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Gary Dallison
Great Reader
United Kingdom
6361 Posts |
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Gary Dallison
Great Reader
United Kingdom
6361 Posts |
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Gary Dallison
Great Reader
United Kingdom
6361 Posts |
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Demzer
Senior Scribe
877 Posts |
 Posted - 19 Sep 2018 : 15:00:35
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quote:
Originally posted by dazzlerdal
I had long wondered about the presence of mulhorandi shrines and temples in Calimshan.
Source(s) for this? |
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Gary Dallison
Great Reader
United Kingdom
6361 Posts |
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sleyvas
Skilled Spell Strategist
USA
11830 Posts |
Posted - 19 Sep 2018 : 15:57:57
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quote:
Originally posted by Demzer
quote:
Originally posted by dazzlerdal
I had long wondered about the presence of mulhorandi shrines and temples in Calimshan.
Source(s) for this?
Yeah, I'm wondering on this too? I know of shrines to Sharess, which is Bast, but that would be different than them having a shrine to a Mulhorandi god since its an alias. |
Alavairthae, may your skill prevail
Phillip aka Sleyvas |
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Gary Dallison
Great Reader
United Kingdom
6361 Posts |
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Gary Dallison
Great Reader
United Kingdom
6361 Posts |
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sleyvas
Skilled Spell Strategist
USA
11830 Posts |
Posted - 20 Sep 2018 : 00:10:53
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quote:
Originally posted by dazzlerdal
I found it, its in Empires of the Shining Sea and the pyramid temple is located in Schamedar. Apparently it was founded by Mulhorandi dissidents who arrived after the Shoon era. Not sure the portal to Tethyr fits now, but I'm still unsure of how a large group from Mulhorand managed to migrate from Mulhorand to Calimshan, more importantly why.
Gotcha, I see it on page 116, but its basically listed as an almost deserted temple with the majority of the Mulans having either fled or died in madness. So, its not a very active temple or anything, its just impressive for the architecture. |
Alavairthae, may your skill prevail
Phillip aka Sleyvas |
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Demzer
Senior Scribe
877 Posts |
Posted - 20 Sep 2018 : 08:32:48
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quote:
Originally posted by sleyvas
quote:
Originally posted by dazzlerdal
I found it, its in Empires of the Shining Sea and the pyramid temple is located in Schamedar. Apparently it was founded by Mulhorandi dissidents who arrived after the Shoon era. Not sure the portal to Tethyr fits now, but I'm still unsure of how a large group from Mulhorand managed to migrate from Mulhorand to Calimshan, more importantly why.
Gotcha, I see it on page 116, but its basically listed as an almost deserted temple with the majority of the Mulans having either fled or died in madness. So, its not a very active temple or anything, its just impressive for the architecture.
Thanks for the pointer!
I don't think it implies any big migration, more like people moving away from the frontier style Shaar and, for whatever reason ("dissidents" but still paying tribute to all the gods, so political dissidents, maybe some hold outs of the ancient times when Set was not seen nearly as bad and Ra was still alive), not going back to Mulhorand but pushing to the other civilized side and temporarily occupying the cursed Schamedar.
Anyway, I may have a use this lone temple for something else in my campaigns so thanks for the find! |
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Gary Dallison
Great Reader
United Kingdom
6361 Posts |
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Gary Dallison
Great Reader
United Kingdom
6361 Posts |
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Gary Dallison
Great Reader
United Kingdom
6361 Posts |
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George Krashos
Master of Realmslore
Australia
6666 Posts |
Posted - 22 Sep 2018 : 20:42:10
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That's interesting. How do you do that?
-- George Krashos |
"Because only we, contrary to the barbarians, never count the enemy in battle." -- Aeschylus |
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Demzer
Senior Scribe
877 Posts |
Posted - 24 Sep 2018 : 08:13:07
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quote:
Originally posted by dazzlerdal
Sooo, order of the ibis found a portal in gheldaneth that took them to a pyramid where they saw an Avatar of their goddess and learned to cast wizard and priest spells together (It's in a web article about 3.5 weird classes). Could it be that they found the same portal as those who fled to tethyr long ago.
I read this as a reference to them receiving some kind of vision from Thoth (i.e. they are not using this "portal", it just worked once and they woke on the floor of the room were the "portal" was with new powers and a new divine mandate, sounds more like alien/godly abduction than always functioning 2-way portal to me). |
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Gary Dallison
Great Reader
United Kingdom
6361 Posts |
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Gary Dallison
Great Reader
United Kingdom
6361 Posts |
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Gary Dallison
Great Reader
United Kingdom
6361 Posts |
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Demzer
Senior Scribe
877 Posts |
Posted - 30 Sep 2018 : 14:54:29
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quote:
Originally posted by dazzlerdal
Been thinking about funeral practices and the whole mummy sarcophagus thing.
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The practice for sarcophagus and mummification comes from that.
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Just an attempt or two at realmsifying more of the Egyptian customs.
You know, I was about to start another "Oh no, dazzlerdal is trying to reinvent the wheel again" post, but actually there is no saying how burial customs were in ancient Mulhorand. It would make sense for them to be the same throughout the empire but there are two things that have to be taken into account that allow your claim to stand. The first one is that I seriously doubt the Imaskari would let their slaves have proper religious burial practice and after 1500 years the practice enforced by the Imaskari (whatever it was) was the one used by the Mulans, and for quite some time afterward too, probably.
The second thing, but here we go into godly matters, is the fact that in Powers and Pantheons it clearly states that Osiris came to be the Judge of the Dead and Nephthys the Protector of the Dead only after (and because of) Osiris' resurrection. This actually reinforces my theory that the Mulhorandi did indeed lose some deities in the Orcgate Wars (beside Ra), one being Anubis, the deity presiding over the Egyptian dead up until that time (other Egyptian deities from the D&D multiverse that are unaccounted for on Toril and may have suffered the same fate are Apshai, demigod of insects, and Seker, lesser god of light).
So, connecting the dots, we don't know what funeral and burial practices the Mulan had as slaves, nor what they did under Anubis reign as Guardian of the Dead but we know that things changed when Anubis disappeared with the Orcgate Wars and Nephthys and Osiris split his portfolio. Since the resurrection of Osiris and this divine relay race are pretty big things to happen, it makes sense for the God-Kings to enforce a change in funeral and burial rites, using the mummification of Osiris as the new standard.
quote:
Originally posted by dazzlerdal
The sarcophagus seems a good fit to come from spellweavers (who cocoon themselves to regenerate). Ra, enlil and any go to the fuirgar and steal a few items from the last remaining intact spellweaver settlement. One of those things that is stolen is the sun throne which is a spellweavers sarcophagus.
Only Ra knows it's purpose and upon his death leaves instructions for his body to be placed within the golden throne to cover his body in magical texts and bury him within the geometric pyramid (geometric shapes being important for magic). The idea was that this would allow him to regenerate.
Unfortunately the text was written in an archaic form of mulhorandi and so it was misinterpreted. His body was wrapped in bandages and placed in a golden sarcophagus specially made for him.
Sigh, this is were I have to disagree, you have a tendency of emptying humans of every accomplishment and having them just scavenge from prior civilizations, it was sarrukh all the time before, now it's spellweavers.
While the sarrukhs have left plenty of ruins, liches and things lying around and are back to actively trying to exert their will in various places of Faerun, the spellweavers are not nearly as pervasive and all their charme and peculiarity comes from the mistery of their civilization and fate. It would be good to leave it that way, otherwise Jergal might take issues.
I very much see humanity as "building on the shoulders of giants" by using as a base the collective knowledge of all the civilizations of the past but the achievements of mankind (and it's deities) should remain and not be constantly respun as "but really they just copied X from civilization Y, and messed up in the process too".
On this specific case, a sarcophagus is just an ornate stone coffin, is as close to a cocoon as it is to a barrel of beer in so much as it contains something. Also, deities that were not mortal before don't seem to have any urge for contingency resurrection plans and Ra (the uptight, no-nonsense, honorable head of the Mulhorandi pantheon with a personality so strong it completely subsumed Horus') doesn't seem a good fit to be an exception.
Last point, the Mulhorandi deities misinterpreting a text because it was written in "archaic mulhorandi" and messing up is ... well ... uninspired ...
quote:
Originally posted by dazzlerdal
Now onto osiris. If it was so easy to resurrect the dead why didn't they do that with Ra. Can you even resurrect the dead without the assistance of a god. What do you do in terms of resurrection if the gods die.
I'm thinking that Isis and the other one accidentally discovered the use of the sun throne and they wrapped him in magical texts and bundled him into the sun throne. He was resurrected and now the sun throne is also attuned to him which means osiris and his mum can also sit on it (but only osiris, Isis, and the other one know about that).
Ra died an honorable death defending his pantheon and subjects from overwhelming external forces, it's the best death he could've wished for, one that fulfilled his purpose, no Mulhorandi deity would even dream of resurrecting him. Osiris on the other hand was betrayed and murdered way before "his time", thus depriving the pantheon of a powerful member and leaving his duties unfinished and his subjects without a guide, it makes sense to try and recover him from the edge.
It took two deities to resurrect Osiris and actually it was not even a proper resurrection as he is now a mummy (even if a very special one). We can't say for sure but all depictions we have are of a coffin/sarcophagus, not a throne, and it wouldn't make sense for them to use the Sun Throne just because ...? I would imagine the Sun Throne to be left untouched until the next head of the pantheon was appointed so why would Isis and Nehphtys bring the dead body of Osiris there? And how could they take it out of the sarcophagus that killed him?
A possible way to respun this and involve some mortals in it is to have the sarcophagus used by Set to kill Osiris be in truth some horrible Imaskari artifact/torture device especially made to siphon and drain deific power (we know the Imaskari hated deities, they had the power to shut them off and they probably battled all the various godlings of the disparate pantheons of the people they conquered, so it makes sense for them to have had something like this) and what Nephthys and Isis did was to find a way to partially reverse the flow (through incantations and the mummification of the body, maybe the original enhancement worked only on living divine matter as who would ever think of fighting an already dead deity?) and thus restore the power of Osiris. |
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Gary Dallison
Great Reader
United Kingdom
6361 Posts |
Posted - 30 Sep 2018 : 15:05:08
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Well I'm happy someone else thinks Anubis died during the orcgate wars, because I was going to add him in the list.
Everything with humans is about borrowing and reinventing and repurposing, I see no problem with it, it in no way detracts from the achievements of the Mulhorand. The technology they took from the dwarves, the magic came from imaskari and sarrukh and now spellweavers. Much of that is already in the lore already. Building upon it is fine, even if it's not what the original intention was for the item or magic.
A lot of the realms civilisations build upon the ruins of past civilisations. Netheril got their entire magic from the sarrukh who in turn got it from the spellweavers. Narfell and raumathar built their entire empire thanks to stolen magic lore. It's almost a tradition in the realms that the current humans will build from the scattered remnants of ancient empires. And again the tradition with the realms seems to be that the current nations are never as great as those they inherit from.
Unther lost a score of godkings and suffered for it. They would certainly have resurrected them if they could. But it didn't happen so I'm left wondering why. Ra not wishing to be resurrected is a bit of a cop out, and as a result of his death there was a succession crisis which would have been easily avoided if he was just brought back to life. I'm not adverse to the whole imaskari thing, but imaskari has had a lot of love in lore, almost all of Mulhorands magic will be based upon imaskari methods plus a few items they found from ruined okoth and the spellweavers. Their language is imaskari based, their slavery is likely imaskari based. I'm just trying to add in a few not imaskari bits, so pyramids are spellweavers and now osiris' resurrection are spellweavers based. The animal thing is from hordelands migrants. I might make the game of pockets come from spellweavers (an old diagram of the multiverses where the function was misinterpreted). Just a few extra sprinkles of spellweavers and sarrukh influence. Fighting styles and trade practices might come from the dwarves though. |
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Edited by - Gary Dallison on 30 Sep 2018 15:26:22 |
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Demzer
Senior Scribe
877 Posts |
Posted - 30 Sep 2018 : 15:28:30
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quote:
Originally posted by dazzlerdal
Unther lost a score of godkings and suffered for it. They would certainly have resurrected them if they could. But it didn't happen so I'm left wondering why. Ra not wishing to be resurrected is a bit of a cop out, and as a result of his death there was a succession crisis which would have been easily avoided if he was just brought back to life.
You are talking like a real world gamer now.
Every gamer/player character wants another life and vengeance, the rest of the world not so much, unless they are taken from the world way before their time and in absurd/cruel manner.
Even then, if they have a proper afterlife they might simply choose that over the toil of mortal life (why resurrect and face bandits and goblinoids and harsh winters again when you could live perpetually in the golden wheat fields of Chauntea's realm?). Always remember that afterlife on Faerun is granted except to a precious few.
Deities fighting for ideals are perfectly fine dying to protect those ideals and as long as there is some surviving worthy element of the pantheon the deities have no pressure trying to stay in this life. The only recorded exceptions in FR are Jergal sidestepping power-grabbing issues and then outliving both those that "challenged" him and his "superiors in the office", Mystr- because there needs to be always one active otherwise everything goes boom and then the once-mortal deities.
Every pantheon has lost multiple deities, to the point that the Faerunian pantheon is a mix of deities coming from more than 4 different human ethnic groups respective pantheons. Deities rise and deities die, that's the existence of gods.
Osiris resurrection is an unicum and one that may interest quite a few deities if studied (Kelemvor for the peculiar situation of an undead colleague hating the undeads, Cyric because planning contingencies with all the ruckus he makes is important, Shar and Jergal because Osiris avoided eternal oblivion, Set obviously, Velsharoon for the similar yet different experience of being an undead imbued with divine power, Lathander for reasons similar to Kelemvor, ecc...).
On the specific issue of Mulhorandi and Untheri deities another thing to account for is that deities dying were effectively banished from Toril but were not "full dead" as in floating carcasses in the Astral (the phrase used often is something along the lines of "rejoined his/her essence on the Outer Planes"). It would have been interesting to explore the effect of the full Mulhorandi and Untheric pantheons coming back to Toril after the Imaskari barrier was taken down by Ao but such an event never came to pass (I'm not up to date but maybe there is something hinted along these lines in the last books of Erin Evans with chosens/incarnations/avatars of various Untheri and Mulhorandi gods appearing, but I may be wrong). |
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Gary Dallison
Great Reader
United Kingdom
6361 Posts |
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Demzer
Senior Scribe
877 Posts |
Posted - 30 Sep 2018 : 19:15:58
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quote:
Originally posted by dazzlerdal
If it was a cooperative magical ritual involving Isis and neptjys they could repeat it as often as desired.
If I use my spellweavers cocoon then it's been used up now so it's not capable of resurrecting anyone anymore.
That's exactly the point I was making before: for you two human deities can't concievably figure out a way to partially bring back a fallen comrade and have to fall back to some obscure and made-up thingamajig from an alien race from the past.
This means that the uniqueness shifts from Isis, Nehphtys and the specific conditions that they had to meet to something equal to DM fiat, thus humanity greatest achievements (like bringing back a deity from the edge of oblivion) are again just a copycat of some broken artifact of past civilization X. As in no achievement at all.
Not saying you can't go this way, just explaining why I personally don't find this reasoning attractive.
You don't have to explain exactly how Isis and Nehphtys did it, it's something that happened only once in the long history of the Realms, they did it, period.
This is not even a case were players might possibly b***h about not being able to redo the same thing, not in 99.99999% of the campaigns I know of, surely not the ones in which the DM and players have a brain. |
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Gary Dallison
Great Reader
United Kingdom
6361 Posts |
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Gary Dallison
Great Reader
United Kingdom
6361 Posts |
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Demzer
Senior Scribe
877 Posts |
Posted - 01 Oct 2018 : 10:25:23
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quote:
Originally posted by dazzlerdal
They don't strike me as imaskari, or sarrukh, or (my favourite) spellweaver). Could it be something they brought with them from their home world (it says made by Ptah but I regard most of old empires as just mythology as its too real world derived). Or could it be a dwarven mechanical device.
If its something they brought with them then why did only 3 of them have the chariots, why not the others.
No idea on the origin, but if you consider Ptah to be a dwarven deity (no idea where this came from, I just remember it from a post from Markustay quite some time ago) then the chariots could be made by Ptah and be dwarven in origin (frankly I don't see the sarrukh or spellweavers using chariots, maybe the Imaskari, maybe some other forgotten conquered people).
As to why only the 3 of them well, it's sort of a family thing, even if the Mulhorandi family three is kind of messed up and they make the Lannister blush.
Ra was the chief deity, so he got one.
Osiris was one of the oldest and politically active (Thoth and Geb were never concerned with command) and steadfast ally of the stern Ra (they shared almost the same viewpoint on anything) to the chagrin of Set (the other old deity and brother of Osiris, but already "gone bad"). So Osiris was the second-in-command (of the pantheon, not necessarily on the battlefield where young Anhur shined) and got one. Note that after all that happened Osiris is still "stuck" to be the second-in-command, I bet Set likes reminding him that second place is for the first of the losers or something along those lines.
Horus was the son of Osiris and Isis, apparently Ra didn't have deific offspring or they didn't come to Toril so the line of succession went straight to Osiris and then to Horus and that's why he probably got one, as heir to the pantheon "in pectore" (meaning that in the event of the disappearance of Ra, Osiris would've taken over and Horus would've been the new second-in-command ... but Ra had other plans and skipped his pal for the more easily controlled young deity ...).
Oh wait, just checked, Ra is the great-grandfather of everyone else apparently, his direct offsprings (Shu and Tefnut) didn't came and their firstborn (Geb, father of Isis, Osiris, Set, Nehphtys and apparently Thoth too since he is the brother of Isis ...) was not very interested in the politics of the pantheon so the succession skipped a couple of generations and was Ra-Osiris-Horus. |
Edited by - Demzer on 01 Oct 2018 10:34:01 |
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Gary Dallison
Great Reader
United Kingdom
6361 Posts |
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Demzer
Senior Scribe
877 Posts |
Posted - 01 Oct 2018 : 12:00:48
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quote:
Originally posted by dazzlerdal
Perhaps Horus found his in the dwarven ruins of semphar
Possible, since one of his titles is "Guardian of Semphar" so that must've been (one of*) his power base(s) before his promotion/transformation into Horus-Re.
*He is also the "Overseer of Thesk" and the "Protector of the Priador", all titles coming from Powers & Pantheons |
Edited by - Demzer on 01 Oct 2018 12:02:12 |
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Gary Dallison
Great Reader
United Kingdom
6361 Posts |
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Gary Dallison
Great Reader
United Kingdom
6361 Posts |
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Reimagining Old Empires
