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Originally posted by Gustaveren

An artifact that, by this point gives them the ability to freely cast High Magic in a radius of roughly 200 miles around Myth Drannor.

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Originally posted by Aldrick

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Originally posted by The Arcanamach

@Aldrick: The Tree of Souls was never mentioned...guess they missed that one. As for the reaction of the elves to Shade being dropped on the city, they are fine with it because the city was already lost. Almost all of the survivors were children and elderly and there were still thousands of enemies in the city. There was no other way to defeat them. As El said in the book, dropping the city on them was a good way to reduce the number of people willing to wage (unnecessary/unethical) wars against others.

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That's crazy. So the Elves were basically telling Elminster, "Sure, we're totally cool with you destroying our city. The city that we lost, and fought like hell to reclaim through war. The city that we spent the last century rebuilding. The city that houses our most precious and sacred artifact, the Tree of Souls. Oh, and yes, of course, any of our people who still may be left behind - oh well. We'll just call them collateral damage. Go ahead and blow it up."

I mean... they didn't even come up with an alternative plan they tried to pitch? I mean, I'm just taking a step back and imagining myself an elf in the room with Elminster as he's pitching this idea. My immediate response would be something along the lines of, "Woah, woah, woah! Hold up! Let's not make that option A. Let's come up with three or four alternative plans to that, weigh their pro's and con's, and then make a decision before we callously disregard the lives, labor, and culture of my people."

It's just hard for me to imagine something like that going down - even if it was a last resort and had to be done. I don't think the Elves would just stand back and take it as an acceptable loss. If for no other reason than to protect the Tree of Souls.

Let's be clear... I think if Elminster was revealing his plan to the Elves, they'd probably assassinate him before letting him even make the attempt. Even if it meant the city falls to the Shades, and they end up winning. They can always try to reclaim it later, like they did in the past. They should have been willing to do anything to protect the Tree of Souls - no sacrifice should have been too small.

Let's remember what the Tree of Souls is (for those who don't know), from the Elves of Evermeet pg. 76:

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The most powerful and valuable of all elven magical artifacts resides in magical stasis in the palace of Queen Amlaruil. It is possibly the most powerful artifact on all of Abeir-Toril. The tree of souls holds the essences of many ancient elves who chose to stay on Toril, rather than join Corellon Larethian in Arvandor, allowing their souls to be used to rebuild the elven nation. It is being held in safety, looking forward to the day (possibly thousands of years distant) when the elves finally return to Faerūn.

If planted, the tree will instantly sprout into a gigantic (500-foot-tall), white-barked, oak-like tree with gleaming green and gold leaves. The tree itself will then act as a permanent gate to and from the island of Evermeet. It will allow the free casting of high magic without penalty within 100 miles. This radius will increase at a rate of one mile per year after the tree has been planted.

Once the tree of souls has been planted, however, it can never be moved again. For this reason, in anticipation of an eventual return to the mainland, Amlaruil and the leaders of the elves (those few who know of the tree's existence) do not wish to plant it on Evermeet.

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Okay, so let's recap. The Elves have in their possession at this point the most powerful artifact in the entire world. Undoubtedly, the most important artifact of their entire people. An artifact that, by this point gives them the ability to freely cast High Magic in a radius of roughly 200 miles around Myth Drannor.

...and at this point, the best plan they can come up with is to crash the Shade Enclave into Myth Drannor killing any of their people who might be survivors, spitting on the lives of everyone who sacrificed themselves to reclaim the city, abandoning over a century of work rebuilding it, destroying the most prized and important artifact of the Elven people, and likely dealing a death blow to Elven culture and society in the process.

Was there no one in the room with a wisdom score above three? Was there no one there who could have at least spoke up and said, "Hey, look I think that sounds like a good idea, but we should actually ask someone who is smarter than us just to run it by them before we go through with it."

This is just nuts. I mean, I guess they forgot about the Tree of Souls (again). But damn. There has to be some serious consequences to this for the Elves in the Realms - some long term consequences.

I basically consider this to be a death blow to Elven culture and society in the Realms outside of Evermeet. There are probably some other isolated pockets that hang on, but over all - that was it. The Elves are pretty much done in the Realms. Evermeet, to my knowledge, is still hanging out in the Feywild, but who knows how that has changed the Elves who've been living there for the past century. The last real pocket of Elven culture and society on Toril is Evereska, which will likely become even more isolated as a result of this event.

Something like this can't happen without there being significant fallout and consequences. It would be so utterly ridiculous if they hand waved this away.

This is exactly why I allowed this event (the reclaiming of Myth Drannor) to happen in my Realms. It was the freakin' Elves Last Stand. They were going to reclaim their place in Faerun, or they were going to die trying. They were going all in... and... now it's gone. Now there are inevitable consequences to the failure of that last stand. Which would be, at least in my opinion, the death blow to Elven culture and society. There will never again be another Elven nation or power on Toril, and they will slowly fade into the shadow of humanity, losing their unique racial identity - their culture, their gods, and likely everything else that made them stand apart. They're done. That's the significance of this loss.

Talk about loss... Shar sacrificed Telamont to hit the jackpot. I'm pretty sure there are scores of Elves giving into despair at this very moment, calling out to Shar to deliver them from their miserable pointless existence. Sacrifice your not-so-loyal servants to doom an entire race of people? Shar: "Yes, please. I'll take that deal."

That, to me, is the appropriate consequence to what happened here. Really, anything less is hand waving.

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Originally posted by George Krashos

In Ed's "The Herald" novel, Larloch pornounces himself as a Chosen of Mystryl.

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Originally posted by rodrigoalcanza

Larloch ... Chosen of Mystrul? The novel explains this?

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Originally posted by Irennan

Pretty much. The only returned deities who have got some explanation are -AFAIK- Mask, Helm, Mystra, Lathander. For the rest of them in the novles there are only chosen and rumors.

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Originally posted by ErinMEvans

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Originally posted by Mirtek

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Originally posted by Lilianviaten

And might I add, shouldn't Cormyr have been a wasteland??? All the previous Sundering books made it clear that Cormyr was losing the war to Shade.

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For which I would also like to see an explanation. Cormyr has fought several wars against Shade/Sembia and was always an equal opponent. So why were they suddenly able to overpower Cormyr, the Dales and Myth Drannor all at once?

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The war in Cormyr is the focus of Fire in the Blood for what it's worth, including the reasons Shade managed to entangle them so badly.

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Originally posted by Mirtek
<Snip>

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Originally posted by Mirtek

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Originally posted by Lilianviaten

And might I add, shouldn't Cormyr have been a wasteland??? All the previous Sundering books made it clear that Cormyr was losing the war to Shade.

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For which I would also like to see an explanation. Cormyr has fought several wars against Shade/Sembia and was always an equal opponent. So why were they suddenly able to overpower Cormyr, the Dales and Myth Drannor all at once?

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Originally posted by Lilianviaten

I was furious with the ending. Telamont is an extremely accomplished mage with all kinds of combat experience. Plus, he had just absorbed the power from every magical device in his throne room. Then Elminster comes along and pimp slaps him.

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Originally posted by Lilianviaten

Finally, Mirt the Moneylender spends hours talking to Manshoon, and easily distracts him until reinforcements show up. So with Cormyr vulnerable, and the Chosen distracted elsewhere, Manshoon is still completely incapable of winning.

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Originally posted by Lilianviaten

And might I add, shouldn't Cormyr have been a wasteland??? All the previous Sundering books made it clear that Cormyr was losing the war to Shade.

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Originally posted by Lilianviaten

Apparently, even the greatest sources of evil in the Realms can be casually smacked down by Mystra's Power Rangers.

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Originally posted by Lilianviaten

I was furious with the ending. Telamont is an extremely accomplished mage with all kinds of combat experience. Plus, he had just absorbed the power from every magical device in his throne room. Then Elminster comes along and pimp slaps him.

I was fine with Telamont being killed. He's awesome, and the Shadovar characters were a lot of fun to read about (especially from Kemp and de Bie). But they had their time to shine; now we must make way for new villains to develop and new empires to rise.

The way he was killed was preposterous, though. What should have been an epic spell duel was reduced to Telamont looking like a chump. He couldn't even get off 1 counter spell or effect Elminster in the slightest way. Elminster just beat him down and bullied him, without even exerting much effort.

Now I thought Larloch was being made into the main villain, because Larloch had already embarrassed Telamont and all of Shade's other mages at once (when he stopped them from draining the mythal and nearly killed them all with his crippling psionic power).

But after that incredible showing by Larloch, and his near draining of the mythal, BY HIMSELF, the Srinshee blasts Larloch ONE TIME and lays him low. Larloch is hurled a great distance away, and he's screaming from the agony of her spell.

Finally, Mirt the Moneylender spends hours talking to Manshoon, and easily distracts him until reinforcements show up. So with Cormyr vulnerable, and the Chosen distracted elsewhere, Manshoon is still completely incapable of winning.

And might I add, shouldn't Cormyr have been a wasteland??? All the previous Sundering books made it clear that Cormyr was losing the war to Shade. In "The Reaver", Cormyr has all but fallen. Then the Shadovar inexplicably allow Cormyr to recover, while they suddenly go after Myth Drannor. They could have dealt the deathblow to Cormyr, and then gone after Myth Drannor anyway. Was there some reasoning presented for this that I have overlooked?

In the final analysis, we have Larloch, Telamont, and Manshoon in the same novel. That should have been an epic, once in a lifetime experience. Instead, all 3 archmages are neutered by Mary Sue's, and they don't even put up a hint of resistance.

I've never been critical of Mystra's Chosen (or the Harpers) to the extent that many readers are, because I've always felt that plenty of evil archmages and power hungry organizations exist to balance them out. Now I've seen that I was wrong. Apparently, even the greatest sources of evil in the Realms can be casually smacked down by Mystra's Power Rangers. And to make things worse, Elminster is determined by the end of the novel to be more proactive than ever in hunting down evil.

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Originally posted by Mapolq

Well, that gets down to very subjective assessments. I just don't see more than, say 200,000 elves migrating to the whole of Cormanthor over the last century. Which would be more than enough to lay claim to the forest, by the way, given how sparsely populated it was before that. Myth Drannor is stated in Cormanthyr: Empire of the Elves to count 54,000 permanent inhabitants during its height (650 DR), 80% of which were elves. Surely 10,000 seems a bit of a low number to make the entire place active again, but it seems clearly enough to make a claim and do rebuilding, and much more reasonable than a population in the hundreds of thousands.

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Originally posted by Mapolq

Aldrick, I honestly can't understand where you came up with your numbers. Most of the elves who were in Evermeet didn't go back to Faerūn and massed up in Cormanthor, or that would have been felt much more strongly. Rather, from the wording we see, it's pretty clear that when Evermeet left Toril, the elves still there (most of the 1-2 million) left with it.

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Originally posted by Mapolq

You also say the elves will live in their cities instead of human-like farming, and that is sensible. But there is no reason to assume Myth Drannor was the only such settlement in the entirety of Cormanthor (excepting Semberholme).

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