Hey @TheEdVerse With the revival of Tyr in the Second Sundering, Torm seems like he "disappeared." As an avid Champion of Torm lover, is Torm still around in FR, and do his followers still follow the Penance of century past? @TheEdVerse
Torm is very much “still around” in the Realms circa 1500 DR, his church small but energetic and very much a “factor on the local scene” in most places on Faerûn. His devout followers still perform the Penance of Duty; doing so shapes and guides their lives.
I'm an old DM and a great fan of Forgotten Realms.
Currently I'm running a campaign near Tuern and particularly Uttersea. I wasn't able to find a map of that small town.
Do you have any advise for its design please. @TheEdVerse
Sure!
Originally, the volcanic island was known as Uttersea, as to seafaring Northmen it marked the beginning of vast open seas, uncharted and “empty of all but storms.” The rich volcanic soil, coupled with the volcanic heat that still warms the half-collapsed caldera and the bay that now fills its missing southern arc, made it great for farming, so the Northmen seized it and settled. The land became known as Tuern after an early leader, and the settlement known as Uttersea. It was settled haphazardly, but frequent landslides forced a design on it that persists today: stone wharves jut out into the bay and are joined together along the shore into a hard “dock” with two large “beaching ramps” where ships large and small can be winched ashore; upland of both ramps are large shipbuilding sheds.
Above them, Uttersea climbs the slopes of the caldera, which are thickly planted with clinging vines and stunted shrubs and trees to anchor the “clinker” stone-rubble-dominated soil as much as possible.
Streets follow a switchback pattern: from the ends of the dock, packed-clinker roads curve along the caldera parallel to the dock, like rice-growing terraces on slopes in parts of the real-world Far East, with NO direct uphill/downhill routes, just the curves at both ends of the parallel runs.
The best houses are located as high as possible, off to the sides of the main “bands” of streets on their own side-lanes.
Someone ask him if vecna likes popsicles. @TheEdVerse
Yes! Vecna likes all manner of sweets (Elminster has seen him devour various flavors of ice cream, chocolate bars with cherry filling, and even candy floss!). Liches don't need to eat, so it must be pure pleasure chowing!
@TheEdVerse We've been discussing in my group why druids cannot use metal armour. My thought is that metal is as natural as leather or cloth (if not more so), but my friend said something about "interference with the weave and the natural order."
Could you clarify this for us? @TheEdVerse
Yes. The D&D in-house design thinking has always been that NATURAL iron or copper in the earth is no hindrance to druidic magic, but REFINED, concentrated metal items ("cold iron") is. When the Realms was made a D&D setting, that became canon for the Realms.
Hello from Minnesota, this past weekend my party and I were investigating sightings of red clothed wizards about a days ride from Waterdeep when we thought of a question. What does being healed by magic feel like? We came to the conclusion that having your bones rapidly mended, muscle stitched, and flesh healed would probably hurt like a bitch and then be hot and itchy afterwards whether by potion or spell. Just curious if that’s a correct assumption or not.
Thank you for your time and have a good day. @TheEdVerse
The answer is: it varies depending on what sort of being is healing, what damage is being healed, and what magic is being used.
It's always "a rush," meaning: an excited, tingling, energy rushing through you sensation.
What varies is how painful it is, and if you feel hot, cold, or otherwise. "New" (replaced) bits of you often itch for a day or three afterwards, yes. Lower-level spells shield the recipient less against pain and shock; more powerful spells are "gentler."
There are instances in Realmsplay at the "home" table where individuals being healed in battle, while active, by touch spells, roared out in agony as they were being healed.
@TheEdVerse question for you, if i may! Big fan of Forgotten Realms and im currently running a campaign set in the Silver Marches, are there any tidbits you could share about maybe a city or area in the region that isn't in a published work or similar? Thanks! @TheEdVerse
Sure! Over at my Discord server, Greenwood’s Grotto, I answer Realmslore queries as often as I can grab the time.
From a reply I just made there, here’s an establishment in the city of Sundabar that welcomes adventurers of all races, from drow to aarakocra, and lizardfolk to dragonborn:
Brokh’s Tankard. In the hovels and older warehouses that crowd the eastern verges of Sundabar is this adventurers’ favorite, a low dive of a tavern that consists of a dank, gloomy stone-walled taproom of many alcoves and candle-wheel lamps hanging from massive chains. This great room has kitchens and pantries behind it to the left, jakes behind it to the right, and in between passages that descend in long, curving ramps, to connect to a descending series of cellars, also given over to tables for dining and drinking. The seventh and eighth cellars have side-tunnels leading to rooms that can be rented for the night, for travelers desiring accommodations or drunkards too gone to find their ways home, and the ninth and lowest cellar is where the kegs of merriment are stored.
The founding dwarf, “Brokh” (more formally, Barrokhuld the Younger, of Clan Vorstone), is long dead, but his descendants still own and run the place. With the aid of some living spells who inhabit the cellars (guarding the strong drink in the ninth level, by the way) and about whom locals tell all manner of conflicting and colorful origin stories.
In Sundabar, Brokh’s Tankard is best known for the Burning of the Beards, a battle that almost destroyed the tavern, and began with a 1362 DR duergar raid on some shield dwarves drinking at the Tankard, whom the two-dozen-strong duergar regarded as trade rivals hampering their prosperity in “their” region of the Underdark.
Ironically, they were entirely entirely mistaken, attacking the wrong dwarves, and paid for this error with their lives, though they took over a dozen dwarves, and about twenty other drinkers, with them. They began their attack with fire magic directed at the beards of their targets, and the taproom was a scorched shell by the time the last duergar was overwhelmed and hacked down—with three clerics and a mage battling the flames to quench them and save that end of Sundabar from a widespread inferno. To this day, torches, lanterns, and fire spells are still forbidden for guests of the tavern to bring or wield.
And there you have it: a meeting and hiring place for adventurers, a "base" if you'd like. I have literally hundreds of small lore tidbits about the Sword Coast North; is there anything SORT of lore that would be particularly helpful?
A while back, I asked a question about mapping Ostoria before it fell. Trying to pin point the locations (so I've found Nedeheim and Helligheim), and seeing how much territory it had before the fell. You think you could help a Giant Fan out? @TheEdVerse
I have done very little with Ostoria, and would have to lean on my "Lore Lords" of the Realms, like Eric L Boyd and George Krashos, but in general: giants ranged far and wide over the lands in their day, with their own "hunting grounds" (includes foraging), venturing far from Ostoria, which was more a tucked-away, mountain-girt refuge that giants visited when they felt the need, rather than "the country in which all giants dwelt."
So, not a huge territory. Let me rummage in the lorefiles and get back to you.
Hello from Minnesota, this past weekend my party and I were investigating sightings of red clothed wizards about a days ride from Waterdeep when we thought of a question. What does being healed by magic feel like? We came to the conclusion that having your bones rapidly mended, muscle stitched, and flesh healed would probably hurt like a bitch and then be hot and itchy afterwards whether by potion or spell. Just curious if that’s a correct assumption or not.
Thank you for your time and have a good day. @TheEdVerse
The answer is: it varies depending on what sort of being is healing, what damage is being healed, and what magic is being used.
It's always "a rush," meaning: an excited, tingling, energy rushing through you sensation.
What varies is how painful it is, and if you feel hot, cold, or otherwise. "New" (replaced) bits of you often itch for a day or three afterwards, yes. Lower-level spells shield the recipient less against pain and shock; more powerful spells are "gentler."
There are instances in Realmsplay at the "home" table where individuals being healed in battle, while active, by touch spells, roared out in agony as they were being healed.
I don't know why, but I really love this.... something I had never really explored.
Hey Ed, I had a question I couldn't find an answer to. I've been trying to understand the timeline of the changes to FR cosmology, but and a few things struck me as odd. I was thinking about the implications of the switches between the Great Wheel and the World Tree mostly such as, first and foremost, why and how did the cosmology switch, both in-world and out-of-game? It seems as though the outer planes were in a sort of WIP state behind the curtain, which nobody could access during the Era of Upheaval. What happened to the planes that got cut?
I'm also curious to know what the design intention was for this change and if you had any inside knowledge on how/why this was needed from an IRL executive standpoint, and what involvement you might've had on designing the World Tree/Axis models, if any. Appreciate you @TheEdVerse
I don't know why the cosmology was changed; I've never been on staff at either TSR or Wizards, and that was an internal design decision. I can only speculate. One thing I have heard is that it covered for "getting rid of" problematic plane names like "Happy Hunting Grounds." @Boxboxxes
Speaking from ignorance here. If Ed created the FR and what we see on the actual game differs from time to time, they can just make the changes? :o @TheEdVerse
When TSR purchased the Realms in 1986, they acquired the right to make changes, add things, and take things away. What I say and write about the Realms is canon, unless or until they contradict or change it, in print. So, yes, they can just make the changes. ;} @ThorThunderdog
What's the most significant thing they "just changed" from the original? @TheEdVerse
Putting real-world cultures (or Hollywood versions of them) into the Realms.
Then replacing my Moonshaes with the TSR UK Albion setting.
Then changing the gods and deleting assassins for a D&D game edition change (Time of Troubles).
Then the 100-year time jump of 4th edition. @AuntieHauntie
Oh huh. I always thought the "Human cultures migrating from Earth to Faerun via magic" was an original element from you. Did not know that was TSR. @TheEdVerse
I had gates linking many parallel Prime Material Planes (our real Earth and the Realms among them) but secretive traders and fugitives used them, not invading armies bringing entire cultures with them.
She planned on a long-term spellfire-based cage; what befell them with Shandril out? Are they related to Barrowfields item-bound ones? Why'd Mystra save them? @TheEdVerse
With the tumult of those times in the Realms at which HAND OF FIRE was set behind Toril now, the need to humble the mad Netherese Weave-wraiths has passed. Alustriel’s plan was for her to cage them with the Weave and her command of it, while Shandril’s spellfire burned away some of their magical power and some of their madness with it.
As a Weavemaster, Alustriel can command the Weave with enough force and precision to call on it to cage wraiths or other powerful beings (living spells, for example) with a strong magical nature. Her warning to Andras was for him to summon other Weavemasters (Elminster, her fellow Sisters, or other Chosen) in the event she herself went down, to re-encage the mad Netherese.
Mystra forbade their destruction because, despite their madness pride, and fell intent, she wanted their magical knowledge and creativity (devising new spells) to be preserved…because that’s the core of what Mystra seeks to do: make magic more widely used by everyone, and constantly make magic wider in its horizons (creative uses).
I got a Drow male, minor noble house from Maerimydra who did some stuff that had him running from the city (lucky for him Kurgoths Sack went down right after and his family had bigger, hotter problems). What food might such a Drow probably find himself liking on the surface? @TheEdVerse
Drow are as varied in their culinary tastes as, say, humans, but MOST drow from the Underdark will fall in love with fresh fruit of all sorts (and degrees of sweetness/tartness) thanks to the juicyness and flavors.
Nicely-seasoned and prepared snake, eel, and edible beetle innards (and shrimp, crab, and lobster for the same consistencies) are closer to the non-fungi edibles drow like in the Underdark, so will be more “familiar” to him, and so feel “safer” and substantial as meals.
And finally, the variety of edible surface fleshy mushrooms and fungi will seem to him as if he went from “three varieties of meat at local shops” to “a huge buffet of all sorts of meat” for him to sample.
Everything else will be an acquired taste, but green vegetables (peas, lettuce, celery, cucumbers) will be the most exotic, and will either revolt him forever, or be “dicey” at first but then become his sought-afters. Spices and herbs of the surface will be a constant learning curve, and sweet confections (sugar-coated breadstuffs!) may be a shock, or a delight!
Ed Greenwood on Twitter
Posted - 10 Apr 2025 : 14:20:09
