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Originally posted by Ayrik

Netheril briefly mentions that three cities fled to other planes, although it did not name them or their destinations. It also mentions that Lord Shadow, with some assistance from Karsus, faked his own death while fleeing to the Demiplane of Shadow, and that he was master of his own enclave.

Subsequent lore established that Shadow is Telamont and that he took his entire enclave of Thultanthar/Shade to the Shadowfell with him. Shar was apparently instrumental in the salvation of the city.

Opus/Selûnarra instead fled to the Astral, through the workings of Selûne, and sometimes sends covert assistance to Faerûn to battle the Shadovar.

An example of what I'm asking about is sunken Sakkors. The city was never named and never existed prior to its introduction in the modern Realms as needed by an author, it was simply invented to make an interesting story work. No fixed quantities have been given, "most" and "hundreds or thousands" are quite vague when the impact of even a single Netherese city can be profound. What if, for example, this third unnamed city was taken to Acheron by Tempus, the inhabitants are now militant cambions and tieflings who practice infernal Netherese magic and endlessly hone their skills of war, and it plans to open mythallar-powered gates to Hell on Faerûn as the first phase of an invasion? Or what if this city went elsewhere and the original inhabitants have been displaced by Giths or Illithids or Slaadi, along with their realization that they can use it (and the city's mythallar) to gain a permanent foothold on a Prime by invading Toril? How many other cities remain lost to history until Szass Tam grows tiresome and a new imperative threat is needed to menace Faerûn?

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Floating Cities

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Originally posted by entreri3478

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Originally posted by Hoondatha

If we must purple, I prefer purple and bold. If it's bolded, I can at least read it.

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I don't even bother reading the posts that are colored, bold, or in all CAPS.

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Originally posted by Chosen of Asmodeus

Ariel superiority and a stunning view.

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Originally posted by Markustay

Some times, when you have too many nested quotes it goes blue by itself, which is an idiosyncrasy of the site.

Obviously, that wasn't the case here.

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Originally posted by The Hooded One

Hi again, all.
I bring a reply from Ed to Dennis, re. this: "Hi, Ed! I wonder, what exactly drove the Netherese to create flying enclaves? Was it just for the simple fact that they wanted to stand literally above all the other civilizations? Perhaps to slake their wanderlust, if they had one? Or did they think it the most convenient and fastest way of expanding their empire?"
Ed responds:

Hi, Dennis. sorry, but none of the above (though some of those motivations might have been true for certain individual archwizards). As I've said before, at the Keep and elsewhere, the various archwizards were far more individuals pursuing their own personal interests than they were a cohesive 'empire.' A FEW of them wanted to explore and travel, and a few wanted to conquer or expand their influence, but the Netherese in general did not consider themselves a 'civilization' in conflict or rivalry with other 'civilizations.' It's simply wrong to think of them as a group that cooperated often on much of anything, let alone cultural conquest. (For instance, there was never any such thing as a "Netherese army.")
In the past I've explained that floating cities developed initially as a way of creating environments under the complete control of their creating archwizard, but still being near to the "underlings" (also Netherese) who gathered foodstuffs or hunted for them or farmed them, and mined (etc.) for various other things the archwizards needed. It had to do with dominance of each other (and beasts that happened to be handy), not other peoples. When you post: "the simple fact that they wanted to stand literally above all the other civilizations," there's a problem: it's not a simple fact, or even a fact at all.
A few individual Netherese, notably Karsus and some of the inhabitants of Shade, wanted to be "above" all others - - but that's not true of the Netherese as a race, collectively. Any more than it would be correct to say, for example, "All Americans play football and baseball, and do all their cooking on barbecues." Certainly SOME Americans may do all three of these, but...
And what later humans, looking back, call "the Netherese empire" was anything but. It's our later way of mentally collecting together scores of completely independent city-states and flying cities.
Many flying cities were built by workers forced to build them by archwizards who wanted to "keep up with" rival archwizards, or who were fascinated by the idea of building an environment whose physical laws were spell-controlled and -determined, and wanted to benefit by having one of their own.


So saith Ed. Who created Netheril, its flying cities, the Realms around them, and so on...
love to all,
THO

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Originally posted by Ayrik

Yet surprising that the obvious next evolution from flying city, that is a city which can travel to different worlds and planes, hardly existed. Only three cities had such capability, I believe, and managed to survive Netheril's Fall.

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Originally posted by Dennis


More than a score archwizards might have the ability to transport their entire enclaves to the planes of their choice, but simply didn't possess the foresight, or most likely, the luck that could have saved them from Karsus's Folly.

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Originally posted by Wooly Rupert

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Originally posted by Dennis


More than a score archwizards might have the ability to transport their entire enclaves to the planes of their choice, but simply didn't possess the foresight, or most likely, the luck that could have saved them from Karsus's Folly.

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I think luck is the biggest factor, here.

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Originally posted by Wooly Rupert

Ah, but the Lady Luck is ever-known for her fickleness.

Besides, it wouldn't require her actively giving someone good luck... Depending on which account you favor, Shade either slipped into Shadow the day before the Fall, minutes before Karsus cast his Ultimate Folly spell, or at the same time. I favor it happening the day before, myself... But either way, if Lord Shadow was planning this experiment before Karsus's moment of idiocy, then it was a fortuitous happenstance that Shade didn't fall. This could be viewed as luck, but it is likely more of a happy coincidence.

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Originally posted by Icelander

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Originally posted by Wooly Rupert

Ah, but the Lady Luck is ever-known for her fickleness.

Besides, it wouldn't require her actively giving someone good luck... Depending on which account you favor, Shade either slipped into Shadow the day before the Fall, minutes before Karsus cast his Ultimate Folly spell, or at the same time. I favor it happening the day before, myself... But either way, if Lord Shadow was planning this experiment before Karsus's moment of idiocy, then it was a fortuitous happenstance that Shade didn't fall. This could be viewed as luck, but it is likely more of a happy coincidence.

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Realms of Shadows has a short story where magic starts failing and Telemont and his wizards immediately use the Shadow Weave to shift Shade into the Plane of Shadows.

They had been working on the spells for it for quite some time, but were driven to use them by the emergency.

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Originally posted by Portella

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Originally posted by Ayrik

Back to flying cities ... were they all accounted for after Netheril's Fall?

I doubt anyone took a census or confirmed crash-sites for every single city off some great checklist. There were many hundreds or even thousands of flying cities in Netheril, it's not impossible for dozens of them to still remain unaccounted.

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All of them or most can be found on the maps inside the netheril campaign setting with their location and crash sites.

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Originally posted by Portella


I can count 14 enclaves during the golden age and there is eleven at the fall. Please see below the painfully put together list for everyone.

Netheril Enclaves

• +*Spiel


• +*Lachery


• +*Buoyance


• +*Karsus


• +*Opus


• +*Delia


• *Ioulaum


• +*Shade


• +*Palter


• +*Shadowtop Borough


• *doubloon


• +*Quaqmire


• +*Sanctuary


• +*Jockteleg

Legend: Golden Age *, At the fall +

Early birds

Tanathras

The floating city of
Tanathras, ruled by the archwizard Falious (NG hm W36), decided
to make an example of Dagger’s Point in 3212. The archwizard
planned to establish his city over Dagger’s Point as a summer
retreat location, but he wanted to clear out the evil that was
rampant in the city before doing so.
Unfortunately for Falious, Trothas was prepared for his
approach. As Tanathras began its journey to the Dagger’s Point,
Trothas’s “former students” (who were advising Falious as to
the best course of action to take to control Dagger’s Point) cast
a disintegrate spell at the city’s mythallar, plunging Tanathras
into the side of the Dagger Mountains. The students escaped via
contingency magic.

Sunrest

The first enclave fell in 2202, when the floating city of Sunrest
yielded to the effects of ill-planned spell research. The city hailed
the impending creation of a spell called the Sunrest sunshock
(which was an early attempt at an ultra-powerful meteor swarm
spell), but an accident occurred. The spell probably worked correctly,
especially when eyewitness accounts from the city of
Remembrance reported a blinding flash of light from the west, with
a deafening roar that followed a few minutes later. Those who
watched were horrified to see the whole enclave fall to the ground
into a heap of rubble and stone. No one survived the accident.

Missing from action

Doubloon

As the counterfeiting
and gem operations of Doubloon grew, so did the interest in
bring Tempera to justice. Karsus nearly trapped the city in 3417, but Doubloon simply disappeared as the two cities closed with
one another. It was widely believed that Tempera had discovered
a method for rendering the entire city invisible, although
many more believed that Karsus banished Doubloon and its
inhabitants to some fiendish demiplane that Shadow had discovered.
The truth remained unknown even after the fall of
Netheril.

Opus

The Fall and Beyond (3520+): It’s widely believed that the
city of Opus was spared the destruction of Netheril’s cities by
divining the effects of Karsus’s avatar spell and evacuating mere
moments before magic failed. The truth behind their salvation
was somewhat hazy, however, and other sources stated that the
goddess Selûne personally delivered them from destruction.

Shade

We know about that one.

Your's faithful
Portella

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