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Originally posted by Markustay

And Yal Tengri is called the Great Ice sea.

When I get back (going from sat. to Sat.) I will try my hand at making it all work. I already have an idea of how to make the location of the Ostorion capital work, despite its out-of-the-wayness. If the capitol was in the corner of a very large Kingdom/Empire (and many capitols do rest on the 'edge' of the nation), then its easily reconcilable.

I will try to scan-in those maps from the Twilight Giants trilogy, and provide whatever notes I can, later. I will also post a snapshot of the far north from my big map, so we can see all the areas under discussion right now.

I believe 'The Great Ice sea' refers to ALL the water ABOVE Faerun, and not just that one body of water where that name is applied. Ed has already told me that sea connects to the sea of floating ice - those Glaciers are NOT the same as Earth's Antarctic - they are far south of where an Arctic circle would be. There is quite a bit of open water above Faerun.

The map in the Giantcraft book is a bit off - that body of water connects to the open sea, but is actually a VERY large inlet - that is NOT the actual northern coast (trust me, if it were, Hartsvale would have to be about 50 times larger then it is). I would have preferred they not place Harstvale on the 3e Silver Marches map, but I have to work with what I have, even though that placement is not optimal.

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Originally posted by Dalor Darden

However, the new "Monument of the Ancients" adventure map shows Mounts Ombaddor, Launt and Horgrymborr as all being adjacent to Mount Tesh in the Dragonspines!

Not only that, but Camnod's Cairn is now listed as the mountains that we were previously talking about being in the middle of the Ride...

Whatcha think about that?

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Originally posted by Markustay

Sage, feel free to place that in the map Room - I noticed there was already at least one map (Utter East) from a novel therein, so I figure this is also okay (and if not, just delete my link).

Edit: I think Photobucket shrunk the file - it is larger and more ledgible on my computer.

If you want Sage, I can send you the original file for posting here at the keep.

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Originally posted by Matt James

'Monument of the Ancients' takes place almost exclusively in this area and has large chunks of lore regarding The Ride and surrounding areas.

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Originally posted by Markustay

Which is why I had such a hard time fitting Hartsvale in to established lore - it isn't really located properly - if anything, it should have been in the center of that roundish-glacier above Anauroch.

By the looks of things, you could assume the high ice IS the glacier that formed around Iulutiu, Buuuuut... that glacier wasn't there during Netherease times, which is a BIG problem.

That's why I had to lean toward a rather convoluted, artificial-melting /warming magic scenario to explain the oddities. If the Netherease did melt the High Ice at some point, then Iulutiu should have been released, or uncovered at least (unless he was at the bottom of the sea.)

The Narrow Sea used to run north/south (in the 1e realms, as per Ed's Realms), but the Netherease box designer decided to do whatever he pleased and someone had to go-back and fix the inconsistencies (in LEotR IIRC, by saying the sea was moved by the Sarrukh in order to destroy the phaerimm). That could explain some of the weirdness - the upper portion of that sea may have been cut-off from the rest when it was shifted, and that is where Ulutiu lies and where the new (post-Netheril) Ice originated from. Not canon, mind-you - supposedly he is somewhere under Pelvuria (the great Glacier). It could just be 'the locals' (please don't ask me to spell those horrendous names!) are mis-remembering things handed down by their ancestors, and they are referring to the greater glacier that existed before Netheril rose and fell.
<snip>

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Originally posted by Markustay

I've noted that many of FR's cartographers over the years, when doing historic maps, or even when doing the new 4e FR ones, FAIL to take into account any chages what-so-ever.

I am sure they are not privy to all the oodles of Realmslore we are, and are not giving much background for them, so they just follow the 'current' versions when they do theirs.

I'm not saying they are exactly like the modern FR maps, but the changes are not nearly as dramatic as they ought to be. I have found evidence that the Swordcoast itself has changed dramatically just in the last few centuries, and many lands and island chains were lost - none of which show up on any maps.

It is like the fact that the source material says the coastlines all changed in 4e, and yet the maps that accompany articles do NOT take that into account at all (and leave coastal cities still as coastal cities). Or the fact that the maps of ancient Imaskar fail to take into account any of the Desert of Desolation material. Some day I'll get around to doing an accurate Imaskari Empire map.

Anyhow, the Glacial shelf existed to the far north, and then Ulutiu (sp?) sank and a second glacier formed, and as it grew, it connected to the one to the north. Only problem is, the whole thing makes more sense if the Glacier above Anoroch was the one Ulutiu sank in, when you take into account the placement of Hartsvale. There is also the Reghed glacier above and to the east of ten Towns - both that one and the Anauroch one are anomalies, unless the Cold created by The Great Glacier altered the climate enough to bring the arctic circle lower. I can only assume that they were also both bodies of water that froze (which probably fits the canon of Netheril anyway).

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Originally posted by Markustay

Toril is odd in that it has open water ABOVE the ice cap (the only incorrect thing about Karen Fonstad's maps). Along with the necklace Ulutiu wore, I would go out on a limb and say the elevation all along northern Faerun is quite high, in order to explain the oddly placed glaciers. Someone once figured that Toril had a smaller axial tilt then earth, which makes no sense to me - the lack of ice at the poles indicates a greater axial tilt, IMHO. The temperature along the equator is also milder - another good indicator.

Unfortunately, most of FR's more extreme geography has to be chalked-up to the ever-popular 'its magic' explanation.

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Originally posted by Markustay

The other problem comes in when you read the Thar source and some others regarding the Moonsea region - humans were there apparently long before the current wave of them were, and seem to have been wiped-out at least once, and then the area re-settled yet again.

We would also need to know what the Moonsea looked like before it was formed, supposedly by yet-another 'tear-fall'. I would guess that it, too, was part of the northern glacier at one point, and that the meteor (or whatever) vaporized much of the water and caused that region to de-freeze earlier then the rest. The Anauroch Glacier is a bit of problem in that regard as well - if it is indeed the frozen remains of Netheril's Narrow Sea, then why did it freeze? Netheril fell long after Ulutiu's necklace stopped 'doing its thing', so why did it get so cold? Were there Netherease magics to make the region artificially warm, that failed after the fall? Not a good explanation, really, when you consider they settled around the sea BEFORE they had magic (but the sea was moved, so that could be fudged as well).

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Originally posted by Markustay

Hmmmm... The Netherease needed to divert the sea, but the north was too cold, so they built some sort of massive device/artifact that warmed the entire region for hundreds of miles around. They then diverted the sea, which worked out fine, until Karsus cast his spell, and the giant Faerun-warmer went on the fritz.

Didn't the Archwizards try to re-melt that sea? We also have the abnormal warming around Hotenow, and there is some indication of something similar happening in the east. Hmmmm... maybe the Netherese didn't create the warming devices... maybe it was something MUCH older...

Maybe the Pyramids of Ascore have something to do with that... I would think climate-changing magic would reguire something the size of a pyramid. Perhaps the Netherease merely learned how to turn them on and off... which could be what they were doing in the beginning when they returned to Toril.<snip>

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...The Beastlord did challenge and defeat Herne, a corrupted incarnation of the Master of the Hunt brought to the Realms by an ancient wave of immigrants along with Oghma and other powers...

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Originally posted by Markustay

Herne's Woods is a forest located in the Utter East, BTW, at the very northern edge of Zakhara and on the most south-western tip of Kara-Tur.

The Blood & Magic video game makes it appear that the region was named by the Northmen who settled Konigheim, but since the Northmen were in the company of Ffolk (Moonshaes), it appears that the pantheon established there is some sort of combination of the Faerunian one with bits of Ffolk (Fey?) lore and pieces of the Vedic pantheon from the Mar natives (who themselves were not indigenous).

Anyhow, since the Ffolk appear to have some connections to the Celtic panthoen (and Fey creatures), Herne as 'Master of the Wild Hunt' and 'The Horned God' works quite well for a bunch of disenfranchised Northmen. I can actually see them using him in Loki's place, although that could just be because I am picturing the Marvel Comics Loki (with the horns).

Don't forget that the Giant god Annam is called 'The all-Father'.

Giant mythology in general is very Norse, except for the Titans (although D&D titans are different then the Planescape Titans, thank goodness).

Try not to loose sight of the fact that the people of The Ride are related to the Netherease, and the Tunland barbarians.

Hmmmm... you may have just fixed a problem I was having, saying the people of Thaeravel were of Talfiric descent. Could the people of The Ride be a mixture of Talfiric (Toril's Celt-like people) and Gur? I have it where the Gur are Slavic-looking (and culturally similar - think cossacks) people, but they used the Finnish Pantheon.

If the Eraka are an admixture of Gur and Talfir humans, then that would make both pieces of lore work. One sedentary and mostly peaceful, and the other semi-nomadic and warlike... seems plausible. I really need to get home and start work on that racial migrations map.

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Originally posted by Markustay

The Shades left Toril just before the fall (IIRC), and then returned in time for 3e.

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Originally posted by Markustay

I'm not home, and I haven't been thinking about any of this the past week, but what I may do is listen to krash and try to bend canon (rather then break it) to make everything work.

For instance, just because the Pyramids appear to be connected to the fall of Netheril somehow, doesn't mean that the magic associated with them (if any), or some item (or power) contained within them didn't date from an earlier period.

Suppose... just suppose... that the Nether scrolls weren't the only Creator-race artifacts they found. The Terraseer didn't just steer them towards those - he spear-headed a complete exploration of 'The North' by the ancient Netherease (that part is canon).

What if the Netherease had an 'Warehouse 13' type-thing going? Like at the end of the 1st Indiana Jones movie - a place they stashed stuff that was either too powerful, or that they felt they needed to investigate further at some point in the future. Those are just the kinds of things that would NOT be mentioned in the normal histories of the Empire (but it could be something the Shades were privy to), which is our 'out' for creating them out of thin air.

There are ways to spin everything in such as way to bend the somewhat broken timeline around the lore, and artifacts do not have to necessarily date to the same time-period as the structures/locales they are placed in. Just look at the Nether scrolls for a canon example.

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Originally posted by Markustay

BTW, that particular shape - pyramid/conical - is associated with 'energy accumulators' in folklore & theory; perhaps that would be a good place to start. You could even say one of the survivor states (of Netheril) re-built the ancient structures in their {futile} attempt to survive. Everything also keeps going back to the High Forest - the seat of power for that group of creators who wrote the Skins of the World Serpeant (sorry, not near sources and can't find their name on the Net). There are quite a lot of secrets buried there, and that could be why the Elves coveted the place.

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Originally posted by Markustay

Lots of ways to go with this - we just have to keep the 'big picture' in mind at all times. No sense fixing the lore in one spot and wind-up creating glitches elsewhere.

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Originally posted by Markustay

Well, without trying to be overly negative, I actually prefer the new group in charge NOT try to fill-in-the-blanks.

I've noticed a lot of lore-holes with newer canon about the past - I like it better when we can have these kinds of 'deep discussions' here at the keep.

The 4e Realms have a great deal of room now for 'new material', and THAT is where the designers and authors should focus their attentions, because THAT is where it is needed. Leave the past for the grognards.

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Originally posted by Jakk
By way of doing so: do we have a more exact location for the ruins of Yrlaancel/Ondathel/Myth Ondath? We know it was near the White Peaks (north of Whitehorn on the 3E FRCS map), but IIRC, that's all we know. Anybody know of anything more specific anywhere?

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