idea that women are more naturally attuned to magic, the people of Blustich are close to nature, more women than men are born there, and the Weave is powered by the energies of creation, so it’s simply the case that Blustich will breed a higher percentage of women who can learn to cast spells.
9. Manshoon has always been the type to be satisfied and impressed with his own logic and thinking, so he’ll be content with that explanation. Of course this wouldn’t keep him from being tempted to try and take control of a place that could spawn an army of mages under his control. Since his eyes have always been on the bigger prize (ruling Cormyr), he’d think it wiser to gain control of the throne from behind the scenes. Then he could move on to other things on his to do list, like focusing on Blustich and digging up its secrets.
10. This doesn’t mean the village lacks for enemies and the sort of curios people who want to take what the village has without regard for its safety and well being. Once again the sage Crimmorn comes to mind. He’s a problem. There are others.
11. You could scrap the gates altogether, and simply have passages below the two old houses that lead into separate parts of the Upperdark.
|
| Jeremy Grenemyer |
Posted - 04 Nov 2015 : 07:02:56
Blustich, Blustich and more Blustich.
Topics: altars, garden groves, gates, graveyards
Note to the reader: I use the terms “gate” and “portal” interchangeably and without warning. Each means the same as the other, i.e., a magical connection between two fixed points that instantly transports you from one point to another in the Realms.
1. The garden groves found with the oldest houses in Blustich have large altars, with patterns of stone in them that look like trees. The tradition in these houses isn’t simply to track new family members as they are born, but to track their descendants; people who’ve gone on to found other families, or join other families. Everyone born in Blustich has their rock, but that doesn’t mean someone else didn’t pick out another rock to represent you, which means there can be two stories about you that are told after you die.
2. The eldest homes in Blustich are not all towards the river’s edge. A few are in the middle of the Hill. One straddles the water’s edge.
3. Blustichers (it sounds terrible, but I have yet to render a word out of “Blustich” that is as elegant sounding as “Arabellan” or as straightforward as “Marsemban”) that go on to become servants to noble families are sometimes used as exemplars of the sort of behavior and learning expected of noble children. The inevitable complaints from noble children about having to learn their seemingly endless family history sometimes causes the Blusticher (Blustor? Blusman? …oh, I give up) to be summoned, and upon his or her arrival is made to recite the family history—names, deeds, year of birth and death—which anyone from Blustich can do easily. Of course not all noble children are brats; some of them think it’s pretty cool that this kind of memorizing can actually be done, so they stop complaining and double down on their efforts to learn.
4. Where are the dead buried in Blustich? You could place a graveyard between the village and Thimdror Fields (see above, Dear Reader).
5. Piled on a barge that’s towed out into the water and set afire, Marsember style?
6. Buried in a round field bordered on all sides by farmland, that’s set between the edge of the village and Hermit’s Wood? If yes then the graves are deep, there are no headstones or markers, and the only clue that a body lies beneath the earth is what grows above it on the surface. Most outsiders think of the graveyard as some kind of odd flower garden because they don’t know any better. Volo might have thought the same, had he bothered to look around more.
7. Interred deep within the Hill? Not in any of the cellars beneath each house—though that’s a good rumor you could use. Instead the bodies are dumped in any of several caverns filled with fungi and mobile plant things that aren’t really dangerous to the living, but are capable of doing great harm to the already dead. If yes, then this is a good spot to dump the murdered and needing-to-be-disappeared. Another good rumor, whether true or not.
8. Or perhaps beneath the Hill, but in any number of empty, open sarcophagi arranged in rows in a long chamber. The lids for the sarcophagi were found a long time ago in another chamber, the long hall of the dead soon after. Who built the chamber and put the sarcophagi there is a mystery, but damn if it isn’t mighty convenient for the villagers above ground.
9. There are two houses in the village that are unoccupied. Their gardens are overgrown and wild; the houses appear to be falling apart and collapsing in on themselves. Perhaps the basement and cellars below them contain entrances to deeper portions of the Hill. Or to one or more gates that deliver someone to anywhere in the Underdark.
10. Whatever the case, the bodies of the dead in the village find their way into one of these two houses before anything else is done with them. |
| Jeremy Grenemyer |
Posted - 03 Nov 2015 : 06:24:45
”The Glyphs in the Gardens of Blustich” or “The Importance of Rocks and Stones”
Topics: garden paths, family traditions, growing up in Blustich
1. Elaborate stone paths run from the houses of Blustich to the adjoining garden groves that are found with every home in the village.
2. Stone and minerals, quartz and marble—all these and more can be found in the paths. No two are alike. Many trace elaborate patterns, the growing parts of the garden filling the space all around the paths.
3. From overhead, some of the patterns resemble glyphs or runes—and some of them are. The effect they create is similar to the sort of magical ward one might encounter in the Royal Palace in Suzail (these are anchored to the castle, active but not readily discernable, and capable of unleashing powerful effects if the right command words are used), save that a detect magic or similar won’t necessarily allow one to perceive them. Their effects are like opposing magnetic poles on pieces of metal. Left alone, you’d never know there was a magnetic field present, but place one pole near the other and you observe something happening. Depending on the pattern in the paths, the effects of the garden glyphs will draw on the energy of the garden itself to power a (usually defensive) effect that wards against things like undead, lycanthropes (once a major problem in the area) or other things (DM’s option).
4. A tradition among the families is to teach their children to keep an eye out for rocks and stones; to learn about them, to collect them, to think about them—especially at night before bed—and (eventually) to put them back where they were found.
5. As the children age, they practice the art of putting things back that they find, except for what will be added to the garden path, to the low stone walls that ring many of the gardens (and serve to shore up the earth as the land the village rests on rises, which places houses further away from the Wyvernwater’s edge at a higher elevation) and to the altar in every garden.
6. This helps to teach them to remember, and to catalogue, and to compare. There are certain kinds of rock and stone native to Blustich and the surrounding lands, and all children are encouraged to collect at least one of each kind of stone.
7. Word of a dwarf in Blustich spreads fast; the children don’t know (and probably don’t care) that not every dwarf is a genius encyclopedia of knowledge about rocks and stones (what, you thought they were?). If there is a dwarf in town, the children will come running to thrust rocks and stones into the dwarf’s face and pepper the dwarf with questions about them.
8. As children grow into adulthood, they return the rocks and stones they found (save for the exceptions listed above), reliving in their minds the journeys and experiences that led to the rocks.
9. One stone is always kept by each child turned young adult. He or she will hold onto it until they reach full adulthood and/or they leave the village. At that time the stone is given over to the mother of the house, who performs a prayer ceremony to Ochrana in the garden grove at the foot of the family altar. The process of the ritual includes the addition of the stone to the altar. Other deities are called upon (if the mother so desires) after the stone is set, not before. To keep the stone and not turn it over is seen as a rebuke of the family; one is considered exiled until they return **with** the stone.
10. Every stone has a name. Every name is the beginning of a story. The children of Blustich are told some version of, “If you leave a good story behind, you will rest comfortably in your grave.” And they are told the stories that come with the stones in the family altar. All of the stories. And they are expected to learn them, just as they must learn the names.
11. Hearing and learning the stories teaches respect for family, gives one an idea of how far back their family goes, and serves to help teach the young children of the village about wider Cormyr. In southeastern Cormyr, there are sayings that warn against doing great wrongs to anyone from Blustich, because the family of the aggrieved will never forget it.
12. Cormyreans native to Blustich that go on to make lives in other parts of the Forest Kingdom will listen for word of the activities and doings of others from Blustich. They do this because they feel kinship to home, and a responsibility to help finish a story. Most of these people leave instructions to hteir loved ones to send one final note back home on their behalf, should they die. It’s considered sorrowful for someone to die or disappear without any word as to what happened, because then their story can’t be told with a proper ending (“he disappeared” doesn’t cut it).
13. Helping someone (or someones) from Blustich to find a lost family member, or to at least determine that person’s fate, is considered a seriously good deed, and is great way to earn a boon that can be called in later. This is the sort of thing adventurers in southeastern Cormyr would know about, in terms of finding an activity that often as not leads to adventure. Knowing the story of somebody’s fate is one way to get your foot in the door in otherwise cold shouldered Blustich.
14. The news of the deaths of loved ones, including information on how they died and possibly more (sometimes much more) is delivered by Royal couriers, altar sworn priests, and merchants who do a side business in parcel and letter deliveries all make trips to Blustich, the correspondence they carry having been sent from all over Cormyr, and sometimes beyond.
15. This information makes its way to the mothers of the houses, who piece together the story of loved ones and teach it to future generations. Mothers are expected to tell true stories. Nevertheless, children are admonished not to make their mothers angry, because they might not like what their mothers have to say about them after they’ve grown up.
NOTE: I'm happy with this set of ideas. It's nice to find another way to answer the question of how someone growing up in a small village can know anything about wider Cormyr. "You've heard third and fourth hand accounts from passing merchants about the kingdom you grew up in" works, but it shouldn't be the only way. |
| Jeremy Grenemyer |
Posted - 02 Nov 2015 : 06:15:39
Eye Idea using water haunts.
Topics: water haunts
1. A water haunt is run over by coach filled with a royal investigator and attendants. They and horses drown, someone is not warned and has no chance to go to the water first and haunt is destroyed. All crown peeps become ghosts, carriage is quite the crime scene, rumors are stirred up and a whirlwind of speculation flies about, leaving nothing but the dead and water haunts on the crown's radar.
2. Intro is deaths of crownsworn and rumors of strange hauntings in southeastern Cormyr.
3. Moving middle first part is: Crownsworn description: What they were investigating; Response team out of Wheloon; First to the scene was a hermit--she who was fated to die. The description is hers.
4. Second part is: Near deaths of adventurers and death of patron, after encountering a water haunt. Use names from your list of adventurers aka company of stolen elf--for footnote point out that they fooled an elf into stealing himself.
5. Close is what the water haunts are and are not. Could cover a lot of ground here since Eye articles can focus entirely on a haunt without giving all the extra details you plan to give in this piece. Keep is simple, stupid.
6. Footnotes, color descriptions include halfling wagon palaces and other of your recent ideas material, and possibly a middle section on the women of Blustich.
7. Don't worry about the Five Ladies commentary until it's all done.
8. Regardless, the Crown's attention is focused on the area.
9. Describe it as "A hurricane of speculation and rumor passed through southeastern Cormyr, the eye of the Crown at its center.
10. On a completely unrelated matter: have pacifiers ever been described in Cormyrlore or greater Realmslore? Does rosecork make for a good pacifier since it soaks up water? Need to Ask Ed. |
| Jeremy Grenemyer |
Posted - 31 Oct 2015 : 07:15:17
Water Haunts
Topics: the changing face of Cormyr’s southeastern lands; hauntings
1. The coastal lands east of Marsember are pastoral, and filled with farms, grazing animals, gardens and cottages. It’s a long-settled place. People have lived there just about as long as anyone has lived in Cormyr.
2. As one travels inland, the farmlands give way in places to groves of trees. These woodland spaces cover anywhere from ten to fifty square miles of terrain. Kirinwood (located between Wormtower and Monksblade) and the small forest that surrounds it is a good example.
3. Streams that start as springs bubbling up out of the earth cut through the lands north of the coast. These waters flow south, sometimes overlapping to form rivers before emptying into the Dragonmere. For example: the Evenbrook and Kirinar streams join to become the River Mistwater.
4. These facets of southeastern Cormyr have been around a long time and haven’t changed much. What has changed are the trails and paths used by farmers, peddlers, merchants, Purple Dragons, adventurers and wayward nobles to travel from one place to another.
5. The Mistwood Trail has long connected Wheloon to Kirinwood. But ever since Wheloon was corrupted from within by darkness and walled off, travelers moving east on the Way of the Manticore and south on the Thunder Way (or, if you prefer, the Hullack Trail) have been forced to bypass Wheloon.
6. As a result, the leg of the Mistwood running from Wheloon to Kirinwood fell out of use (see map in Volo’s Guide to Cormyr, page 92). The path now runs from Kirinwood to Dreamer’s Rock (see Mike Shley’s beautiful map of Cormyr in the free to download article “Backdrop: Cormyr” by Brian R. James). Located on the Way of the Manticore east of Wheloon, the tiny hamlet of sheepherders and vegetable growers has been forced to expand at an uncomfortable rate.
7. Places left untraveled become unfamiliar over time, as new travelers take to the road and old travelers retire or die. As a result, most road-wise travelers in modern day Cormyr (lets say 1489 DR, if what I gather from the Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide is correct) will tell you the expanse of land that was once cut through diagonally by the Mistwood Trail has seen more than its fare share of strange encounters and hauntings.
8. Wandering peddlers that sell miscellaneous goods to isolated farms describe daggers that float above ground by day and fly about by night. In the day they claim to have seen individual daggers ten or more feet in the air, point down, spinning on their axis. Sometimes the rate of spin is one turn per second, sometimes its so fast it’s impossible to count. By night there are daggers that fly like birds in a V formation, usually two daggers but upwards of twelve, all glowing in an array of colors ranging from green to blue to gold to red. (Not to be confused with the daggers, gauntlets and other things that have been spotted to the north of Nesmyth, which move about by night only, while bathed in an eerie green light).
9. Terrified farmers have passed their own stories of strange encounters to the peddlers. First among them is the tale of being confronted by a duplicate of one’s self. The cold of winter, the cold of rain, the cold that blows in from the Dragonmere, these are all reliable killers in Cormyr. They assist their partners in crime, such as old age and heartstop. For Cormyreans living in the wide stretch of land east of the Wyvernflow and south of the Way of the Manticore, death appears to have a new herald, one that arrives wearing your face, that moves as you move, and that falls into a puddle of water after looking at you first imploringly, and then sadly, for an uncomfortably long time.
10. A band of adventurers encountered one of these water haunts (lets call them that, shall we?) about an hour after leaving the home of their patron, herself a form adventurer now retired. The water haunt walked by them without speaking and in the direction of their patron’s home, and did not answer their calls. They sought to stop it, not yet knowing what it was, and that’s when they all started drowning. The water haunt stopped to regard them with a baleful look, and their throats filled with water.
11. The adventurers were out of the fight, having passed out. None of them died, but sore throats, burst blood vessels in their eyes and aching lungs were there’s to suffer for days after. Added to this was a measure of grief at the loss of their patron. The adventurers got back to her before she died, and it was her task to tell them that death would claim her very soon. She passed away in her sleep.
12. Where do the water haunts come from and what purpose do they serve? Why are they appearing now? Are they actual heralds of death? Or the work of a demented wizard? Has something invaded Cormyr’s rivers and lakes, that’s capable of creating them? And why is it that the women of Blustich hunt them? |
| Jeremy Grenemyer |
Posted - 29 Oct 2015 : 06:30:48
Death, or fetch another.
Topics: Magical Lakes, the Wyvernflow
Note: The word "fetch" once meant an apparition or double of a still living person. It was a warning of that person's impending death.
1. A cave entrance…to a halfling. Something a human would have to crawl into. It faces east, along the banks of the Wyvernflow, between Blustich and Wheloon.
2. It’s hard to get to because it’s usually submerged in the Wyvernflow. There is a period of a few days every year when it’s possible that the water level will drop just enough to allow for a (relatively) dry entrance into the cave.
3. Regular storm activity over the Wyvernwater can cut short any trip into the cave. Excess runoff from the rivers that feed into the Wyvernflow (such as the Sword River and the Thunderflow) can prevent the cave from being seen at all.
4. Just beyond the cave mouth, which is shaped like a door with a rounded, half-moon top set into dull white stone leaning away from the Wyvernflow, the entrance opens up in height and width. The floor of smooth rock remains level with the entrance, and is covered in small pools of water. It’s utterly dark within unless one brings a source of light.
5. The smooth white rock of the cave gives way to stone, rock and earth of different colors as one moves further in. The way meanders left and right, and slowly rises. The footing on the path is not treacherous. There are rocks here and there, and dead fish and other things that may have washed in from the Wyvernflow, but eventually these go away. Next come a few twists and turns, and one place where it’s necessary for anyone human-sized to crawl to get through a narrow opening similar to the cave entrance some three hundred feet in the other direction.
6. Beyond that narrow gap the way opens up again with a flat floor and walls, and a curved ceiling. This tunnel space is barely ten paces long, and there is light, of a sort. It’s the kind that those of us in the real world are used to seeing on the walls of a building housing an indoor pool with underwater lighting.
7. Whatever lies beyond the tunnel is shrouded in darkness that no spell or light **of any kind** can pierce. What is visible is a figure standing at the end of the tunnel. It is a duplicate of whoever crawls through the small space and stands up in the tunnel.
8. No matter what, the duplicate always speaks first. It says, “You approach your death. Won’t you fetch another to take your place?”
9. If the person does anything aggressive (like draw a weapon) or takes a step towards the duplicate, it takes one step backwards into the darkness and disappears. It’s last words are, “We could have lived.”
10. Turning one’s head to look around, asking questions…these things won’t provoke the duplicate to leave. If one asks questions, the duplicate responds with, “You must choose: death, or fetch another.” |
| Jeremy Grenemyer |
Posted - 29 Oct 2015 : 06:04:46
The many wizards of Blustich
Topics: Blustich, Wizards, Mage Royal, Crimmorn
1. There are an unusually high number of female Wizards of War native to Blustich. Most of them come from the ranks of second born village children. It’s not just that the ratio of female wizards is high, it’s that their numbers exceed the quantity of male and female wizards (combined) that come from any other village in Cormyr with similar population counts.
2. The fact that all of these mages begin their training as war wizards with some magical skill (equivalent to 2nd level Wizards), even though there are no mage towers in or near Blustich, nor is there any formal school of magic there, nor do the villagers regularly send their children off somewhere to learn the Art, is seen by the Crown as a boon, not a mystery to be solved.
3. Vangerdahast solved the mystery more than a century ago. Like just about every other secret of the Forest Kingdom, it wasn’t enough for Vangerdahast to be told the truth by a knowledgeable source and then allow for the content of that explanation to serve as a fact on which he could rely. Which is to say he had to go and see with his own eyes if what Storm told him about Blustich was really true. (Did Vangerdahast use the young Azoun IV’s desire to see his kingdom as an opportunity to make his own investigations and inquiries? Probably. Vangey was paranoid back in the day, so he likely viewed his needing to keep an eye on the randy young monarch as a means to kill two birds with one stone.)
4. The agreement Vangerdahast struck under the Hill has stood for nearly two hundred years, to the point that it’s become common knowledge of the sort accepted as truth by Vangey’s successor and the wizards he commands. Ganrahast believes what he’s been told about Blustich: traveling wizards visit Blustich, either alone or as part of merchant caravans moving along the coast. The locals pay to have their Art-talented children trained for a short time, and the children are made to practice religiously what little they are taught until it’s time for them to leave home. Ganrahast has no idea this information is false.
5. Wizards do visit Blustich, but the locals don’t seek them out and the visits are usually “just passing through” affairs. In Blustich, any magically talented outsiders are watched warily, and like other travelers in town these mages are encouraged to depart as soon as their business is done. This is usually accomplished by ignoring the mage, which is easy to do because the people of Blustich work their collective asses off on a daily basis, so it’s hard for outsiders to find somebody in the village to ask questions of.
6. There are no inns or rooming houses in Blustich. The villagers do keep a supply of things that merchants and travelers might need, such as hay, horseshoes, replacement parts like wagon wheels (not that there are standard wheel sizes in Cormyr, yet) and more, all in one building just off the coastal trail, but this is no money making affair; the villagers realized a long time ago that it’s easier to keep visitors out by providing them what they need to speed them on their way, so travelers are encouraged to take ONLY what they need, and to pay what they can.
7. A handful of trusted wagon merchants bring these supplies to Blustich (along with their usual provender of nets, hooks and rope from nearby Moonever, and other supplies for the fishermen of the village), and in return the merchants get first pick of the fresh vegetables and fruits from the garden groves, nuts and meat from Hermit’s Wood, and the occasional lesser root mushroom (this last always found “somewhere deep in the Wood, and hrasted hard to find too!”). All this is done in trade with whoever is appointed to mind the supply shed that day; rarely for coin. Fishing supplies are bought from merchants and paid for by fishermen on the docks of the village.
8. Travelers desiring to camp overnight are not allowed to remain anywhere near the supply shed, so they must find a space on the outskirts of town. Not an easy task because farmland runs right up to the town’s upper edge and the farmers don’t take kindly to overnighters. The trail into and out of Blustich is just that, and it runs down along the water, which is always a cold and damp, and—depending on the season—either frozen or muddy. The villagers don’t care for overnighters sleeping on or near the docks.
9. Blustich is bordered by small streams on two sides, and the land beyond the streams quickly becomes steep enough that anyone bedding down can expect to roll right down the hill to the water. The townschildren keep the land beyond the streams free of large rocks or debris that could be used for fetching up against (overnighters have tried it before).
10. Travelers have taken note of the fact that there is no Purple Dragon garrison in Blustich. In theory, patrols from Marsember do the work that used to be done by forces out of Wheloon, but in truth a ride of Dragons based in Marsember rarely makes it as far as Blustich unless an important noble or courtier requiring escort happens to be passing through.
11. There are simple garrison keeps of the foursquare variety nearby. These are the sort of keep (not castle) found all over Faerun, that are favored by adventurers and self proclaimed baron overlords of all within sight, and in Cormyr by the recently ennobled and the Purple Dragons. One is perched along the banks of the other side of the Wyvernflow to north of Blustich, another stands within sight of the Bluemist Trail and can be reached if one travels due south from Dreamer’s Rock, and a third sits on a lonely outcropping of cliff rock that marks the southernmost piece of Cormyrean cost between Moonever and Blustich. All three garrison keeps are abandoned ruins.
12. With regard to wizards that are welcome in Blustich, these include a pair of trusted adventuring bands (and their mages) who can find a warm fire and dry beds to sleep in at most any home in Blustich;
any of the lady mages of Blustich returning home to their families and extended families while on leave from Crown business;
the handful of wizards in Cormyr who make a life out of wandering the Forest Kingdom that have learned how to make friends wherever they go, like the Old Wagon Wizard, are welcome in the village as well.
13. There are other visitors to Blustich. All of them go straight to whichever house they are welcome in.
14. Wizard-trained females in Blustich do head some of the houses. This happens when an elder sister dies and the second born daughter has yet to depart the village and find her own way in the world. Instead she’s called on to take over for her deceased sister. These individuals rarely have the time to continue their magical studies. Nevertheless they should not be underestimated.
15. In Suzail word has spread that the people of Blustich are of Netherese origin. That this rumor has quickly turned into belief among both sages and independent mages in Cormyr is a sure sign that Crimmorn the “Adventurer Sage” is behind it. No doubt Blustich will experience some trouble as a result, and Crimmorn will wait in the wings to see what truths are revealed.
16. In Cormyr, the position of Mage Royal does not come with instructions. One might assume, for example, that Ganrahast inherited a wealth of knowledge and lore about Cormyr, its history, and its secrets, that make him the equal of his predecessors. Not so. He’s certainly received instruction and been taught a great many things, but just like the current Regent, and the King before her, when he walks the Royal Palace he’s treading over secrets and history aplenty to which he remains unaware, that could easily topple over and crush him. His is a job where you sink or swim and learn as you go. Hard lessons are the best teachers. Hard lessons teach the value of blood; what’s spilled is lost and can never be recouped. Mages Royal are long lived; it’s too bad these lessons take decades to be learned. |
| Jeremy Grenemyer |
Posted - 27 Oct 2015 : 05:55:08
Features of Hermit’s Wood and the abundance of women in Blustich.
Topics: Hermit’s Wood Dangers, Ranger Factoids
1. Deep bass rumbles boom out of the caves mouths near the center of Hermit’s Wood. The “thunder in the forest” can easily be mistaken for real thunder. The orientation and location of the cave mouths differ, so the noise doesn’t happen at the same time out of the caves, nor does it carry in the same direction. Sometimes only one cave will sound off.
2. Druid magic can steady the ground temperature in an area of the Wood. How big an area depends on the Druid, the spell, and what’s at stake. On the very small scale this sort of spell is cast and maintained to help saplings grow into new trees.
3. Druids of the Wood form no circles. They are more like dryads; attached to a region of the wood and loathe to leave it.
4. Depending on the time of year and the weather conditions, a rapid change in soil temperature can adversely affect the temperature in the Wood. This is enough to cause anything from freezing temperatures to extreme heat in a small area—usually no more than a quarter mile on a side—with a lesser change in temperature over a much wider area. Rarely the shift in temperature will move.
5. Frozen soil can become boot-trapping muck, and then harden up rapidly as the ground cools. This is the reason why rangers in the Wood sometimes walk barefoot. First to know is first to survive. They also keep an eye out for animals and other creatures up in the trees, since the trees are usually the safest places when a severe temperature shift takes place. The trees themselves don’t seem to change temperature, even when they conduct large amounts of heat or cold.
6. One of the “facts” known to Cormyreans is that any woman who conceives a child in Blustich will almost certainly bear a girl. This knowledge is based on the observation that women outnumber men in the village; these days it’s about two to one and the ratio fluctuates over time. Another is that to take a wife from Blustich is to guarantee many children, all of them daughters.
7. It’s rare for the firstborn children of village mothers to be male (one in twenty firstborn births). Three in five second born children are female. Third born and subsequent births are approximately one to one.
8. Just as with other parts of Cormyr, the eldest child born to a family in Blustich is expected to take on the family business. Thus the numerous firstborn daughters of Blustich take on responsibility for the garden groves, harvesting, and learn the art of tending the tree roots below ground. They also inherit the homes they grew up in upon the death of their mothers (even if the father is still alive).
9. Second born children seek work with the Crown. An unusual number of them become Wizards of War. The rest join the ranks of the Purple Dragons unless they possess a skill or talent that makes them suitable for employment as a courtier (which is rare).
10. Third and fourth born children are expected to remain in the village if boys, if girls to depart the village and find a life in wider Cormyr. The later are sought after—in some cases even recruited—for their skill in the garden and their knowledge of herbs, plant life and natural medicines. Some become trusted confidants and close friends in the houses of nobles or rich merchants, others become midwives, servants or adventurers.
11. One of the pieces of wisdom, known Cormyr-wide by midwives and passed on to hopeful mothers/families in time of need, is this: in cases where a family absolutely must bear a daughter, husbands and wives are welcome to conceive children in Blustich. After, the wife must remain for at least three months, while the husband and any other family and attendants must depart. The cost for this service can be steep; usually a favor to be named later, or a service that must be rendered immediately after a child is conceived. Pregnant wives make good collateral, and each house in Blustich is free to set their own terms.
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| Jeremy Grenemyer |
Posted - 27 Oct 2015 : 05:13:35
The mushrooms in your footsteps will tell you about the weather in the Wood.
Topics: Hermit’s Wood, Mushrooms, Weather, Paintings, Ranger Lore
1. Hunter’s Bread. Also called Hunter’s Footsteps, Footsteps or Mushroom Loaves.
Native to Hermit’s Wood, Hunter’s Bread is a kind of fungi that grows in the tracks of hunters and others made in piles of rotting leaves that form the groundcover beneath the empty canopy of a tree. Quick to grow, it fills the cavity left by the footstep and is of one piece, with a nut-brown top and sides. It grows only in cold conditions, and thrives at temperatures hovering just above freezing.
2. Hunter’s Bread grows in the southern half of the wood. The men on Moonever and Blustich harvest it, as do rangers, druids and the woodwise. It can be consumed on the spot. The bottom portion is usually trimmed off first, as it contains bits of dirt, tree and leaf; the sides grow smooth. It has no discernable taste (think real world tofu—I’m talking the good stuff, like you can find in Japan Town in San Jose, California, at San Jose Tofu Co.). It’s usually sliced just like bread, and if wrapped in a wet cloth or similar and allowed to remain cold it will keep for upwards of a tenday.
3. Hunters and others that travel into the northern half of Hermit’s Wood watch out for Hunter’s Bread in the Fall months; if it’s sighted there’s a good chance the top half of the wood will experience colder than normal temperatures.
4. The climate in Hermit’s Wood is a thing unto itself; for reasons not widely known, the temperature of the soil can change dramatically. One would expect these fluctuations to kill trees and plant life, but the forest is full of green growing things that don’t appear to be bothered by it.
5. Whether it’s a function of magic or divine blessing, the presence of overlapping coterminous extraplanar influence (Mr. Spock, next time just say "Feywild"), or because of growing things invisible to the naked eye, the trees of Hermit’s Wood seem capable of gathering both heat and cold out of the air with their leaves (and possibly their outermost branches) and transporting it from limbs to trunk to roots, almost as if the trees were attempting to regulate the temperature of the soil they’re anchored in.
6. Ranger lore holds that a sudden temperature change in the earth of Hermit’s Wood leads to localized weather phenomena in the lands and sea near the forest. Any ranger capable of predicting the weather subsequent to a soil temperature shift is considered very wise among his or her peers. One of the first things apprentice rangers training in the vicinity of the Wood learn is that the ground in the southeastern half of Hermit’s Wood will remain calm in terms of temperature (which is to say cold but not freezing) for about a month after the people of Blustich perform their windraising dances.
7. The processes below ground that cause the temperature in the soil to change are accepted as a part of life in Hermit’s Wood. One can see for one’s self just what’s going on, but to do so requires a descent into the Underdark.
8. To this end, a handful of druids and rangers know of cave entrances found in rocks that shoot up out of the earth in the heart of the forest. Their rule is to tell no one; a few actively work to dissuade others from finding the caves, and violence isn’t out of the question.
9. Descriptions of these caves can be found in the memoirs of adventurers, which sit on the not as dusty as one might think bookshelves of the Society of Stalwart Adventurers in Suzail.
10. One can find paintings all over Marsember depicting one set of these rock formations, though the events unfolding in the painting focus not on the fact that a cave exists; instead one finds any of several “heroes” of Marsember from times past standing atop a jumbled mass of dark bare rock, usually in mid swing with their bloody sword, as soldiers from hated Cormyr clamor up the rocks. The heroes were all supposedly chased out of Marsember and into the woodlands known today as Hermit’s Wood, where they made their final stand.
11. Many families in Marsember, whether noble or not, have at least one painting of this type, that shows a relative from several generations in the past meeting a heroic (or vainglorious, depending on your point of view) end. Some families have two paintings. It's considered poor taste to have three. |
| Jeremy Grenemyer |
Posted - 26 Oct 2015 : 01:52:34
Blustich below ground.
Topics: Blustich, mushrooms, cellars
1. In Blustich, the homes of villagers are connected to deep cellars dug out of the earth, that descend far enough below ground to allow the villagers to get at the roots of the trees that grow in the garden groves that are part of every home.
2. The deepest of these cellars are not very long or wide, but they are tall. Wooden scaffolding and ladders run up the sides of this deep cellar. The scaffolds support long trays of soil that house one or more collections of tree roots (still attached to the tree). The ladders allow a villager to have access to numerous of the roots of a tree.
3. Near the roots in the trays can be found round growths that look like spherical potatoes. These are connected by small, hair-like threads or tendrils to the roots. The texture of the growths are identical to potato skin, but the growths themselves are much less dense, and are in fact a form of mushroom native to the Underdark.
4. Tending tree roots that continue to grow as the tree they feed grows, while growing edible food on them, while also tending the tree and making sure it thrives, is a laborious process. That, and immature mushrooms die in natural light, and it’s easy to misjudge when they’re ripe and ready to harvest.
5. Other cellars exist beneath the homes of the villagers of Blustich. The topmost is the traditional sort of root cellar one would expect to find. These store vegetables and other goods needing to be kept dry for use in the winter months. One can usually find a trio (but never less than two) cellars beneath the root cellar; these contain half-eaten food, garden waste, soil, and a variety of molds and small living things one might expect to find in the Underdark (specifically, the Upperdark), that are combined to produce the soil that is constantly rotated in and out of the troughs that house tree roots. Narrow tunnels with steps carved out of the earth lead from one cellar to another; the deepest cellar’s floor is usually even with the floor of the cellar where the tree roots can be accessed.
6. Chutes descend into the earth and connect one cellar to another. These are capped with either stone or metal covers with holes punched through them. Soil mixtures, compost and other matter can be dumped down the chute when the material is ready for the next step in the process. As the process continues, bioluminescence increases ("bioluminescence" is not a very fantasy term, that, but it’ll do for now). This is the only form of light that does not damage the root mushrooms (let’s call them that, for now), and the colors are similar to those found around the homes in Blustich.
7. Other than judging when root mushrooms are ready to harvest, the most difficult aspect of their cultivation is the fact that it’s done darkness or near-dark conditions, depending on how much natural bioluminescence is found in the soil around the roots. Light of the sort produced by magic items, by torches, candles, lamps, etc., will kill the mushrooms. The creation of just the right sort of compost and soil mix to pack the tree roots in (especially after a harvest) is another difficult task that must be done in the dark.
8. The villagers have yet to find a tree whose roots can’t be utilized to grow root mushrooms. Depending on the tree, the mushrooms bloom (mushrooms ‘bloom’, right?) during different times of the year. Regardless, a tree can only produce mushrooms once a year. These mushrooms are nutritious and revitalizing; their consumption during pregnancy is practically a requirement in Blustich, and they are a food in high demand by those who can afford it.
9. Different mushrooms grown from different tree roots have a variety of properties—magical, psychotropic, restorative, you name it—depending on what the DM needs to introduce into a campaign.
10. The gardening techniques practiced by the women of the village are passed from mother to daughter(s). The men are not ignorant of the process and certainly do a share of the work to maintain the gardens, but much of their time is taken up fishing, farming, harvesting (everything except for root mushrooms) and hunting.
11. Who first discovered the root mushrooms? Some say an adventurer. Others say it was a sage who heard tell of the mushrooms from an adventurer, and tried growing them after acquiring fungus to work with. Still more tales claim the work was done by a mage that magically removed the earth and rock beneath her tower, and the tower once stood on the edge of a cliff face that ran right up to the river’s edge; the cliff and tower vanished—nobody knows where the body of rock comprising the cliff went to, but the tower sank into the ground and was swallowed up.
12. There may be some truth to this last story: whenever Ochrana’s Sister disappears for longer than a few days and the village children ask after her, their parents tell them she’s gone to the tower under the Hill. (“The Hill” is the term locals use to refer to Blustich; it describes the long slope the village sits on.)
13. Root mushrooms are a delicacy in Cormyr, and rarely served more than a day’s ride from Blustich. These mushrooms once graced the plates of the most expensive eateries in Wheloon, and are still served at high prices in Marsember. There consumption has been linked to good health, and they are something pregnant mothers will crave if they’ve ever consumed them prior.
14. It’s not widely known where root mushrooms come from. They’re sold to trusted wagon merchants by the villagers of Blustich, and are traded by hunters out of Blustich to others they meet and do business with in Hermit’s Wood. The men of Blustich do the haggling and selling, and collectively they’ve worked hard to spread differing rumors: that the mushrooms are harvested in Hermit’s Wood along with other mushrooms unique to the wood, like Hunter's Bread; that they’re found in coastal caves; that they’re products of the Underdark.
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| Jeremy Grenemyer |
Posted - 24 Oct 2015 : 07:30:28
The Walls That Move
Topics: walls, travel, nightmares, Bogbrook
Have you ever driven on tight, one-lane-in-each-direction roads that wind their way through hills or mountains, only to get stuck in traffic created by construction crews operating machines that were chewing away the hills so the road could be widened? Me to. The traffic sucks, but the end result is something to behold: part of a small hill (or a really big one) or even the foot of a mountain has been removed and what’s left is a vertical wall covered in rock, tar, netting or whatever combination seems best, leaving space for extra lanes and room enough for a shoulder to pull over in.
Keep that wall in mind as you read what follows.
1. In the one hundred plus years since Volo wrote his guidebook to Cormyr, the bog that marks the space occupied by the village of Bogbrook has expanded.
2. In truth the marshlands have always been growing, as the water from the underground spring that feeds water into the marsh has always found an easy path through the loose earth that borders the spring.
3. As the water from Bogbrook's spring reaches further outward, it has begun to saturate the land south of the village, which has sped up the process of erosion and faced the villagers that make repeated trips to Marsember with dangerous new hazards that must be navigated.
4. The elevation of the land south of Bogbrook descends as one travels towards Marsember. Numerous of Bogbrook's residents know multiple and relatively safe routes through the terrain, which is marked by patches of old grey stone exposed to the elements.
5. This stone rests in mostly black, clod-filled soil on which pointy lumps of long-bladed grass take hold. Some of these stones have been revealed to be the topmost portions of long oval rocks—the smallest as long as a man is tall and thick around as a barrel—resting vertically in the earth. These stones are visible in upright sections of terrain left exposed after loose earth and rock broke away and washed downslope.
6. Where the rocks are most profuse, the terrain looks something like this: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/5e/bb/58/5ebb5896fb64106d7c30d007d7a79209.jpg
7. Relief from the hazards came unexpectedly in the form of a handful of walls that appeared overnight south of the village. The walls buttressed the long stones visible in the exposed face of the earthen hills.
8. The walls are made of solid stone blocks. These blocks are usually of equal proportion, with sharp corners and smooth faces on all visible sides. It’s not readily apparent what joins them together; no mortar or marks from stoneworking have been found on them. Some of the walls have a bend to them in order to fit against the face of whatever hill or rise they are bracing.
9. Of the three walls that had appeared, the shortest was no taller than a halfling, the biggest as tall as a man standing up in stirrups while on horseback. The third wall stood at about head height, and ran for sixty paces in a more or less east-west direction.
10. Water from Bogbrook oozed around the walls and found other routes to new earth to saturate. Foot traffic past the walls and over the earth they supported continued for months, until the day word reached Bogbrook that the walls had disappeared.
11. Later that day villagers returning from Marsember announced that new walls had been spotted further south; none were the same height or shape as the previous three walls, and there were a total of five of them found (so far).
12. The disappearance of the first walls revealed smooth vertical surfaces faced in pitted white stone. The texture of the stone is identical to the long oval rocks common in the area.
13. Travelers tested the white stone and found it solid, and took to camping near them by night, and walking over and past them once more by day.
14. Strange tales from these overnighters have just begun to trickle into Bogbrook, and into the nearby communities of Moonever, Nesmyth and Marsember: waking in the middle of the night as though from a nightmare and with the firm conviction of being watched; that others are nearby, within reaching distance; that the light is wrong, everything is aglow in color not of the moon or of the dying embers of a fire; the sight of ethereal, translucent beings floating in the white stone that are there and then not there--along with the odd light, the propinquity and sense of being scrutinized.
15. These stories are not the only ones to be told in recent months about things appearing out of nowhere in the vicinity of Hermit's Wood.
16. To the knowledge of the villagers of Bogbrook, no Wizards of War have investigated the stone walls, nor the smooth white surfaces they appear to be leaving behind. The halflings that operate wagon palaces have shown a keen interest in the walls, and have suffered accusations that they were responsible for the wall’s construction. Some of the tale-telling travelers (say that ten times fast) have reported sighting a single cloaked and hooded figure the morning after experiencing a night fright, that stood at the edge of Hermit’s Wood and turned to walk back into the forest as soon as the traveler spotted them.
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| Jeremy Grenemyer |
Posted - 22 Oct 2015 : 07:35:27
Drawing a circle around Hermit's Wood on the map.
Topics: Hermit’s Wood, merchant routes, Blustich, Bogbrook,
1. The halflings that operate wagon palaces on the coastal trails east of Marsember want to forge a route that encircles Hermit’s Wood—one that joins the Way of the Manticore along the northern flank of the Wood with the Bluemist Trail to the south.
2. The terrain along the eastern and western flank of Hermit’s Wood varies from flat and easy to traverse, to irregular and dangerous for the unwary traveler. For example, although small wagons regularly depart the village of Bogbrook (located along the western edge of Hermit’s Wood), the terrain does not lend itself to fixed paths of the sort used by wagon trains or large carriages that frequent the Way of the Manticore to the north. This is because of the marshes and bogs that surround the village, which sometimes swallow and kill unwary travelers foolish enough to travel by night.
3. North-South footpaths and trails exist along the edge of the Wood. They zigzag east and west, winding their way around obstacles where possible, and require a bit of climbing and high stepping where avoiding an obstacle is impossible. Pack animals and sturdy-footed travelers are most commonly seen on these trails, along with small single mule carts that either hug the high ground near the forest’s edge or stay near the rivers and push hard to make their destinations before rain or inclement weather make the river-edge terrain too muddy and loose to move on.
4. The halflings aren’t the first to try this. It remains to be seen whether the Wood will allow it.
5. Other obstacles include the presence of nobles, who’ve come to dominate the terrain between Bogbrook and Nesmyth. Their presence demands supplies and goods be brought to them, but they aren’t keen to see regular traffic push past the lands they oversee just yet.
6. In Blustich, Volo assumed the purpose of the windraising dances was to bring down hickory nuts along the edge of Hermit’s Wood. It never occurred to him that something more could be going on.
7. One clue may lie in the fact that the small streams that flow out of Hermit’s Wood and through the farmland to Blustich never freeze over. Not within living memory at least.
8. The water is definitely cold—just above freezing—but something in it keeps it from solidifying, so long as it flows in the streams. The coastline along the edge of Blustich does not freeze over in winter. Water removed from the streams freezes up readily enough, is potable (that which is upstream from Blustich) and does not emanate magic.
9. Hickory nuts are harvested in the month of Eleint (September) and sometimes earlier. Snows and hard rains fall soon after. Ochrana’s Sister (see a couple posts above this one) decides when to call forth the gales via the windraising dance. The dance happens only once a year.
10. The dance is not simply a means to harvest, rather it is the transfer of (seasonal?) energy coalescing over the Dragonmere into Hermit’s Wood. What happens when the wind disperses in the Wood is anyone’s guess, but the energy—whatever it truly is—slowly flows back out in the water that trickles out of the wood, flows past the farms, through the town of Blustich and back into the Dragonmere.
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| Jeremy Grenemyer |
Posted - 22 Oct 2015 : 06:42:14
quote:
Originally posted by xaeyruudh
Just pitching in my two cents and hoping to see others pitch theirs in too!
Sounds good to me. I like it.
Now for some thinking out loud:
One thing I have to watch out for when writing these ideas, and when doing work as a fledgling game designer, is that it's real easy to get bogged down in the details.
Also, I know what it's like to be a DM and go right down the rabbit hole of an idea, only to discover I can't make it work after I've fleshed it out. In the past when this happened, I made the mistake of tossing my ideas and starting over.
From what I've seen, somebody like Ed Greenwood can swim in and out of the details and minutia at will. He weaves it into his work where necessary and leaves it to the imagination of the reader (and the DM) when it's not.
And that's the key right there: if you have an idea that's cool or interesting, but you can't fully explain it, don't worry about it. Unless you have players who you know for sure are going to ask, just move on to the next phase of adventure writing.
For game design, I have to be careful not to leave the obvious questions unanswered. Not a good idea to make a DM's life unnecessarily difficult.
What I'm getting at is this: It's pretty cool for me to see someone else come along and address an issue I hadn't even thought of. I appreciate it.
My focus had been on how the residents of Bogbrook deal with their waste in the Wintertime. Ideas came and went, such as dumping it in barrels kept outside each house, that are rolled downhill once the ice thaws and set on a barge, that's towed out onto the water and burned, but I think I found one that's more in line with what I'm imagining Blustich to be. |
| xaeyruudh |
Posted - 22 Oct 2015 : 04:42:42
I'm really digging the wagon palaces.
Also, I had some thoughts regarding the "hole in the floor" over the sluice. Moisture from the water passing by will result in moss, mold, bacteria, and general unpleasantness. Not trying to get bogged down in our-world issues, but just that the boards in that section of the house will weather and rot much more quickly than the rest if they're not protected somehow. Since folks are not going to be keen on replacing a corner of their home every couple of years, or paying for magical solutions, there ought to exist a mix of the following:
(1) at least one type of wood that is particularly resistant to rot and which grows plentifully in the region,
(2) a cheap, quick, and nonhazardous chemical treatment similar to modern sealants for decks and outdoor furniture,
(3) a stucco-like substance which is cheap, durable, and simple enough for commoners to use, to insulate wood from the water and offal.
Just pitching in my two cents and hoping to see others pitch theirs in too! |
| Jeremy Grenemyer |
Posted - 21 Oct 2015 : 06:36:55
Blustich
Topics: Blustich, Thimdrors, Halflings, Gnomes, Irrigation, Sewage
1. Thimdror Fields is south and west of Blustich, where the shore breezes push the smell away from the village. (See line #12 in the post above this one.)
2. Due to the presence of Thimdrors[1], halflings are regular visitors to Blustich. A sight the locals look forward to seeing are the enormous rolling wagon palaces that can house up to 20 halflings at a time. For their part the halflings were tired of having their smaller, Thimdror-drawn carts being run off the road by larger wagons, so they started using full-sized wagons drawn by beasts that were to them like elephants are to men.
3. The first of these wagons were castoffs once owned by nobles—most of them carriages of unusual size and decoration for the purpose of making a grand entrance into Suzail when King Foril summoned the heads of all noble houses to Suzail for the Council of the Dragon in 1479 DR—that were purchased by the halflings at cut rate prices and repurposed. Wagon palaces pretty much own whatever coastal trail they are on, and are a hell of a lot harder for human-owned wagons to push around.
4. The wagon palaces transport and sell goods from nearby coastal settlements, and sell sweets and pastries baked in the small kitchens inside them. Rarely does a wagon palace fail to stop at Thimdror fields. When the wagon palaces depart, they trail newly purchased Thimdrors behind them. The creatures are used as beasts of burden on halfling farms, which are growing in number on the coast.
5. Unlike their human counterparts, halfling farmers seem to have no trouble using Thimdror’s as draft beasts, and halflings are very good at feeding and working their Thimdrors such that they produce meat that is marbleized and suited to hearth-fires. When the beasts are judged ready to be sold, they are attached to the trailing end of a wagon palace, but of course not before replacement Thimdrors are delivered.
6. The wagon palaces run up and down the coast, from Moonever in the west to far off Dawngleam in the east. The halflings sell to just about anyone, but favor their fellow halflings and even smaller folk, such as the gnomes who’ve revived the community of Smuggler’s Stone.
7. Human merchants see the halflings for the competition they are, but have held off from pushing them out of business because they provide goods and services (such as repair work on small objects and in tight spaces) that generally enhance everyone else’s ability to do business. As well because the new halfling and gnome communities along the coast are a market not exclusive to their own kind.
8. Back in Blustich, small stone-filled sluiceways meander between the houses. 3’ to 4’ across and comprised of smooth, flat round stones. Miniature arching bridges connect the paths through the village where they intersect with the water channels. The sluices carry runoff and wintermelt from the homes, and water from the small streams that meander out of Hermit’s Wood through the adjoining farmland to find its way to Blustich. This water combines with the south-flowing current of the Wyvernflow, and ends up in the Dragonmere.
9. Some of the newer homes in Blustich have steel troughs attached to the bottom of their roofs, on the downhill side of the house. A ring is built into the underside at the center of each trough, with a steel pin running through the ring and into the house. The troughs can be raised or lowered a few inches by pulling or pushing on an iron rod attached to one end of the trough, which allows for rainwater and snowmelt to flow either into a barrel set at one end of the house, or out on a cantilever that empties into a sluice.
10. Many of the homes are arranged so that one side sits a foot or so over a sluice, which allows for offal and urine to fall through a gap in the floor of the house, above witch one usually finds a board with a hole cut in it. These boards are thick and securely placed, and are usually covered by a second, sturdier board that can be locked down, the better to keep critters, the cold and worse out of the house.
[1] Thimdrors are a kind of ox (or a “bullock” to people from Australia or India). Thimdrors have almost lizard-like heads, are short but very wide at the shoulder, are possessed of a double helping of strength and only half a helping of intelligence. They yield fantastic meat for hearth-fires if worked properly.
See the article "Eye On the Realms: Thormil’s Secret", in Dungeon #194.
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| Jeremy Grenemyer |
Posted - 20 Oct 2015 : 07:54:20
Ochrana's Sister (edit: added in line #12)
Topics: Blustich, Farming, Chauntea, Lesser Divine Aspects
1. Had Volo stayed the night in Blustich, instead of stopping only long enough to get a feel for the place and acquire provisions that would see him through to somewhere else more interesting, he would have witnessed the lights by night in Blustich.
2. At night in Blustich, the small village is illuminated by light emanating from the flowers and plants bordering homes that seem to rise up out of the earth, much like the village itself steadily rises up from a slope of land bordering the Wyvernflow.
3. The kinds of colors are like real world glow stick colors, but softer in their brightness, and give a sort of fuzzy textured look to the edges of the plants the colors emanate form.
4. The displays of light are muted; the light does not engulf a whole tree, for example, and fill every last branch and leaf with color. Instead, the light finds flower petals, small patches of lichen and moss, the leaves of low-growing bushes, and the stray branch stump jutting out of a fallen log. It stays close to the edge of a house’s walls, save for any commonly used path that leads to a house’s garden grove, which the light illuminates by emanating from anything growing near the path.
5. For some homes the lights do not appear naturally, because although there are people inside, there is no mother within. For these homes a blessing is usually provided by a priestess; she watches over all the garden groves attached to each home, and provides the motherly essence of love and warmth to the garden groves that are absent a mother living in the home nearby.
6. This blessing cannot be performed by a man, nor by any true priest of Chauntea. Idols and statuary dedicated to the Earthmother are of course present in Blustich, but the residents have largely given themselves over to a lesser aspect of the goddess called Ochrana.
7. The garden groves are sacred places to this aspect of Chauntea, the gardens serving as both a source of food to the families that tend them, and as a place of worship and prayer—one used primarily by the mother of the house.
8. The priestess is usually the eldest woman living in Blustich to have born children there. When the current priestess dies, the next eldest in line takes her place. This replacement need not be a priestess to begin with; any woman fitting the criteria will do.
9. To become the priestess is looked upon as an honor, and an important responsibility. However, it requires no change in wardrobe or in behavior. No tattoos or magical marks appear on the priestess. She simply knows she’s been given the mantle of protection, and has a pretty good idea just what she’s capable of since she’s probably lived in Blustich all her life and has seen first hand what Ochrana’s Sisters are capable of doing, such as leading the windraising dances (see Volo’s Guide to Cormyr, page 78).
10. Anyone who becomes priestess is referred to as Ochrana’s Sister. The lesser divine aspect known as Ochrana is concerned with protection of the home and garden, and preservation of the mother and her link to her children and family.
11. Although there are farm fields bordering Blustich (these are what Volo saw on his way into town), the majority of foodstuffs produced are grown in the garden groves that are part of every home. The farms are located north and east of Blustich; they start where the gentle slope on which the town sits flattens out, giving way to farmland that fills the space between the village and Hermit’s Wood.
12. There is always an excess of garden foodstuffs in the village. This organic material is used in compost (just never above ground...), some is given over to farmers to feed their animals or transported a short way to nearby Thimdror Fields, or sold at low rates to merchants that make the coastal roads and trails their home.
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| Wooly Rupert |
Posted - 19 Oct 2015 : 11:52:48
quote:
Originally posted by Jeremy Grenemyer
(This map link might not work for you, but it does for me: http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/forgottenrealms/images/9/95/Cormyr_-_1479_DR_copy.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20081014082233).
It works, but I've seen thumbnails bigger than that one. |
| Jeremy Grenemyer |
Posted - 19 Oct 2015 : 08:00:08
Thinking about Hermit’s Wood
Topics: Size and Scale, the Hermit’s Wood
1. When looking at the best map of Cormyr ever, i.e. the map found in the free to download “Backdrop: Cormyr” article by Brian R. James and map by Mike Schley (via the WotC website), it occurred to me that size isn't everything, and Cormyr isn’t as small as one might think.
2. For example, consider Hermit’s Wood: this woodland is about 30 miles on a side, give or take, and it’s small compared to the Hullack Forest and the much larger King’s Forest. Yet a 30 x 30 space is 900 square miles—not a small piece of territory.
3. 900 square miles is plenty of room for things to grow in, live in and die in, and not see the rest of Cormyr, much less the wider Realms. So Hermit’s Wood has to have a character all its own. The fact that it’s one of three major woodlands to still stand in Cormyr says something too (not sure what that is, but we’ll get there).
4. Hermit’s Wood borders one of “the longest-settled, most pastoral part(s) of the Forest Kingdom” meaning the “coastal farmland between the Starwater River and the Vast Swamp”—this according to the opening words in the first paragraph of “The Coast” chapter in Volo’s Guide to Cormyr. Cormyr is nearly 1500 years old. Plenty of time to cut down coastal woodlands, especially if you need wood for ships, fortalices and homes, yet Hermit’s Wood still stands.
5. Hermit’s Wood is surrounded by small settlements, including Moonever, Nesmyth, Blustich and Bogbrook . However, Volo’s Guide to Cormyr states that it only covers a few of the hamlets, vales and villages that fill the coastal countryside starting from the outlet of the Starwater River east to the outlet of the Darkflow (and Cormyr’s eastern border with Sembia), so there’s more to be had in the way of places where people live around—and in—Hermit’s Wood.
6. There’s plenty of smuggling activity that occurs along the coast, with heaping side of piracy. Been that way for a long, long time. No surprise considering Marsember sits on the coast. Marsember also happens to be the equivalent of a stone’s throw away from Hermit’s Wood, so I wouldn’t be surprised if outlaws, those fleeing danger in the form of nefarious smugglers, pirates, nobles and ne’er do wells all head into the Wood. Probably a handful of redoubts within the Wood that are used by long-lived Marsemban families who’ve survived by doing their skullduggery where the prying eyes of the Crown can’t reach, which might explain why the wood still exists, because it’s useful this way.
7. So if you think about all this activity around what’s become the Hermit’s Wood, and how these events have occurred in different shades for over a thousand years, then it follows that the Hermit’s Wood has long been a magnet for the desperate, the conniving and the adventurous, as well as those seeking privacy (for whatever reason) or solitude. Dude…the place has to be filled with interesting things!
8. The question becomes: what’s in the Hermit’s Wood that keeps people out? There’s no settlement big enough within it that was worth mentioning by Volo (though Volo may well have missed something—it’s happened before) and the descriptions for the settlements surrounding the Wood talk about it ever so briefly. One of these states, “A few brave locals hunt in Hermit’s Wood and even hire out as guides to visitors who don’t guess just how little of the forest these people have seen.”
9. Contrast this with the innocuous name of the forest. To me the word Hermit doesn’t suggest danger or something worth avoiding. It doesn’t announce itself like the King’s Forest, which is literally the King’s forest. Nor does its name carry the weight of history like the Hullack, named as it is for a druid you didn’t want to mess with. So who’s the Hermit? Is or was there more than one? How would a hermit, or hermits, keep Marsembans eager to remain independent of Cormyr from cutting down the woodlands to either side of Marsember in order to lay down hulls and build a fleet of ships to fend off ships sailing out of Suzail?
10. Or was Hermit’s Wood named something else, until recently when, perhaps, it was changed? This has happened in Cormyr, if I recall correctly. For example: the Hullack was not always called that. It used to be Elfhold. So maybe Hermit’s Wood has a history not hinted at by the name it’s known by in modern Cormyr.
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