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Hello again, fellow scribes. This time Ed answers The Sage, re. this: “I'm more than a little hesitant to add to my own backlog of questions for Ed to answer ... but a discussion with a fellow scribe over an aspect in another setting got me thinking about how this aspect is reflected in the Realms. It's about inbreeding, specifically... among the many royal families -- human and demihuman -- and/or long established noble families across the Realms. I know about instances of inbreeding in published Realms material already, for example... like that which is somewhat common among long isolated Underdark races, as well as the inbreeding that occurs among the ruling class of the Gugari people in the Hordelands. There are slight references in other sources... mostly with regard to noble families looking to keep favorable traits within their own family, but I'm looking more for Ed's personal take here and how he's handled the concept in his home Realms campaign, as well as any additional thoughts and/or lore he'd like to sure with me. I realize this can be a sensitive subject, and if you feel it's inappropriate to answer here, I'll understand if you do not wish to elaborate. However, I'm intrigued by this somewhat, and I'd like to learn a little more about how such an aspect is realised in the Realms.”
Ed replies:



No, no, nothing is inappropriate to discuss. After all, you’re talking to a man who’s discussed the visual success of her breast augmentation with a perfect stranger at a LIBRARIAN’S convention, very much in public. (She declined my offer of the taste test, but she was laughing as she did it.) Ahem. Inbreeding: as royalty sets the laws in almost every place in the Realms that has royalty (except in a few city-states, not yet detailed, where priesthoods have strong influences), there’s nothing illegal about inbreeding. It’s rare, and when it does happen is usually mothers marrying sons because the father (the king) has been slain, and the mother wants THAT son (often a bastard) to rule, or fathers (kings) marrying daughters. Sometimes brothers hitch up with sisters - - and uncle/niece and aunt/nephew pairings are quite common and aren’t even thought of (in the Realms) as inbreeding.
Yes, there are inevitable genetic problems. When they become obvious is usually when rules start to get forced into place (and the drooling idiots get locked up and never spoken of again, or killed in “accidents” if they don’t have to be kept around for possible backup breeding purposes).
It’s important to remember that many of the Realms deities encourage “sex for fun” (or even “sex for religious rapture”) and their priests have magical and pharmaceutical meals of preventing contraception, so “it’s only incest if the female partner gets pregnant.” This, by the way, usually means family members satisfy their curiosity and indulge feelings of mutual affection, and then go looking for less “safe and familiar” but far more exciting partners, elsewhere.
What the Realms DOES have, in most places, is laws against bringing rulers back from the dead umpteen times, or ruling as undead. Sometimes a raising done quickly, after battle, can be passed off as “healing,” but otherwise it’s usually “death is final, for crowned heads” (to avoid factions bringing back centuries-worth of kings as pretenders and tearing kingdoms apart in endless civil wars).



So saith Ed. Who seems to own an adequate supply of incest repellent in real life, I might add.
love to all,
THO

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Originally posted by The Hooded One

He did indeed. However, the powers that were in publishing at the time had other ideas.
Me, I agree with Ed's plans: getting the Rangers Three away from Elminster and Shadowdale and Storm, and into adventures on their own.
A young, agile, but green trio undertaking missions and "learning on the job" (with the inevitable screwups and pratfalls that would ensue) would have made for some very entertaining novels...and it's these close-focus-on-character, LOW-power protagonists, far from Realms Shaking Events as storyline tales that I think Ed excells at, and that would have built up a library of enjoyable, eminently re-readable Realms books that TSR and then WotC could have kept in print for years.
Rather than going for "gods onstage" books and a parade of into-print, then-swiftly-back-out again, and a stable of everchanging authors to keep payouts low rather than to build six or seven writers into firm, ongoing fan favourites . . .
But enough. We can all play the "If I Ran WotC" game, and what's done is done. Sigh.
love to all,
THO

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Originally posted by The Hooded One
Now, to Zandilar and Zireael, re. the larger issue of incest: partners contemplating such relationships in the Realms will be fully aware of how it might harm friendships and family relationships, the complications it might cause regarding inheritances, and so on. The Obarskyrs, most nobles, and many other Cormyreans have access to magical contraception, and almost all Cormyreans (and Dalefolk, and Sembians, and...) to herbal contraception. Some want to use it, some don't (and remember, some faiths in the Realms have a very different position on incest than the Judeo-Christian one).

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This is something Ed and I have talked about, too, and he has made it very clear that the female Obarskyrs (some of whom married into the clan, of course, rather than being born into it) would behave very differently if contraception wasn't available. Also, the existence of magical contraception has saved many noble women from rape, because it takes away the danger of it being done cold-bloodedly to get a tie to a family's inheritance or wealth.

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Me, I'm more in the Alusair camp.

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Originally posted by Zandilar
<snip>

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This is something Ed and I have talked about, too, and he has made it very clear that the female Obarskyrs (some of whom married into the clan, of course, rather than being born into it) would behave very differently if contraception wasn't available. Also, the existence of magical contraception has saved many noble women from rape, because it takes away the danger of it being done cold-bloodedly to get a tie to a family's inheritance or wealth.

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I'd be surprised if there weren't counter-agents to contraceptives, whether other herbs or magical spells available for the really determined. Are there such things in the Realms? Or is my supposition wrong here?

Also, I doubt the child of a rape would gain the father/mother any leeway with the family of the woman/man so treated. Illegitimate is illegitimate, no matter the circumstances of conception, and especially so in the case of a rape. (That might sound cold, since it's hardly the fault of the child that it came to be in such a situation, but nobles can be very callous and self-centred like that (Yes, as always, there are exceptions, and it's depends, and other such quibbles apply).)

<snip>

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Originally posted by The Hooded One

(some of whom are doppelgangers, who have infiltrated the ranks of the Guard, Palace courtiers, nobles, guildmasters, and even the Lords; they are the sole means by which the Black Hand can still reach the "world outside the mountain").

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Originally posted by The Hooded One

The drow tend to be relaxed regarding homosexuality, sex without marriage ...

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Originally posted by The Hooded One–Questions for Ed Greenwood (2005) Page 80–19 December, 2005

In addition, every pasha, yshah, ynamalik, sultan, and caleph (and frontier bandit lord; such individuals almost always style themselves “satraps”) has their own adventurers, usually three distinct groups (which their master plays off against each other as rivals, each spying on the others): a personal bodyguard, a publicly-known “razra” or strike force, and a little-known “saress” or ‘Silent Hand’ (dirty-work group).

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Originally posted by The Hooded One

So saith Ed. Master worldbuilder, perhaps the greatest we have in English, who's still alive.
Not that he'd agree with that...
love,
THO

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Originally posted by The Sage

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Originally posted by The Hooded One

The drow tend to be relaxed regarding homosexuality, sex without marriage ...

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Milady, what are Ed's thoughts on the views of the other demihuman races, like dwarves and gnomes for example, when considering such sexual conduct among their own in the Realms?

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Originally posted by The Hooded One

Sage, I know Ed held the view that in some places, EVERYTHING broke down for dwarves in the Realms in recent centuries, as holds fell, clans got decimated or entirely wiped out, and births dwindled to a trickle. So ANY social norms (including taboos and strict rules) may well have been abandoned, as the desperate, wandering dwarven survivors did whatever was necessary, lost their traditions, and so on.

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Originally posted by The Hooded One

Hi again, all.
Knight of the Gate, it is indeed very common, and your view is accurate. I would of course add Sharess to your first list of faiths.
However, this doesn't mean that temples usually run overt brothels, or try to compete with (or stamp out) free-enterprise prostitution. Sex is used in rituals in specific (narrow) ways, for worship of the deity and "improvement of self to make the self a better servant of the deity as well as more pleasing to the deity and therefore more favored by the deity."
A lot of out-in-the-streets prostitution, as in the real world, is a job (economic necessity), and is sought out to slake lusts and/or just to get some companionship (i.e. banish loneliness). [It's that last aspect that real-world crusaders against the "evil of prostitution" usually overlook, discount, or are unaware-of; the huge amount of buying sex that's really buying intimacy/banishing loneliness. Of course, for some, participation in faith is primarily for the very same reason.]
YMMV, of course.
love,
THO

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Originally posted by The Hooded One

Hi again, all. Tyranthraxus, most cities and "market towns" in the Realms have alchemists or herbalists or both (shops, that is), and of course most farmers (crofters) and rural villages have ample supplies of grown-right-there herbs as well as "harvested from hedgerows and woodlots or the wild" herbs. However, the Realms DOESN'T have laws against soft or hard recreational herbal drugs (the very concept is unknown, because herbs and other plants have always been used for home medicines, and for trance-inducing, hallucinogenic, and mood-altering purposes IN TEMPLES, by the priests of the Realms (of almost all faiths).
As a result, there's no market need in the Realms for what's sometimes called in our real world a "head shop" or a "funk shop" or any "counter-culture" gathering place or vendor of drugs and associated items ("bongs", music, T-shirts, etc.).
No drug trade, no drug laws and police enforcement of them...none of that. If an idiot "drives" a wagon or chariot when stoned or drunk and does damage, citizens mete out rough justice on the spot, or the Watch in a city comes and arrests and takes the miscreant to justice for the damage done and for the reckless endangerment of the behavior that caused said damage...NOT for the drugs. (Again, in a setting where EVERYONE "believes" in all of the gods without necessarily having to take anything on faith, and priests habitually make use of drugs in holy rituals involving themselves and lay worshippers, the very concept of "drugs being illegal" is unknown.)
The one exception I know of is: military discipline. In many of the armies and local lawkeeping forces (i.e. City Watches) of the Realms, it's an offense to be drunk or stoned on duty.

Now, a note to all scribes reading this: please DO NOT misinterpret this post as advocating drug use in the real world, or describing the Realms as a place where everyone (or a majority of folk) are stoned all or part of the time. Nothing could be further from the truth. In some thirty-two years or so of Realmsplay, Ed has only ever described ANY evidence of drugs in the Realms twice, that I recall.
Once was a ritual in which priests had undertaken a vigil in which they drank sacred wine and inhaled vapors from specific herbs burned on an altar, in order to receive visions that would guide them (that they believed came from the deity).
The other occasion was PCs invading a temple of Bane to try to recover kidnapped persons. As they descended into lower levels of the temple (subterranean dungeons), Ed described acrid scents in the air, as if certain plants were being burned...and then the visions started. (This wasn't a defense of the temple, it was priests down on those lower levels engaged in a ritual, and the PCs inhaling the results from the air currents that normally exhaust the air of those lower temple levels.)

So saith me.
As they say on the news: No, don't try this at home.
love,
THO

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Originally posted by Jorkens
In Adjatha "the Drinker.":
Nesker of Mulmaster, sorcerer king, ruled in the early years of the 1300's. Would it be possible to get some information on this ruler and the older Mulmaster rulers in general?

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Originally posted by Jorkens
In Susk "The Silent Sword":
The sword was held some twenty years ago by a prince Abadda of the Fallen Kingdom. From what I have read the two lands bearing that name existed much earlier. Was this term used for a third area or was the kingdoms in existence at a later date in Ed's early Realms?

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Originally posted by Jorkens
In Taragarth "The Bloodbrand":
Here the islet Toaridge-At-The Suns-Setting and the City of Vlan in the Moonshaes are mentioned. I guess that both of these were lost with the Celtic version of the islands, but could it still be possible to get some information on these areas and what they were like?

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Originally posted by George Krashos

I'm not Ed (but can do a feeble impersonation when at my best), but here are some responses to your questions:

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Originally posted by Jorkens
In Adjatha "the Drinker.":
Nesker of Mulmaster, sorcerer king, ruled in the early years of the 1300's. Would it be possible to get some information on this ruler and the older Mulmaster rulers in general?

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I think I asked this question a couple of years ago. Still waiting patiently.

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Originally posted by Jorkens
In Susk "The Silent Sword":
The sword was held some twenty years ago by a prince Abadda of the Fallen Kingdom. From what I have read the two lands bearing that name existed much earlier. Was this term used for a third area or was the kingdoms in existence at a later date in Ed's early Realms?

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Eric Boyd dealt with this in a write-up he did of the "Unicorn Blade" (see Volo's Guide to the North). It was originally slated for his "Eye of Myrkul" DUNGEON adventure but I think it got cut for length. Fellow scribes will no doubt point you in the right direction.

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Originally posted by Jorkens
In Taragarth "The Bloodbrand":
Here the islet Toaridge-At-The Suns-Setting and the City of Vlan in the Moonshaes are mentioned. I guess that both of these were lost with the Celtic version of the islands, but could it still be possible to get some information on these areas and what they were like?

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Both still exist in the maps as far as I know. Toaridge is the small cluster of islands just north of the Nelanther and south and east of the Moonshaes.

-- George Krashos

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