| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| sleyvas |
Posted - 21 Jul 2020 : 22:37:56
I'm looking at the Scholar's Guide to Toril Map. There's a long string of islands that extend out very far from Zakhara's western shores. They don't appear on the Al-Qadim maps (its not the corsair domains or anything like that which would be much closer to shore). They MIGHT be equatable to the lands of the "Lady of Tides" from Blood and Magic, which has almost non-existent development officially. Has anything ever been done with these islands? Was just thinking if there was going to be a place with "water benders", this might be a good place. |
| 10 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| sleyvas |
Posted - 23 Jul 2020 : 22:38:36
quote:
Originally posted by BadCatMan
I don't know about the others, but for the Realm of Tides, while it just seems to be a collection of tiny desert islands linked by bridges in the game battle-map itself, magazine advertising for Blood & Magic refers to "a land of floating islands".
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Realm_of_Tides
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/File:Blood_%26_Magic_magazine_ad.jpg
That's a rather more intriguing and fantastical idea – what if they really do float? What if they're mobile? It could turn up anywhere on the Great Sea to control shipping. Maybe they're natural assemblages of flotsam and jetsam that grew into floating islands, or they're artificial like collections of boats or the man-made reed islands of Lake Titicaca.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floating_island
Or they could be built on the backs of giant zaratans. :D
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Zaratan
Looking at the map from the standpoint of the islands in the FR Interactive Atlas, these are definitely far removed from where I initially thought they were from the scholar's guide to Toril. So, if it IS the Realm of Tides, then its moved. That being said, I don't know that I would do that with this whole collection of islands. However, some of the smaller ones amongst them... if there are indeed something like earth benders or "earth element shapers which is probably shortened to earthshapers", then perhaps they can move some of the smaller islands if they work together with "watershapers".
The idea of them being Zaratans is intriguing, but I'd hate to overdo it by having a lot of them together. That being said, I do note that the realm of tides had a lot of "giant snapping turtles" that were in the water. I also note that Konigheim doesn't have a bunch of large islands off its shorts now (at least in the FRIA, which does call it Konigheim, btw). I propose that possibly the Realm of Tides, as it existed near the Utter East was destroyed in the Bloodforge wars. The place had previously held prisoners who were "minions of chaos" in special places with "banishing stones" that Tartyron worked to free.
So, perhaps the realm of tides WAS sank, and they brought their giant snapping turtle pets/guardians with them to these new islands. Perhaps much like Halruaan Skyships have to have special turtle shells on their underside for enhancement with levitation, these turtle shells are used to make boats for the peoples of these islands. However, perhaps these boats can be enchanted to work like submarines, with the "spirit" of the turtle forming something like a air barrier... or something different. In this instance, long lasting levitation type effects on the shell wouldn't raise them in the air, but rather descend them beneath the waves without crushing under pressure. Maybe giant snapping turtle shells are used in construtction of roofs and their long claws and bones used in the construction of weapons, boats, etc... I can in fact picture an double-hulled outrigger canoe which has a canoe on each side of a snapping turtle shell. The canoes are attached via claws and the spines of the shell, and the shell itself is sealed by rubber to contain a bubble of air.
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| The Masked Mage |
Posted - 23 Jul 2020 : 18:17:56
From there you could have the little continent to the West be an Atlantis.
The only real problem would be working out the Gods of the Greek Pantheon fitting in with Ao's Toril. |
| The Masked Mage |
Posted - 23 Jul 2020 : 18:06:09
Looking at the map in question and spinning of the Al Qadim=Arabia system, you could use those islands as a Mediterranean crossover.
Asia Minor on the Right with a capital like Troy, a Cyprus island, Rhodes, the Balkan peninsula on the left with an Athens, one big island would be Cretan, one could be Peloponnesia one Macedonia one Laconia.
You could have Ionian culture next to Thracian, Lycians, Etruscans, Cilicians, Pisidians, etc. You could divide every city state into its own island and really go all out. |
| BadCatMan |
Posted - 23 Jul 2020 : 12:44:14
I don't know about the others, but for the Realm of Tides, while it just seems to be a collection of tiny desert islands linked by bridges in the game battle-map itself, magazine advertising for Blood & Magic refers to "a land of floating islands".
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Realm_of_Tides
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/File:Blood_%26_Magic_magazine_ad.jpg
That's a rather more intriguing and fantastical idea – what if they really do float? What if they're mobile? It could turn up anywhere on the Great Sea to control shipping. Maybe they're natural assemblages of flotsam and jetsam that grew into floating islands, or they're artificial like collections of boats or the man-made reed islands of Lake Titicaca.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floating_island
Or they could be built on the backs of giant zaratans. :D
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Zaratan |
| sleyvas |
Posted - 23 Jul 2020 : 12:10:15
Just some more ideas to make this society more unique, if isolated.
First, actually including 3 different types of "elemental shapers", that being air, earth, and water. Water being the most common. In addition, there should be an element shaper of wood, who gets some druidic types of effects, all centered on plants, but not animals/people.
Obviously, they don't like sahuagin, merrow, etc... but perhaps they also have a problem with sea elves, perhaps due to misunderstandings in the past where they've entered sea elven territory and been seen as encroaching. So, while they may not attack sea elves on sight or anything, they also don't trust them at anything like a negotiating table.
They should have shared their knowledge of element shaping of water with the merfolk that they've come in contact with (and the merfolk may have learned and shared secrets in return).
Bamboo should be a primary building material amongst them, but due to their knowledge of element shaping of wood and earth, maybe after constructing things they've learned how to petrify wood materials quickly. Also, while they would build their villages on land, they also should be heading outwards to the ocean and setting up small crannogs and bamboo and thatch huts with bamboo docks built around them in all directions to allow for multiple boats to be docked. Thus, it may not be unusual to find what appears to be a simple overwater bungalow from a distance that one approaches, only to discover that its made of petrified bamboo and very solid and resilient to the elements. Coral might be encourage to grow around their bases, and "coralizing" things might be another commonly practiced method in their society. These overwater bungalows should all be separate, to allow for areas to fish in all directions, and the residents travel between them to visit one another by small rowboats or larger double-hulled outrigger canoes with flat planks between hulls..
https://www.crannog.co.uk/what-is-a-crannog
In addition to the idea of merfolk living amongst them, perhaps they also have Katanga (or a spirit folk that shapechange into animals). We'd already discussed having selkies (seal women), but perhaps some people with the natural ability to become dolphins or sea turtles or giant crabs and giant seahorses (separate types).
Hippocampi and Giant Seahorses should both also be a creature that this society herds. |
| sleyvas |
Posted - 22 Jul 2020 : 22:40:31
quote:
Originally posted by Seethyr
This is one of my favorite things about the Realms and simultaneously one of the most frustrating. So many regions to detail and explore that have never been touched or only lightly so in a living breathing world with a beautiful history that despite some inconsistencies, is sound and whole. Yet we keep returning to the same four or five areas every few years.
I don’t think the islands in question have any lore (that my ten minute search could find anyway) so there is an opportunity for home brew. What are you thinking they might be like? My imagination is too polluted thinking they’re in many ways similar to the Golden Voyages islands but if I were to have to run them in a campaign quickly (if my players saw this post for example and decided to take a trip) I’d throw together some Arabian version of Jakandor. Perhaps using ghuls instead of necromancers.
Edit: Apologies for the obnoxiously long run on sentence.
Actually, I'm thinking NOT pirates and NOT Arabic (except maybe on some of the closer to Zakhara islands). There's a significant enough desert between them and Zakhara that they don't need to interact with them a whole lot. They're close enough to the Utter East that they may have some of the Mara.
I'm picturing this as one of the surviving areas with "element shapers", unlike the ones that I'm picturing in Lopango and the Wakanari Highlands where people might be rediscovering a lost art from a few remaining practictioners. This group would be focused on water, but as I think, it would fit as well if they also have people focused on air. It would be an insular people who focus on the sea to live, so fishermen primarily. Also, while these folk may be focused on elements, I see them as NOT trusting genies. They might be welcoming of other more "straight forward" elementals. They should have no large settlements (no villages of larger than say 8000 people), and they should be a migratory people who travel from one island to the next to follow the good fishing, etc... leaving behind simple huts and such that they can return to in a few years and quickly repair.
The cultures that we know of that they may trade with would be in the Utter East, Ulgarth, or the Shining Lands like Durpar, Var the Golden, etc... Dambrath is full of would-be pirates when the Crintri ruled and bestial folk later, Halruaa is a bit too powerful to want to deal with them, Luiren is too solitary. However, more often than not, they'd be trading in the direction of Katashaka, as there are less pirates in that direction.
If I were to pick a culture of our world that they might most appear like, it would be Polynesians. Worship of Akadi and Istishia might be strong with them. This area should also have a strong population of sea folk like merfolk, and it shouldn't be uncommon for these two cultures to actually work together (unlike the rest of Toril where the land and sea cultures act like they're on different worlds). Perhaps items that give a land person a fish tail or a mermaid legs are fairly common, but rather than permanent they're temporary things. So, it might not be uncommon that some mermaids might come to visit the surface world on the whole, but in general its usually only a few times in their lifetime. Permanent/long term methods would exist as well, and the idea that a sailor marries a mermaid/merman wouldn't be unheard of here. Selkies would also be fairly common.
Pets amongst these people might be less likely to be something like a dog or cat, and more likely to be something like a penguin, puffin, seal or even a sealion, as well as things like monkeys, parrots, etc.... Giant Puffins or pelicans might be common as mounts used for quick travel between islands. |
| Seethyr |
Posted - 22 Jul 2020 : 13:41:40
This is one of my favorite things about the Realms and simultaneously one of the most frustrating. So many regions to detail and explore that have never been touched or only lightly so in a living breathing world with a beautiful history that despite some inconsistencies, is sound and whole. Yet we keep returning to the same four or five areas every few years.
I don’t think the islands in question have any lore (that my ten minute search could find anyway) so there is an opportunity for home brew. What are you thinking they might be like? My imagination is too polluted thinking they’re in many ways similar to the Golden Voyages islands but if I were to have to run them in a campaign quickly (if my players saw this post for example and decided to take a trip) I’d throw together some Arabian version of Jakandor. Perhaps using ghuls instead of necromancers.
Edit: Apologies for the obnoxiously long run on sentence. |
| sleyvas |
Posted - 22 Jul 2020 : 12:21:40
quote:
Originally posted by The Masked Mage
They are in Golden Voyages - Al Qadim 1992. The area is called the Crowded Sea - Based on Sinbad. Assuming I'm thinking of the islands you mean.
No, the crowded sea are the islands south of Zakhara, and a lot of those are named as groupings of islands, etc... These are ones that appear on the scholar's guide to Toril and I noted yesterday also there's a clearer picture of them (if spread across a couple maps) in the FR interactive atlas. These are directly west, and looking at the FRIA there's about 30 islands of varying sizes... some exceptionally small). At a rough comparison, it might be twice the size of the collective Moonshaes, so its large enough for a decent culture, but small enough to not be overwhelmingly huge. This could make for a decent group of water "element shapers" (because I don't want to say bender... and I can't get behind the term "lacers" that was used in the DMs Guild product) that are in "warm" areas. I'd still want some that are in icy areas, but there's a really large island/small continent that's way further south between Zakhara and Katashaka that would be good for that, and I know nothing was ever done with it.
So, that has me putting a decimated "fire nation" in Lopango that some Thayans rediscover, but portions are also beneath the ocean between Lopango and northern Katashaka. An air nation with earthmotes that was subsumed later by beast humanoids in West-Northwestern Katashaka, a "Northern" water tribe that's below the shining south and east of Katashaka, a "southern" water tribe that's occupying part of an island continent that's the furthest south on the Scholar's Guide map (struggling against frost fey, white furred gnolls and polar bear folk). Maybe an "earth tribe" that occupies a portion of the smaller island/continent that I've been calling "Eastern Katashaka", and whom a portion of their civilization sank beneath the ocean. Maybe another "earth tribe" expanded into the Utter East long ago in the area ruled by the Circle of Order in the area ruled by the "Lord of Lands", as well as some "fire tribe" folk in the area ruled by the "Lord of Flames". Don't want anything that's exceptionally powerful, but more on the idea of a lost art that maybe some still practice, but that when in Abeir might have been highly useful to those that rediscovered the practice. Maybe in the area in the south of Katashaka where I was talking about having the advanced humans known as the Nubari there might be a grouping that studied all four elements as a society together, where the collective from all these fallen groups came together long ago. |
| The Masked Mage |
Posted - 22 Jul 2020 : 09:21:26
They are in Golden Voyages - Al Qadim 1992. The area is called the Crowded Sea - Based on Sinbad. Assuming I'm thinking of the islands you mean.
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| ElfBane |
Posted - 22 Jul 2020 : 08:11:56
Well, Zakhara's been around for a few years, and aside from a couple of things I read giving it middle-eastern "Arabian Nights" feel, that's pretty much it. Osse, Zakhara,and the western hemisphere are pretty much an open playground. Maztica's been lored up, but that's about it in the western hemisphere. |
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