| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| The Sage |
Posted - 05 Dec 2013 : 02:43:36
Well met
This is a Book Club thread for The Adversary (part of "The Sundering" saga), by Erin M. Evans. Please discuss chapters 4 - 8 and the Interlude herein. |
| 1 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| ErinMEvans |
Posted - 07 Jan 2014 : 20:55:56
Again, here's some lore, etc., from the discussions on Goodreads.
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1631251-the-adversary---chapters-4-6
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1644120-the-adversary---chapters-7-10
*Re-establishes the portal to Suzail in Waterdeep. It's being used to send supplies to the Cormyrean army as of 1486 DR.
* The Fountains of Memory: Initially, I didn't have a location in mind, aside from needing it to be near enough to Waterdeep to reach within one book and remote enough that it would be reasonable to say no one noticed yet. The Lost Peaks were offered up, but the Fountains were a major detail of the location. That was nearly enough to rule it right out...but then I realized it could work nicely with a lot of the themes and characters. (You can read about the Fountains' pre-Spellplague state in Ascendancy of the Last by Lisa Smedman.)
*The missing Lost Peak is partly located in the grove where the story began. That earthmote came off the mountain (see the blue flowers that trigger the waters). This is what threw off Sairche's portal. She was aiming for the mountain instead of the castle because Rhand's protections keep messing her up.
*Wroth cards: When we were first getting around to titling the Sundering novels, we had the idea of making the titles pieces of the prophecy that appears in the beginning of the book. Which is a great idea, but Salvatore and Kemp had already decided on their titles, and they were too short and direct to be lines of prophecy. But I pointed out they sounded like tarot card names.
Which gave me the idea of using the cards in the book. Ed Greenwood pulled out a variety of tarot deck analogues from the Realms. Wroth was the one that fit the existing titles, so together with the titles Ed had already created (and a few more it turned out I needed), Wroth makes its appearance in the Sundering.
Now, lucky you, here's the description Ed sent me: "One sort of tarot is descended from ancient Netheril, and known as Wroth (for reasons lost to time). It’s still used among Sword Coast royalty, nobility and “oldblood” families (including farmers and the impoverished), for both fortune-telling and gaming purposes. Thought to be old, and a connection to the land and its deities deeper than priests and organized religion - - so cheating at cards is unthinkable. The fortunes are warnings, not absolutes, so you can change your fate if you heed the cards and act accordingly.
The 22 cards all have names and gorgeous illustrations, such as The Rising Dragon, The Masked Lady, and The Well. Four represent named characters (human males Draevus and Loskor, and human females Paeryl and Tethyla) about whom many folk tales have been told (Draevus is the handsome, saucy-tongued happy-go-lucky, clever, unlikely-successful ne’er-do-well; Loskor is the tall, thin, dark and gloomy, menacing hand of justice/doom/retribution whose face sometimes looks like a skull; Paeryl is a simple but good, just, and kind nurturing mother/cook figure; and Tethyla is a dancing-by-night temptress who dares anything and fearlessly consorts with undead and willingly undergoes shapechanges from fell spellcasters)."
I really wish Wizards had snapped up the notion of crafting Wroth cards for GenCon. ;)
* Deadknight: The game Farideh plays (Dusty Deadknight) is a variant of Canfield.
*The interlude features Fflar and a sort of avatar of Oghma. |
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