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AJA
Senior Scribe
USA
770 Posts |
 Posted - 03 May 2024 : 01:40:50
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quote:
Originally posted by sleyvas
Like this.. haven't read the rest yet... but wanted to make sure I'm reading this correctly. So, previously he was an "owl" form and now he's one of Tempus's horses? Which I totally get and can happen when we're talking divine thing, just want to make sure that's where you were going.... and not that Tempus' horse basically stole his role.
What was Dóskul is now Deiros, yes.
Looking at it with your question in mind I can see where it would be unclear; I made a few changes so hopefully it reads better.
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AJA
YAFRP
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AJA
Senior Scribe
USA
770 Posts |
Posted - 26 May 2024 : 00:31:32
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Felrarra Moonstar
A noble of House Moonstar (only daughter of Thassil Moonstar). Enrolled at the Eltorchul Academy. Twenty-seven years of age. Ten years in tutelage, and swiftly coming to the end of her apprenticeship. Works carefully and diligently in all her tasks and studies, but so far shows no signs of originality or new ways of thinking in the Art. Will probably never create a spell that bears her name, but can still have a long and comfortable career transcribing the works of others. Prefers robes of alternating patterns of diagonal sea-blue and sea-green waves, and corset and boots of dark green leather.
Ilûmnae
A half-elven student at the Eltorchul Academy. Narrow eyes, narrow nose. Wild blue-black eyebrows, short-cropped blue-black hair. Skin pallid as fish-belly, with heavy bluish tints at cheekbones, back-of-neck and shoulders, belly button, elbows and knees. Five years in tutelage. Still has difficulties working within the schools of Abjuration and Necromancy. Her instructors at the Academy believe these are temporary issues that will resolve themselves once her knowledge has matured, although there is occasional talk of assigning her specifically to a Master of Transmutation, to focus her studies. Most often found in loose blouse and long skirt of wavy orange (her favorite color) fabric gathered by a broad leather girdle, and abundant jewelry fashioned of large pieces of warm amber and dangles of cold skydrop.
Rosamund ('Rosie') Saltsheath
A halfling student at the Eltorchul Academy. Her family resides among the coastal salt works of Firedrake Bay near to Port Kir, in Tethyr, where they have long dug and kept the great shallow brine-fields there ('salt-sheaths' being the common Hin name for salters and curers of dried meats, either through dry-curing with salt or seasoned with spices and cured in brine) and trade to the merchants of the Port, who then pack and sell salted or brined fish and shellfish. The salting business has been good enough to allow her family to send her to Waterdeep to study at the Academy (this was her choice; her family would have greatly preferred her to find tutelage closer to home – perhaps with Pelhalond of Velen, or at The House of Shape and Shadow, the conjurer's school recently opened near Darromar – but Rosamund had her heart set on the delights of the City of Splendors), where she has now been three years in training. In those three years she has proven surprisingly accomplished in the finer details of her verbal and somatic components. The latter is quite rare in Hin casters, whose shortened digits often struggle to reproduce finger motions designed by the larger human and elven races. Perhaps too detailed though, which often causes her casting times to lag behind those of her fellow students. Her other troubling issue is her infatuation with the social life of the city. She has been reprimanded a number of times by her teachers for arriving late (or worse, disheveled) to her studies. Ash-grey eyes, elfin ears; wavy, almost frizzy chestnut-brown hair. Prefers to douse herself in scents of spruce and pine and juniper.
Rorsrun the Horse-Hound
A specialized trade factor for Lord Thentivil Tarm, dealing solely in the search for, and acquisition of, Phalorm Painted Horses. Lord Thentivil has the second-most regarded collection of such devices in the region, behind only the nobleman Harolond Agundar (coincidentally his main social rival, a situation which angers him to no end). As a result, Lord Tarm has authorized Rorsrun to utilize any means necessary in his pursuit of such pieces, including opening the purse of House Tarm to pay handsomely for any adventuring company able to bring such prizes* out of the wilds.
* in the time of Delimbyran before the Kingdom of Man, during the reigns of Darnoth I and Darnoth II, the highcoin fashion was for ornate paintings – not of stuffy old lords and ladies, bland pastoral scenes or overwrought images of religious glory, no – their craze was tributes to prized racing steeds and famed war stallions, framed most regally on tor or by stream-side, or in proud profile before war-tent, posed just so to show off their best qualities. Of course, the vast majority of such Painted Horses have been lost to the inevitabilities of time and the cruelties of war and weather, which makes discovering a new canvas quite a big deal to those few who make collecting such things their fancy
Tarntarra
Medium height, athletic build. Dark hair shorn close on the left side and braided on the right. Wild brown eyes. A swordswoman who haunts the taverns of Dock Ward, especially the Yawning Portal, looking for a group of adventurers that suits her needs. She seeks to hire them for a delve into the Undermountain to gain vengeance upon the one she calls Bitter Floom, who she swears was the doom of her previous fellowship. She is evasive on details, save that they must descend to the Third Level, and she insists that in their preparations they bring plenty of heads of garlic and a large catch-net, threaded through with little razor-sharp silver hooks that she crafted herself. She offers to pay well, whether in loose gemstones or silver tradebars held in reserve at the Tower of Fortune. If encountered at the Yawning Portal Durnan can vouch for her skills, if not her intentions. It is also known among local delvers that she was indeed part of a company that often descended into the Underhalls, and that the last time they did so she came back, only a tenday or two ago, bloodied and alone.
Those rare few who might be familiar with the works of the chapbook scribe Renowned Naursk (his name self-given, and often mocked accordingly) may recognize the name 'Bitter Floom' as a somewhat implausible vampiric flumph necromancer, the bane of several of his two-fisted dungeon-delving heroes (as we said, mocked accordingly). Bringing this to the attention of Tarntarra will not deter her in the slightest; she is deadly earnest in this endeavor, and any methods of arcane truth-telling or divine detection of falsehoods will reveal her as such. Whether this is due to her actual experience or her actual delusions remains unknown; it would seem the only way to find out is to accompany her into the depths.
"Illusionists that follow the darker paths can turn your entire lived experience inside-out in the most horrifying ways. There is indeed something down there in the depths, but you'd do well to prepare yourself for a spellcaster that can make you lose count of your fingers right in front of your face, rather than anything involving ridiculous notions of some 'vampiric flumph'."
(Durnan, if he's asked for his opinion – and he likes you or your companions well enough to give an answer)
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AJA
YAFRP
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Azar
Master of Realmslore
1309 Posts |
Posted - 31 May 2024 : 01:35:21
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"'Willy the Sharp' as we called him at the pub. Handy with a blade, but his tongue will cut you long before you enter arm's length.", remarked the eldest fellow - Jedreck - while lifting the tankard to his lips.
Gerab raised an impressed eyebrow; he figured that was the extent of expression he ought to risk sharing while in the company of men who chuckled about such matters. A knowing nod and a light smile from Radmus across the table confirmed that he had made the right play. |
Stand with anybody that stands right. Stand with him while he is right and part with him when he goes wrong.
Earth names in the Realms are more common than you may think. |
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AJA
Senior Scribe
USA
770 Posts |
Posted - 31 May 2024 : 23:27:28
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quote:
Originally posted by Azar
"'Willy the Sharp' as we called him at the pub. Handy with a blade, but his tongue will cut you long before you enter arm's length.", remarked the eldest fellow - Jedreck - while lifting the tankard to his lips.
Gerab raised an impressed eyebrow; he figured that was the extent of expression he ought to risk sharing while in the company of men who chuckled about such matters. A knowing nod and a light smile from Radmus across the table confirmed that he had made the right play.
He was quite the cutting linguist. The girls at the festhall couldn't help but whet themselves.
Sorry, that was a sleyvas-level joke. I feel bad now.
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AJA
YAFRP
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sleyvas
Skilled Spell Strategist
USA
11829 Posts |
Posted - 03 Jun 2024 : 14:12:17
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quote:
Originally posted by AJA
quote:
Originally posted by Azar
"'Willy the Sharp' as we called him at the pub. Handy with a blade, but his tongue will cut you long before you enter arm's length.", remarked the eldest fellow - Jedreck - while lifting the tankard to his lips.
Gerab raised an impressed eyebrow; he figured that was the extent of expression he ought to risk sharing while in the company of men who chuckled about such matters. A knowing nod and a light smile from Radmus across the table confirmed that he had made the right play.
He was quite the cutting linguist. The girls at the festhall couldn't help but whet themselves.
Sorry, that was a sleyvas-level joke. I feel bad now.
<a book appears floating in the air, flapping its pages like a mouth>
By Deneir, I feel tongue lashed! Thankfully I no longer have ears, or they might bleed.  |
Alavairthae, may your skill prevail
Phillip aka Sleyvas |
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AJA
Senior Scribe
USA
770 Posts |
Posted - 10 Jun 2024 : 01:23:49
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Halaror, The Hawk of The North
It has been said that the Tale of Halaror is long, but not particularly merry. The one humans call The Hawk of The North was a half-elf, born to elves in the High Forest. He was taught of sword and bow and magic by the elves, and he could walk between stripes of sunlight and shadow under the trees and so traverse great distances in the forest. But he was also cursed by a vengeful spirit of Aryvandaar of old and so there was always around him the smell of autumn and the scent of dying leaves, which to the elves was the sign of the Lord of Rot, so he left the forest and the elves and then did great deeds among men, who called him The Hawk and The Lord of Uktar.
In the Year of the Worm Halaror travelled to Dragonspear Castle, and he joined in the war against the devils there. He fought in the bloody battle at the River Redbanks but when the fighting ended he was gone, vanished and presumed dead or drowned in the river. Only his blade Nembras, long and straight and thin, was found, entangled in the marsh grass with the corpses of fallen men and devils. It is unknown who wields it now.
But Halaror had not died there at the river. Instead he had fallen in through the whispers and tannins of the Redbanks, far away to The Witch-Hazel Water – the Elrendeskath of elder elven singing, where Rillifane and Amorlil first learned of the subornations of sorcery, or The Greenlil, where Tapann fished nearby on one leg, in the deep pools for perch and sunfish.
Once there Halaror thought to challenge the water goblins of the Alder Swamp far below, to force his return to Faerûn proper, but due to his curse they believed that he was one of them and so he was allowed to travel the verges freely. But beyond the Alder Swamp and under The Witch-Hazel Water lair the Dark Fey of the Shadowlands, and they knew of his curse because they cast them of old, and it is in their clutches that his end finally came. Tapann knows this because he fished up his bones.
So if you should ever find yourself lost into The Witch-Hazel Water, before you challenge the riddles of the great and marbled primordial Malaurel or brave the water goblins of the Alder Swamp far below, be sure to ask the fern-fellows and the Speckled Folk of Halaror, The Hawk of The North. They will tell you of his tale.
Orlynnd
Sandy-brown hair and trimmed beard, warm brown eyes. A simple-song (novice bard) recently graduated from the college of New Olamn. Orlynnd is obsessed with Jade, the star dancing attraction of the eponymously-named Jade Dancer festhall in South Ward. He has convinced himself that the dancer is a real person, cursed by foul enchantment to dance and perform for her owner. As such, he has taken regular employment at the festhall and looks for any opportunity for even the briefest conversation with his obsession, or any sighting of whoever or whatever it is that controls her. If he spots a suitable company of adventurers among the crowd he may approach them, and try to enlist their services with wild tales of foul spell slavery and true, passionate romance.
Reskanther Orn
Proprietor of Orn's Interesting Ensorcellments, a small back-alley shop on Robin's Way, South Ward (sign of The Left Hand and The Upright Wand); formerly on the site of Two Fat Wizards, a failed potents-and-potables (alcoholic and alchemical drinks) establishment. The Ensorcellments stocks a variety of ingredients and components useful for spellcasting and alchemy – always reasonably fresh and potent, but varied by season and chance availability. They also carry an array of vital essences and tonics (mostly those dedicated to 'Preserving, Strengthening, Beautifying, or Restoring the HAIR and WHISKERS or MOUSTACHES', as well as coloring or preventing them turning grey, but also a number that alleviate limb-ache and tired feet and trail-blindness, and other Traveller's Woes), and in one large corner of the tiny shop stands a well-regarded tinkering operation for mending everyday pot and pan and other kitchen implement. This latter business is headed by Orn's two gnomish 'employees', the sisters Elrisk and Endrevva, and is the true source of the shop's regular income.
Orn himself is a short, thick-set man, so short and thick he could be mistaken for a dwarf. He has a youthful face that is scrunched down towards his chin, leaving an unnaturally large expanse of forehead towering above a pair of bright, inquisitive eyes and a well-groomed moustache. Elrisk and Endrevva are small and wrinkled, and quite sharp and sarcastic. They were here when the Two Fat Wizards were and, honestly, they liked the drinks then better than the tonics now. They have, however, learned to keep their snickers to themselves when Orn goes on his grandiose sales-pitch about HAIR and WHISKERS and MOUSTACHES.
The White Coursers of Valkur
Softslow and Windwails, or Olorus and Èndakra. At one time the human scouts of Valkur the Wave-Wander, who vanguarded him on his Twelfth Voyage and were then transformed therein. They often turn up in the legends and fey-fancies of both Valkur and Selûne, sent to aid a hero in need or present instead for their own mischief. It is often said that if one were to happen across them at random one might be able to engage the services of these strange white coursers, but when not directed by a deity their aims are their own, and seemingly decided at random.
In appearance the White Coursers are something not at all human, yet not equine either; they have long sleek, hairless bodies, heads elongated and horse-like, with prominent eyes and teeth and great trailing manes. Great sharp-ridged ribcages, flowing, curling, glossy tails, and great tufts of hair about their lower front and rear legs concealing not hoofs but stubby, prehensile, almost-human appendages.
The Coursers can run over great distances and never tire and, as their lower extremities never touch the ground unless they wish, they can run over swamp or chasm or the steepest mountain without issue, even across endless leagues of open sea. The pair do have intelligence, and can use their throat and broad, flexible tongue to speak in a thick slurred speech, enough for the most basic conversation, but usually prefer to express themselves in loud whinnying laugh of agreement or mockery. When pressed they can also produce a mighty roar, where their gaunt ribcages expand to great dimensions and the curling hair of their tails suddenly stands stiff and straight. The sound that comes forth then is enough to terrify most any man or animal before them, and greatly damages those creatures not born of this world.
It should be noted that, although they are far off in form and function, there have been occasional attempts by the churches of both Selûne and Valkur to claim Olorus and Èndakra as the progenitors of the asperii, the magical equine-like wind steeds. Several other faiths, notably that of Aerdrie Faenya, most strongly dispute this, as do most sages and naturalists learned in such things.
"Day after day they sailed past beautiful stars and planets, until one morning they came to a very large cluster of star islands, which were populated with herds of shaggy snow-white cows. And foremost among them was a great circular island, made entirely of glowing rock and breathless ice. Here then was finally The Island of the Moon, where the Goddess Herself sat and weaved and hummed in the crystal-cold darkness, and of such weavings are not only starlight and snowfall formed, but also dreams and ambitions of all manner.
Olorus and Èndakra, advanced beyond the others and heedless of the warnings of Valkur then moved forth at once, and both spoke aloud their steadfast desire to tame the goddess and to make of her their wife. Selûne did not pause in her weavings or her humming but did briefly unlid half an eye and affect the slightest curl of a lip, even as three of the fingers of her busy left hand waved in what could be described as a most challenging manner." (excepted from A Re-Reading of The Twelfth Voyage of Valkur Wave-Sailor, Translated From the Original Illuskan, Julstyyr of Asdurel, 1150DR)
The Worthy Stones
A group of travelling dwarven stonemasons and war-time sappers. Led by Darg Larukar, a dwarf formerly of the Adbarran legions (dark amber-toned skin. Furrowed brow, deep-set brown eyes and white-streaked brown beard bound into three neat braids. Garrulous for a dwarf, truly loves the arts of both building up things and tumbling them down).
The Stones are said to have recently taken their tools and their donkeys and their turquoise-and-orange wagons and travelled to the ruins of Old Summer (a former hunting lodge of the Deepwinter family of Waterdeep, in the foothills ringing the western High Moor) under the employ of the Company of the Flaming Glow-Worm, the adventurers who recently cleared and claimed the dilapidated buildings, and who now seem intent on using them as a base to launch further expeditions into the Moor (in addition, the leader of the company, the Illuskan warrior Torzald – who insists that everyone address him as "Orcsbane" – wants to have the name "Orcsbane's Den" prominently engraved over the vaulted main entrance of the compound, but there seems to be some great disagreement on that latter point).
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AJA
YAFRP
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AJA
Senior Scribe
USA
770 Posts |
Posted - 23 Jun 2024 : 01:22:10
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Dulnatha
Playwright and head of a local troupe in her native Baldur's Gate in the early 1200s. In 1231DR she was acting lead in the play The Briskbroom of Doom when she was possessed by the vengeful spirit of Bernethel Briskbroom herself, the crazed fishmonger whose various offenses against Man and the gods were once committed in the buildings just next door. The revenant went on quite the rampage before being forcibly unembodied by armsmen of The Flaming Fist. Dulnatha along with her, unfortunately. This incident, of course, is the reason why city ordinances to this day state that no play of true historical or supernatural significance shall be performed within less than six city streets (not counting alleyways, loading lanes or oubliettes) from their inciting location. And also why the play The Briskbroom of Doom hasn't been performed anywhere in the city since. Can't be too careful, you see.
Hlashra of Teziir
Wrote The Conqueror (1247DR, a history of the strategies and politics of the Calishite Qysar Shoon V) and Rulers of Kings (1251DR, a political treatise about how Workers-of-Art inevitably rise to the power behind the throne). Not a spellcaster herself, but definitely held them in great regard. Died in 1259DR, thrown overboard and drowned when the ship she was aboard was attacked in Tazaiir Harbor during a pirate attack. This was doubly unfortunate as she had in her possession at the time the only known copy of Marcammar's Ode To The Spell-Wode, a treatise of the later Netherese Shadowed Age which discussed not only their increasing tortures and twistings of what would afterwards come to be understood as The Weave, but was also the first to examine the great societal pressures– and greater lengths – the arcanists of those later Ages went through to not only create but also differentiate their own "unique, bespoke" spells from a dozen or more already known and named (and also the real-time common desire to find an elder spell to unfavorably compare these new creations to, and to reduce them instead to a quick, preferably pithy, smallname).
Marcammar's Ode was known to hold a sampling of such spells, including the only extant (spellbook worthy) copies of Baebert's Great Gathering Of Diamond Fire (Baebert's Brilliant Ball), Daztreiya's Forced Gazing Into Unthinkable Depths (Daztreiya's Defenstration), Rigelorn's Great Swarm of Gleaming Points (Rigelorn's Pincushion), and Endelmiira's Inconceivable In The Blackness Before Us (Endelmiira's Summon Grue IV). Mystrans everywhere wept.
Marcammar did as well (well technically he didn't, as he's been a lich for a long while now and they aren't really capable of such things. But he would have if he could). The good news is, you still might be able to get those spells from him if you ask nicely. The...lets say, unfortunate, news is...you'd probably have to ask his master, Larloch, first.
Nordro Teltammar
Author of Far Away To Leeward, a first-hand account as the only survivor of the whale-ship Upright Undreld. In 1317DR, Nordro found himself violently stranded upon the bleak, frozen harbor of Scant-Bread, far from the proper shipping lanes to Ironmaster, where his eyes were constantly drawn to the 'horrid, wicked brightness of the devil-realms to the north' (apparently both his name for, and his reaction to, the northern lights), and his mind constantly assaulted by the twin horrors of the frozen depths and the ever-burning horizon, magnified by delirium and starvation. He was eventually succored by the Ruathymaar ice-wender ship Star-Thistle in 1321DR; he scratched the final passages in his fevered manuscript upon his return to Neverwinter, and expired not long thereafter.
The priests summoned to his squalid quarters after his death were unable to detect any foul play (including any whiff of brimstone or scorch-mark upon the furniture), but they did huddle and take note of the deep and reddened finger-marks clawed criss-cross into the smoke-stained plaster of the ceiling (the freshest, and most frantic of which, were dug in deep enough to come near to driving through the ceiling-boards – perhaps one last desperate attempt to gain sight of that horrid, wicked brightness, of the devil-realms to the north).
Steldra
Native of Trades Ward. A washer-woman's daughter, born and raised into the trade. She quickly outshined her mother in matters of writing and numbers for the business, and so gained the eye of Brymb of Berdusk, a local 'small-spells' mage-for-hire and amateur philosopher (and frequent sight in the tankard houses of Trades Ward, where he was known to hold court on a wide variety of topics). Brymb took her under his wing as an apprentice, and introduced her to the professional mysteries of both writing and witticism.
From there she grew to be the prolific author of the wildly popular Magician series of chapbooks (A Magician Most Splendid; A Magician In Disbelief; The Magician and The Daughter of Dawn; The Magician and The Sons of The Sea; The Magician Continues; A Magician Every So Often; A Magician Turns Towards Sunset, all published under the printing auspices of Tym Waterdeep Limited). Her final offering was meant to put a capstone on the series, but it was later revived without her involvement by her former publishers and a new-hired scribe in an effort to sell more copy. The Magician Adventures Again! was the result, but reviews and readership were both less than kind, and so thankfully put an abrupt end to any further exploitations.
Steldra also contributed a number of other fantasticals to various broadsheets of the city, but none caught the imagination of the reader as did The Magician (and so goes the fortunes of a chap-writer). Facing lesser returns and lesser payments she eventually retired from writing and spent time as a lay-person at the House of Knowledge, performing menial acts and attending to the master scribes of the Scriptorum there, before being hired on as a tutor and minder for the children of House Moonstar (her employment was championed by the lady Talmeira, a great fan of her writing and sister of Lord Helve), a position she still occupies to the current day.
The Lady Talmeira also offered a hefty sum of gold (more than Steldra had made in total from the entirety of her chap-book career) for the penning of two brand-new adventures of The Magician. Steldra, having no real desire to revisit such things but also being no fool, quickly wrote out The Magician Comes to House Moonstar and The Magician In The Dragon's Den. Both manuscripts are now ensconced in the library of the House, and only those privileged enough to have been invited into the parlor of the Lady Talmeira have heard her readings from such rare works.
Steldra, for her part, finds great satisfaction in the minding of her young charges and enjoys the fawnings of Lady Talmeira. Several other nobles have made secretive overtures to hire her away, but she knows they are not true fans of her writings and only seek the social one-upmanship such an act would provide, and as so has turned down their offers. She instead delights in alerting her Lady to such schemings, and in watching the subtle, yet devastating, social responses that follow.
Tolaranda
Cormyrean playwright, wrote the popular comedic plays Highsun, Your Highness, A Knight So Brave, Sune In Spring-Time, and Tell Me, Hast Thou? A notorious philanderer and lech who not only seduced various noble and wealthy women, but often cozened them out of a number of their valuables. Was caught by Lord Blacksilver inappropriately engaged with his young daughter at a royal ball, dragged down to Lake Azoun, and had a boat anchor tied round her neck. Lord Blacksilver placed his daughter's undergarments in one hand and his daughter's necklace, earrings and other valuables in the other, and told Tolaranda she could choose one to take with her. Tales vary on which handful Tolaranda chose. Audiences at her plays still throw either undergarments or cheap costume jewelry on stage as the actors gather for a final bow, in memory of this.
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AJA
YAFRP
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sleyvas
Skilled Spell Strategist
USA
11829 Posts |
Posted - 24 Jun 2024 : 18:20:39
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| Love Steldra. Part of me wants to have her secretly having a "ghost writer" who is helping her (as in like a weaveghost who relays stories to her). But then the other part of me thinks that cheapens her. BTW love Tym Waterdeep Limited. |
Alavairthae, may your skill prevail
Phillip aka Sleyvas |
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AJA
Senior Scribe
USA
770 Posts |
Posted - 25 Jun 2024 : 22:09:54
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quote:
Originally posted by sleyvas
Love Steldra. Part of me wants to have her secretly having a "ghost writer" who is helping her (as in like a weaveghost who relays stories to her). But then the other part of me thinks that cheapens her. BTW love Tym Waterdeep Limited.
Thanks. I have a House Moonstar lineage that I pick up every so often to tinker with, and so Steldra recently ended up as a part of that. Yes, I would think having a 'ghost-writer' would lessen her character. But it is a fun concept that could easily work for another.
Or what if Murder, She Wrote, but instead of just Angela Lansbury you had a human writer and a weaveghost detective? Or is that too similar to your Jillian Doncastle and her animated sai?
Tym Waterdeep Limited is a Brian Thomsen(?) creation, seen in the Realms Of Magic anthology among others. The head honcho is a halfling named...'Justin Tym'. I am not a fan, but it is what it is.
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AJA
YAFRP
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sleyvas
Skilled Spell Strategist
USA
11829 Posts |
Posted - 26 Jun 2024 : 13:42:01
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quote:
Originally posted by AJA
quote:
Originally posted by sleyvas
Love Steldra. Part of me wants to have her secretly having a "ghost writer" who is helping her (as in like a weaveghost who relays stories to her). But then the other part of me thinks that cheapens her. BTW love Tym Waterdeep Limited.
Thanks. I have a House Moonstar lineage that I pick up every so often to tinker with, and so Steldra recently ended up as a part of that. Yes, I would think having a 'ghost-writer' would lessen her character. But it is a fun concept that could easily work for another.
Or what if Murder, She Wrote, but instead of just Angela Lansbury you had a human writer and a weaveghost detective? Or is that too similar to your Jillian Doncastle and her animated sai?
Tym Waterdeep Limited is a Brian Thomsen(?) creation, seen in the Realms Of Magic anthology among others. The head honcho is a halfling named...'Justin Tym'. I am not a fan, but it is what it is.
Yeah, that would be dead on too close to my Jillian and Lorey Hisstory. I was also playing with the idea of her actually uncovering a spellbook that was possessed by the spirit of its own (i.e. the Mage), but again that would be too close to my Sleyvas. Still, I love the character.... and actually having her interacting with my own NPC's would be damned fun now that you mention it. Especially given that Jillian is a mage-priestess of Deneir and a weaveghost, and Steldra went to work in the House of Knowledge, it fits quite easily.
I could see it where Sleyvas might speak to her of spell battles and what he or his opponents did, and then she adapts that into stories about a character with an entirely different personality.
Another idea using this premise... what I've been playing with is that over the past century, Jillian, Lorey, and Sleyvas have been performing missions on both Abeir and Toril in service to the gods of magic. It might be interesting if they were relaying stories of the the people of Toril in Abeir interacting with avatars of lost gods (as in people hosting the godly spirits). What do I mean by that?
A Magician Most Splendid;
A Magician In Disbelief; - the magician (a metahel "rune magician") has to interact against the machinations of mortal avatars serving as hosts for Leira and Savras
The Magician and The Daughter of Dawn; - the magician (a metahel "rune magician") has to aid the mortal avatar serving as host for the metahel god Faerthandir (which the novel gives numerous links to Lathander)
The Magician and The Sons of The Sea; - the magician (a metahel "rune magician") has to aid two metahel whalers sharing a birthday (one adopted) and whose mothers died in childbirth during "the time of blue fire". They were both raised by the elder brother of one of the two, who was a half-Poscadari elf. This elder brother is captured by an invading dragon and its dragonborn soldiers and taken away. The "Sons of the Sea" and "the Magician" must go on a sea voyage across "the boiling sea" (a place of freak storms and whirlpools) to a strange new continent called Shyr to rescue their elder brother. A defining moment comes when the magician discovers that the two "Sons of the Sea" and herself can all trace their bloodline back to the same grandfather, a man who had briefly appeared in each of their tribes during the time of troubles. She begins to wonder if their grandfather was really an avatar of Thoros, Lord of Thunder and Lightning.
The Magician Continues; - after crossing the "boiling sea" with some aid from a powerful "spirit"/"goddess"/"primordial" of the sea named Yaernsacsa, the party lands on the continent of Shyr. Meanwhile, the elder brother escapes from the dragon realms to the realm of Carngor and begins raising an army to help him return home. Ultimately the two groups meet up as the dragon lord that originally invaded catches up to the elder brother and wants to retrieve something he stole. The magician finally makes contact with the goddess Thoordra Thorosdottir, goddess of runes, and with her aid she creates a rune which entraps the dragon to remain in one location.
A Magician Every So Often; - Finding her magic still periodically failing, the magician is told that she must help the gods "anchor magic to make it stable". She meets a weaveghost who claims to have been a mage-priestess of Deneir, a foreign god of runes and symbol magic, and her animated sai, Lorey Hisstory. They go on missions to find powerful divine artifacts.
A Magician Turns Towards Sunset - The magician decides to leave Anchorome and discover more about the world by following the sun as it sets over the horizon. She and a group of metahel sailors set sail and follow the coast south to lands known as Maztica, Lopango, and Katashaka. |
Alavairthae, may your skill prevail
Phillip aka Sleyvas |
Edited by - sleyvas on 26 Jun 2024 23:06:09 |
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Azar
Master of Realmslore
1309 Posts |
Posted - 02 Jul 2024 : 01:55:26
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"So officious and preoccupied with contracts was he that he earned the name 'Paper Tyrant' behind his back."
"I imagine he was not fond of that appellation."
"No, he was not. Soon enough the mouths that mocked most learned that even paper can cut." |
Stand with anybody that stands right. Stand with him while he is right and part with him when he goes wrong.
Earth names in the Realms are more common than you may think. |
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AJA
Senior Scribe
USA
770 Posts |
Posted - 04 Jul 2024 : 00:42:11
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quote:
Originally posted by Azar
"So officious and preoccupied with contracts was he that he earned the name 'Paper Tyrant' behind his back."
"I imagine he was not fond of that appellation."
"No, he was not. Soon enough the mouths that mocked most learned that even paper can cut."
Namarda looked down at the scroll before her.
The contents were odd enough, but the seal at the bottom was one she had not seen before. It was very purple and very pronounced, fashioned like a series of overlapping circles, and it threatened to obscure the entire lower half of the document.
And the contract itself. This was just a standard bond between an outgoing caravan and a financing moneylender. The usual six paragraphs of fiduciary outlay and assumed risks along with seven statements listing all known deferments of cause, monstrous or deific or otherwise, and then three more to line out all gate polls and tax-related obligations from city to city. This was the established format that had been in use for ages, since the caravanserai were united under the Seltaph and The Great Trade Road was born.
So why was it so… officious? It was overwrought and overwritten, the simple standard speech turned as purple as the color of the seal that overlapped it. She had never read anything like it. Of course, she had only been here at the Tower for a short amount of time but she had plenty of training and this was just, well, just…
"Absurd," she said aloud, as she held the scroll up and began to turn in her chair. Absolutely absurd. The Overseer must be made to look at this.
The scrape of her turning chair leg stopped with a startled squeak as her attempt to rise met with sudden, unexpected resistance. Namarda flinched with the suddenness of it and jerked around to see what had obstructed her.
A short, squat man stood behind her, his arms clasped behind his back and his sandaled foot wedged up against the leg of her chair. A pleasant, practiced smile dominated the lower half of his face, while just above his eyes were hidden behind a rather large pair of spectacles.
He wore the carefully pleated robes of the Underwriters.
The Underwriters were employed on the Floor below, and by rule were almost never seen among the Reviewers. Namarda wondered what he was doing here, and for one startled moment wondered if it were she herself who had somehow ended up on the wrong Floor.
"Excuse me," the man said, as he leaned down quite close over her and adjusted the overlapping lenses of his glasses. From where she sat they looked very round, and very purple. His smile had not changed in the slightest, but to Namarda it had somehow grown very wide and quite predatory.
"Is there an issue here?"
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AJA
YAFRP
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AJA
Senior Scribe
USA
770 Posts |
Posted - 07 Jul 2024 : 01:29:29
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Danthaldara
Stole into the Garden of the Cloud-Shadows where is hidden the Loom Colossal, which once wove the deepest vasts of the midnight sky, and broke the ancient seals on fey Maealda's iridescent horns and filled her pockets full of patches of color, before slipping down the mountainside which ever-after bore hues of red, yellows, and pinks. Arsmund sung of her. Mogarna was her child and painted the most vivid paintings, some of which can still be viewed today in the Glorious Tower of Amn and inspired the Radiant Mogs, the school of muralists that arose in her lifetime and still persists. Fey Maealda still persists as well, and has made it her one remaining dread to recover every drop of not only those colors which were stolen from her, but every tint later inspired from them.
Neirorla, Night-Terror of Shar
She Who Lids The Eye ('for when night makes the eye useless, then come the goblins'). A priestess of Shar currently gaining status (and notice) in the heirarchy. Neirorla travels to towns and villages across the trade-roads of the North under guise of a road-wise tinker – Nebla, sometimes, or Tierla or Annathete. She sets down her blanket in inn or hayloft for a few weeks or so at a time and lids her sorcerous eye, sending out nightmares and near-sleep visions; deaths of loved ones, loss of harvests, financial ruin and other vivid hauntings. From the sweats of these terrors she gathers to her essences of fright and fear, tinctures and toxins of hopelessness and despair.
She donates such foul materials to her senior Nightseers and trades them to warlocks and lower-planar beings in exchange for sorcerous enchantments, binding favors, and rare abyssal goods. She is said to be guarded by two shadow fiends that she can call forth as it pleases her. These may be her servants or they may be the means by which she trades through the Lower Planes. Believed to be the current favorite to one day replace the existing Nightseer of the Dessarin, Emharthla The Dolorous Mystery, in their office.
Pelphlorn the Great Obscurity, Lord of the Reborn Age of Netheril
One of the first archmages to gain power after The Fall, in the new arcane order under the Risen Mystra. He gathered many of the roving bands and scattered settlements around him and declared a Reborn Age, one where he would seek out the New Ways and raise himself and his followers back into the skies as was their destiny. To prove himself thus he sought counsel from Shashandrae Ruil, The Last Witch of Dreaming Selûne (Netherese Selûne, the Selûne of the Prophecies), and was sent forth on his trials but lost his way to the riddles of the beholder-kin Gomburr and Nalgo (one of whom always lies and one of which always tells the truth). He and his entourage disappeared there into the porphyry desolation under what was once the Nalvron Marsh – the Flailtails Marsh, where both the cattails and the cat-kin once flicked their spikey tails in the lazy summer hazes that no longer lie there. Nalgo sometimes claims he ate the last cattail of the marsh, there at the last dying pool where the waters bled away into the dust; Gomburr says that he ate the last cat-kin, instead.
Without his guiding vision and arcane might Pelphlorn's 'Reborn Age' quickly withered and vanished like all else in the Anauroch wastes; his successor was his least apprentice, Lord Drelmarr of Great Zurr, who was assassinated three times (his guards weren't very effective, but his resurrectionists certainly were) and then that was the end of that. His name was widely known in Anauria and Asram for a time, but is almost entirely forgotten today. The beholder-kin Gomburr and Nalgo may still remember him, but then again they may claim to not.
Raeoriel
A mystic of Mystra and self-professed 'rejecter of waking reality'. "For I have touched the reaches of sleep and dream, awake behind the spaces of future nights". Travelled the Realms, gifting black cats strength and tenacity and transforming iris into butterflies, banded with blue and orange. On the eve of her death she joyously chose to be reborn as a wingless wonder, her only demand of her goddess to be graced with twelve tentacles, instead of nine.
Whelkspur
A purveyor to the Watchful Order of Waterdeep, specifically in the fields of artifice and arcane alignments. Specializes in crafting or sourcing obscure oddiments of the trade, geometric instruments like spell mitres and helical amberines, engines of elemental deburring, even the occasional extremely rare replica of Osmelgo's chamfer. It is not known where his workshop is located, but he can be contacted by leaving notice at the Tower of the Order or at the private Turnback Court parlor of the sage Méthos of Neverwinter.
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AJA
YAFRP
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AJA
Senior Scribe
USA
770 Posts |
Posted - 14 Jul 2024 : 02:26:24
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quote:
Originally posted by AJA
Danthaldara
Danthaldown
Ruined Selûnite monastery on the banks of the Jesseleor (the Fairy Dancer of the elves, a rattling, stony, iridescent tributary of the Rauvin) in the northeastern reaches of the Evermoors, near to Red Lion's Harrow (a low-lying area of woody marsh and thick, impassable copses of stunted, twisted trees where Red Lion once roamed, before Red Tiger and his powerful cultists finally cornered him, and severed the sinew from his bones).
The Down, Danthaldara's Down, was originally the private hold of the adventuress Danthaldara, built near to the Star-Top Tor ('where on clear nights the moonlight gathers, and spatters, and dances all along its' pointed crest') and held by her against all enemies. Danthaldara moved on after she considered her daughter Mogarna sufficiently reared, leaving her instead in the care of the supplicant Selûnites that had gathered around her, come to ponder and praise the mysteries of the starlit tor. Those Selûnites then raised the walls higher and expanded the orchard, creating a holy redoubt of the faith and swelling the ranks of their initial dozen with more than a hundred new faithful, each one more starry-eyed and eager than the next.
The moonpriests ably defended their isolated home just as Danthaldara had, against troll and giant and fell moor-beast, until a massed orc attack in 1066 finally overcame the walls and put the monastery, and the orchard, and many of the faithful to the torch. Danthaldaras' collection of Lost Years was destroyed by the invaders, as were the starry walls and moonfish the child Mogarna had painted along the original kitchen and dining hall, burnt and charred beyond recognition. The Year of Untied Robes and The Year of The Inspired Sendak, in particular, were singled out as 'a loss most terrible' by no less an eminence than the lady Alustriel of Silverymoon. The priestess Laeruna Moonstar and her husband Palduran Hunthund were among those slain in the attack. Their child Raelorna, a paladin of the White Order, fought and survived and shepherded many of the others to safety, down the banks of the Jesselor and on across the Rauvin towards the settlement of High Hold.
[ ref: Prayers From The Faithful p.64, "Danthaldown (a now-vanished Selûnite monastery)"; Silver Marches p.23, "Another, called Startop due to the way moonlight dances on its distinctive pointed tip on clear nights" ]
Laeruna Moonstar [b.1013/d.1066]
(lay-ROONA) Second child of Valadorn/Sharthaea. Faithful of the Moonmaiden. Acolyte at the Waterdhavian temple for a time before journeying to serve at Danthaldown. Married Palduran Hunthund (HUN-thunnd) [b.?/d.1066] in 1040DR, 2 children – Palduran Talmost and Raelorna. Killed in an orc attack on the monastery.
Raelorna Moonstar [b.1044/d.1076]
(rey-LORN-na) Second child of Laeruna/Palduran. A paladin like her father (the White Order, The Knights of Selûne Argent). Two devoted lovers, Jarlarra (died to wyvern attack), and Aumadros (died in the Amnian Moneytrader's Plague), no children. Passed her holy blade on to the aasimar Nelquaera "Etherial-Born", also of the White Order, upon her mortal wounding in combat during the The Battle of Winter Fields against the Black Boar tribe (The Battle of Deep Drifts, The Battle of Two Day's Snowfall).
Red Lion
Most modern legends, although not those of the Uthgardt, conflate Red Lion and Red Tiger as the same being. It would be more accurate to say that Red Lion was to orc beast-cultists as Red Tiger is to human beast-cultists. Danthaldara seized the land that she built her home on from the orc Lion cultists, which is why they finally returned in force, in 1066, to regain their sacred ground near The Harrow. They had hoped that by restoring their claim to the land and to the Star-Top Tor (The Lion's Sharp-Stone, in their telling; 'ozheg-zheg, ozheg-zheg hiss his talons across the tor, raising sacred sparks far in the night, a challenge unveiled before the stars') Red Lion would return to guide them. Unfortunately for them Red Lion was long dead by that time; lessened by Tauraven and less his fang, then cornered and conquered by Red Tiger, and without his divine aid the orc tribe, greatly weakened in their assault on the monastery, were soon attacked, scattered, and slain in turn by raiding giants.
Even the tumbled stones of Danthaldown are now largely gone, disappeared into the undergrowth or gathered up and thrown at passing trolls by the giants of the moor, in their idle sporting amusements.
Tauraven (re-posted from 09 Apr 2019)
A northern slayer of legend. Said to have been raised in the northern wilds by a pride of crag-cats (from whom he learned his mighty battle roar). A popular subject of high-adventure Waterdhavian chapbooks (Tauraven the Terrible, Tauraven Triumphant, and Tauraven and the Lost City of Orphar, to name a few), in which he is floridly (and near-constantly) described as "mithril-thewed." It is also claimed that he fashioned the legendary Red Coat of Tauraven from the pelt of Red Lion, after he defeated the Uthgardt totem god in single combat.
The Red Coat of Tauraven
A magnificent furred crimson cloak hooded by a bejeweled lions head, said to have been fashioned from the pelt of the beast-god Red Lion by the northern slayer Tauraven. It is not known where exactly the lions head itself came from, as Red Lion was known to have kept his even after his humiliating disrobing.
Tauraven was blunt and direct in all things, and the crafting of his cloak was no different. The Red Coat is indeed magnificent as befit his mighty status as a slayer, but its enchantments turned out to be quite utilitarian; resistance to all wind and weather-related discomforts up to the dedicated divine wrath of a deity such as Auril; concealment from the eyes ears and smell of man and all natural, dire, or were- beasts when the wearer wraps themselves up in it and takes their sleep; and certain fighting, tracking, and endurance enhancements when blood (of the wearer or their opponents) has been spilled in combat. These abilities suited Tauraven quite well, but sages learned in such things almost universally lament what they consider the waste of such a potent item, for such underwhelming returns.
Lionsfang (re-posted from 14 Jan 2023)
In some folk tales, after Red Lion loses his pelt to the slayer Tauraven he retreats to Ithûval to lick his wounds and recuperate. He begs a cauldron of fish stew from the lord's wife, giving her as payment his right foremost fang. This is later forged into the bastard sword called Lionsfang (The Lion's Bite in some older sources), still the prized and most sought-after relic of House Cassalanter, descendants of the lords of Ithûval and greatest proponents of this tale. Needless to say, it is best told away from the hearing of any Uthgardt of the Red Lion tribe.
Milkily translucent, like moonstone. Retains inherent memory of the blood and taste of every species and race ever bested by Red Lion, and hungers and strikes accordingly. Growls and grumbles when stalking or having sampled afresh the blood of such prey, bringing terrors of death and sharply increased fear to those so marked.
Ithûval
A mighty castle located 'somewhere' (tales vary) in the North, on the threshold of the Bracken Wilds, the dense, ferny thickets of emerald and crimson and bronze and deep, shadowy places "where the goblinfolk creep and scuttle", whose many sons and daughters, the collected Lords of Ith, roamed the land and did battle and great deeds, as are told of in bard's songs to this very day.
"Ithûval, Ithûval, where the star-light shone fair" (Of Ith and Uth, and Other Kingdoms of Old, Zeltabbar Iliphar, 1347DR)
House Cassalanter likes to claim descent from the mighty Ith Lords, but this is based largely off of nothing more than their former ownership of the legendary sword Lionsfang and their long years of trying to 'brightshine' their humble origins as fisherfolk and (later) moneylenders, arrived to the city from somewhere far to the south of wherever Ithûval and The Bracken Wilds may have been.
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quote:
Originally posted by AJA
Mogarna was her child and painted the most vivid paintings
Mogarna
Mogarna was eight when her mother left her in the care of the moon-priests, and fifteen when she decided that she had had enough of temple life and was old enough to seek out her own way in the world. She was certainly her mother's child, in that regard. On her trek across the Evermoors she was captured by some giants and held for cooking at a grand feast when a visiting cloud giant, the honored guest in whose name the feast was being held, caught sight of her passing the time before her roasting by painting otherworldly images upon the walls of her cell. This giant, known to all across the North as the legendary Great Blue Lotos (Ancient of Water and Stone, Gnasher of Mountain and Sky), was so taken with her talents that he granted her freedom, and swore that he would take her anywhere in the Realms she wished to go. Mogarna said to him that she wished to be taken to one who knew to use colors the way that she imagined them in her mind, and so Great Blue Lotos took her upon his dragon mount and delivered her far to the South, to the giant-blooded magician Naulonga of Ormpur (who bore a thin slot upon her neck where her evil eye came to leer, but kept her canvas clean and smooth, and brushed her colors in such enigmatic angles that even the pixies and darkling in their most chaotic moods came to sit and watch in silence as she crafted).
After her tutelage Mogarna travelled to Amn, where she honed her craft and made her name, and many came to learn at her feet and took to calling themselves the Radiant Mogs. Of this, much has already been written. There are many tomes dedicated to the subject in the libraries of Candlekeep and Calimport and, as such, I will not bother to recap it here.
That, of course, was all a very long time ago. But Mogarna still lives today. She still has her talent, if not her burning passion, and now spends entirely too much time instead in the festhalls of Almraiven, drinking and betting on sarlgo slug-racing.
She still paints, but such things are perfunctory and done only to pay for the most egregious of her outstanding debts, just enough to take the sting out of her tabs for rent and for the bar-bills rung up largely through buying wine for her fellow drunks and gamblers. One day her hands will fail to properly hold a brush and deliver a painting, and then those who have long waited will come to collect from her. The demons who would avidly watch her work through the evil eye, in the thin slit upon the neck of Naulonga, or the resident beholder Crown-of-Mauve, to whom most of her sarlgo-debts belong to, to name a few.
But before that happens, she is still available for your adventurers to commission just the most marvelous mural to christen their new digs up on Trollskull Alley. All you need to gain her attention is a breathless tale of adventure and the seed of an inspiration.
A grand inspiration, of course. Probably best to have the bard describe it, if you've got one in your party. An attractive priest of Selûne or Tymora couldn't hurt, either. Oh, and a few potions of longevity, she definitely likes those. And the repayment of a couple of her outstanding sarlgo debts… mostly just the ones that require a bit more than a sum of gold to make good.
In return, you will receive a masterpiece like no one has seen in a generation, if not more. Perhaps Ordoth Towering Above The Clouds, or Ashruth Calling Hawks From The Sky, maybe even Jelaith Giving Life To Sunflowers. It will be the talk of the city for absolute months. No guarantee on which one you will get though, and definitely no take-backsies if a certain vengeful arch-fey should come a-calling, seeking to rip the colors out of your walls. And also the unworthy eyes out of your skull.
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AJA
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Edited by - AJA on 11 Aug 2024 02:17:15 |
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sleyvas
Skilled Spell Strategist
USA
11829 Posts |
Posted - 15 Jul 2024 : 18:12:17
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| ooo... multiple linked entries... I need to read this when I'm less sleepy, but color me intrigued with the red lion stuff. |
Alavairthae, may your skill prevail
Phillip aka Sleyvas |
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AJA
Senior Scribe
USA
770 Posts |
Posted - 29 Jul 2024 : 04:02:17
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MISC'LLANEA
That's Not Why I'm Writing These Books! Edition
"That was the thing I wanted to put in and the editor at the time said, 'oh, this has nothing to do with the main plot. Out it goes!' I was like, that's not why I'm writing these books! I'm not writing these books to get from 'A' to 'B'....I'm writing a story here"
Ed Greenwood, Mages & Sages podcast 'A Night With Ed And The Gang', Oct. 2021
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"I have spent my quiver," Deneir said to Oddalroar with a sly smile," and all that is left for me now is to re-feather my quills, and to re-imp my feathers. The festhalls of the Human Realms are for that sort of thing. Feathering, that is."
"Imping, on the other hand" The Lord of Literature paused briefly as he gathered himself and re-adjusted his well-acquainted hat, "That is best reserved with a bottle of good wine and the wildest fancies of dreamers all across the Nighttime Realms."
The god Deneir to Oddalroar of the Bent Verses
excerpted from the play, For All The Whimsies
penned by Mimbrusk Mellethorn
Year of the Waking Wrath, 1214DR
"The potatoes in the pot
And a little piece of pork
This will keep our bellies hot
This is how we fight like orc!"
Traditional hunting-camp song of the Bitter Breathings orc tribe
who till and farm the deep river valley known as The Iron Foamings, one of the origins of the River Rauvin
where pork and pork-like things run wild through the upper reaches of the Stone Dreads
in the Rauvin Mountains, east of Felbarr
The gathered parted and drew back as a great fisher blent, grim and red-feathered, with breast of birch and burnished brass feet, came forth to counsel Shylryyr in their own otherworldly fashion. "Human. Manling. The red violet sprays / in the woods where / the white bride lies waiting. This. It has been heard."
Shylryyr looked upon the blent and thought it had such an odd, wrinkled, youthful face. She had never seen one in person before. 'In the woods where the white bride lies a-wait'. There was a memory there. That was a song her mother would sing to her in her youth. Her mother never spoke to her otherwise.
The gathered drew back in, their subdued conversations resumed. The fisher blent had gone. Shylryyr's head pounded and her vision swum as more memories suddenly descended towards her.
Amleskra of Tauntorl
The Meanings of White Hawthorns and Red Cows
Year of the Persuasive Voice, 1133DR
The night lay clear across the fields. Goodness No lay clear across the farmhand she had just finished bedding, nestled deep in a haystack which was just witness to the thrill of a lifetime. She looked up at the spangled sky overhead, the stars rocking to and fro in time to the heaving breaths of the body beneath her.
"I wonder, is this what the bards mean when they say that 'Sune warms even the coldest night'"? he asked.
"Well, I suppose that depends on what kind of nights you are accustomed to", she replied.
Maddyl of Old Covenant Hall
The Glorious Adventures of Goodness No
Year of the Wandering Maiden, 1337DR
"And so the son of the White Bear Ukammu travelled to the strange southern lands and returned with the horns and antlers of many strange southern creatures, of purple and gold and blue and crystal, and decorated his lodge with such trophies as no one had ever seen before. And his most prized possession from those wanderings was a horn unlike any other, all bright and glittering, and as silver as the moon. He proudly claimed it forfeit from a mighty god of the southern lands, an eminence which bore the great horn of Father Narwhal but walked the earth on four legs as did Mother Bear, and he afterwards fashioned it into a great spear and carried it as his weapon.
And Enkannu's reign was long and satisfactory, and it grew to include a number of other lodges and it brought prosperity and health, until one day a stranger came to his lodge from the far south. And this southerner was tall and graceful and terrible, and her hair was as silver as the moon. She sat herself in his lodge and told Enkannu of her bond to the horn-goddess he had slain, and of how irreplaceable a loss to the great uskumé, the great green cradle, it was, and of how his life was so now forfeit. And Enkannu heard her and trembled, for he alone saw upon her brow a crown of dark horns, the gift of foresight he had been given from his mother the White Bear Ukammu, and he alone knew that the one before him now was a vessel for the dark powers of the land.
But Enkannu was a warrior foremost and he was a true son of the White Bear, and so he settled his heart and rose from his antlered chair, and he drew forth his great spear and answered to her challenge."
excerpted from 'Enkannu, Lord of Many Horns',
faithfully transcribed from the oral histories of the Ice Hunters, and published courtesy of the Waterdhavian chapboook Buckle-Board Fancies
by Haelausk Maurrn, Shivering Scribe of the Northern Realms
Year of the Sword, 1365DR
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AJA
YAFRP
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AJA
Senior Scribe
USA
770 Posts |
Posted - 11 Aug 2024 : 02:17:42
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The Sentence That Sits In The Woods
In the northeastern High Forest, in the old wood of pine and oak, tall and dense, there is the slightest break in the forest where only the occasional shaft of sunlight penetrates the deep shade. And right in the middle of that occasional shaft of errant sunlight sits a squat, weathered, ancient plinth. It may have once been precisely carved, it may have once been quite ornate, but all that remains now is an irregular, slightly-slumped plug of moss-cloaked stone. And deep and direct into that stone, even to this very day, are carved the words,
"and the deeds of my age shall be known by the echoing screams in eternity, limned in eldritch fire and molded in the blackness of death"
The name engraved beneath is simply, 'Karsus', same as the Failed God that brought about the Fall of the grand empire of Netheril. These words are not loross, as the Neth and their children used, they are some alien tongue that requires the casting of a read languages spell to comprehend.
There is no enchantment upon the plinth, there is no magic in the words. There is nothing to tie Karsus the Mad to this region of the Tall Trees. There is, literally, only The Sentence That Sits In The Woods.
On Grim-Sides
High on Uldarin, the westwardmost-leaning peak of the Sword Mountains, there is a steep rock face on whose steep grim sides grow neither pine nor purchase. On the impossible rock here rests a woman, a most ancient woman, sitting with her hands folded together in her lap. She wears a black robe and the pale streaks of the stars run in her hair, and the cormorants of the sea come to nest upon her shoulders.
Now and again the woman raises her eyes and looks out over the sea; now and again she sighs and looks back down to her folded hands. Where she looks is not known. What she sighs for is unrecorded.
The tides run on the same, regardless.
The One-Hundred and Fifty Storm-Shivers
A scattering of bleak wave-lashed rocks and fearful storm-battered peaks deep in the Trackless Sea (sometimes referred to in older legend as 'the emaciated bones of Antaskrou, the Great Witch of The Unshrouded Seas'). There are not exactly one hundred and fifty Storm-Shivers. There may be more, there may be less, it depends on how you count such things. The Great Witch Antaskrou certainly had more than one hundred and fifty bones in her body when she finally laid down in the waters and died, emaciated or not.
The Shivers were host to the arch-mage Nathaunt in his miserable exile, and later the lonely cell of the Ilmataran monk Halarro Ilbrim, who buried there all the suffering and sorrow of the great butchery of the Salmmath, and sat and kept vigil over it until the end of his days. In more recent times "The Citrine Storm Over The Sea", the topaz wyrmling Sorlislarsharr, has re-populated the rocks with colonies of squatting faejatha and flippered jeskla, aiming to turn it into the center of his new territory and his own personal larder.
No telling what Antaskrou, who always considered topaz as 'a most unlovely gemstone', would have thought of such a development.
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AJA
YAFRP
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AJA
Senior Scribe
USA
770 Posts |
Posted - 25 Aug 2024 : 03:54:25
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Arlthror Barrusk
A Waterdhavian bravo, born illegitimate of the Hawkwinters. A rival of the legendary Sraece Telthorn. He too fell to the strong wrists and the unmatched blade-work of The Blade Whisperer, although their acknowledged bouts went to three before "the fact was proven," an unheard-of number for Sraece at the time. Chose that moment to kneel and become his understudy. Arlthror has since opened his own school of bladework and is especially eager to take on the training of any adventuring warriors, though he has nothing but contempt for raging barbarians and simple brute-force fighters and will immediately refuse their coin. Author of The Hundred Excellent Methods ("The truth of the sword is this; it is not the cut, but the intention"), 1370DR.
Juulqua the Pale
The one who was born on the rocks near the Dancing Stones which surround the Salmon's Eye, and was ever-after partly a spirit of the waters (a genasi, in southern sage-speak). In her youth she delved the Salmon's Eye and so travelled down and down and far and far away, to the great kelp-forests of the Caeltanon where resides the sweet Flower of Sashelas, Najrimauthra Beloved Beyond the Blue, 'she who looks up from the water and stares down the sky'. Juulqua became the hand-maid of Najrimauthra and learned from her a great many things, including how to stare down the sky.
Then came the day when the Flower of Sashelas told her to leave the Caeltanon and instead seek out the weather-walker Olohauk, high on the mount called Vision, far above the bleakness of Auril's Scything Grounds (the top-most tree line, above which anything that dares to grow is claimed by the Frost Maiden as her Lawful harvest). Juulqua did not like it there, as the cold burned her feet and stung her eyes, and any coal she tried to put in the hearth was instead floated up in the air and thrown down the mountain by the goddess Auril. But there at the edge of the sky Olohauk taught her a great many things, including what it meant to be a weather-walker.
Then came the day when the weather-walker cut off his long hair and beard and the sky descended, and he told Juulqua that her learning was at an end. And the sky split in two and Olohauk was delivered up and Juulqua was carried down, and it was at the rocks near the Dancing Stones which surround the Salmon's Eye that she arrived.
But when she met with her people they did not know her, for her skin was part salmon and part kelp and part frost besides, and even her own mother and father tried to strike her with axe and spear before they recognized the necklace of beaded copper and lake-frost she had always wore. And so her father took her and buried her in the snowdrifts until the kelp had frozen and fallen away, and then her mother took her and lifted her high in the heavy rains until the salmon scales were washed completely off, and then all that was left was the frost-tinge to her skin, but that would never warm and color no matter how long she sat by the fire, and so she came to be called Juulqua the Pale.
And so Juulqua was then a Mage of Two Masteries, of water and of sky, and from her learnings she taught a great many others and from her spirit of the waters (genasi, in southern sage-speak) she birthed many more like her, who grew to populate the region known as the Ice Lakes, and they sang many stories of her legend.
Unfortunately, in the age after her passing her people warred continuously with the monstrous population of the region, which kept their numbers low. And then from that, they were largely done in by a repetition of orc hordes streaming down from the bleak Spine of the World. Some say the survivors merged with the waters of the lakes and that their spirits still reside there. Others, that they gathered instead on the Dancing Stones which surround the Salmon's Eye and called to their gods, and their gods came to them and carried them down and down and far and far away.
The Ice Lake of Daern's Copper once bore her name but that was a long time ago, before it was called Julidiskrae or even Loroloth. The Uthgardt tribes of the area have co-opted bits and pieces of her legend into their own myths but again, that was so long ago that their origins have been largely forgotten. The Caeltanon still exists in the waters near to Evermeet and there is a Flower of Sashelas that still resides there, but her name is not Najrimauthra and has not been for quite some time.
Kolaskro The Red
Formerly an officer of Cordell's Legion, later established his own Faerûnian mercenary company he called The Red Rollathros ('rollathro' being Amnian slang for the goblin subtype of bugbear). Sturdy, black-bearded. Flat, narrow, uncaring black eyes, "like slits of darkness". Wielded the Gond-gunne called Horrid Janglery, which he had enchanted during his time in The Far Lands, turning it equal parts iron flame and feathered barbarism. Eventually driven insane by the deafening sound of his own weapon, driven sick and nervous mad, and so ousted from his command. He now lounges listless on the streetcorners of Velen, broken and insensate to all but the sound of random temple bells or the blown horns of ships incoming to the harbor. What became of Horrid Janglery after his madness is unclear. Probably best to follow the smell of charred flesh and burning horse-hair on the battlefield to find out. And listen also for the bursting sobs of broken Gond-gunners.
Nathchloë
(Nath-KLOH-ee) A Sunite heretic of the Beautiful Woundings, a splinter branch of the Most Thankful ('imperfections are a beauty in disguise') who have corrupted their teachings in a most violent and demanding manner ('happiness cannot be, without first being made imperfect'). For the Beautiful Woundings the more scarred or broken one is the more beautiful, and the more beautiful the closer to the goddess. And those who claim they would not want to be closer to the goddess are just so beautiful. They just haven't been shown that they are yet. They must be shown.
The Beautiful Woundings consider mongrelfolk to be the most exalted servants of Sune. The mongrelfolk consider the Woundings to be gross and dangerous fanatics. Some sages believe Loviatar to be behind the corruption of the Woundings. Those more well-versed in such matters agree instead that a demon-lord is involved, although they tend to differ on which one in particular.
As for Nathchloë herself, she is regarded by most as quite the Sunite beauty. Her curled bronze hair is always arranged in the latest fashion and her wide bronze eyes blaze with mystery. Her dark southern skin is flawless and quite well-scented. She always wears a veil over her lower face in public, fashioned of the finest cloth and patterned in a variety of colorful gemstones.
Beneath that veil lies a chin a bit too strong, a bit too cleft for the perfections of a Sunite. But that alone was not enough for her to consider herself as Most Thankful. No, there must be something that would make her more imperfect, more happy. For her, it was her lips, full and perfect and always the center of attention.
They are no longer full now, no longer perfect. She saw to that. But when she unveils them to those she is intending to welcome into the embrace of the Beautiful Woundings, well, they are still definitely the center of attention.
Olonebro Toljaskra
Master (captain) of The Latitude of Fancy, a southern free-trader. Author of Curious Ventures On The Golden Water ("There was once a great sea-jamt that came down to me while I was alone one night behind the helm, and told me something quite surprising. 'This is the history of it', the jamt said, 'I am the only one who knows anything about it, and by the time the day has dawned I would be sure to forget'."), 1303DR.
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Posted - 08 Sep 2024 : 03:22:19
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MISC'LLANEA
I Aways Think of It as, I Like To Write the Sidebars! Edition
"I always think of it as, I like to write the sidebars. They're almost like little short stories in a larger story where you're telling something else"
Eric L. Boyd, Mages & Sages podcast 'A Night With Ed And The Gang', Oct. 2021
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"Do not think. Do not reason. That way lies nothing but folly and confusion. Obey. Follow the Word of Bane, and there will be only Order and Purpose.
Simplicity. Strength.
One mind and one triumph. So Saith Bane."
Hurlemdra of the Iron Will
The Absolutes of The Black Fist
Year of Embers, 1201DR
"'Tis done, 'tis done, said in cadence sweet
Yet here he lies
Your bloody handywork, at our feet"
Jeskro the Landcrow to Arsduin the Spurned Lover
excerpted from the play, An Urgent Need For Haste
penned by Brilliant Maratha,
Year of the Bright Blade, 1347DR
"It was towards the end of this great silent complex that I squatted in the shadows and took a moment to treat the burning wounds I had just suffered. While so occupied I kept a keen watch on the great door, grey and devoid of detail, that dominated the far end of the hall and the silent guardians that flanked it. Two living statues draped in tattered scarlet cloaks stood guard before that silent portal, immobile and patient until the exact moment of their alotted time, when they clicked their marbled heels and spun smoothly left and right and switched their positions, a silent ceremony of changing the guard that happens for no dead skeleton of man but of a King.
And a King was precisely what I had delved here for. Such a regal eminence, frozen in tomb and in time, and outfitted for the afterlife in nothing but the finest, most glittering and golden regalia. The fact that these leisurely statues still stood and spun, still draped in their rotting finery, confirmed to me that the King and his riches lay unplundered within. I reflexively rubbed the fresh bandages on my aching arm and ruined hand and grinned eagerly in the shadows."
Jelbandro the Rock-Delver, The Eight-Fingered Thief
A True Tell-All of My Adventurings In The Dead-Lands
Year of the Catacombs, 1308 DR
"The record of a war is written in the ash and grease of its' corpse-pyres."
Halder the Patient, Silent Witness of Ilmater
What I Have Been Given To See
Year of Riches Afar, 1004DR
"As I made my way through the endless rows of stalls and carts I remembered the story of a friend who went to the Market out of curiosity, and came away unexpectedly in his return down Mendever Street with the skeleton of a priestess. Well, someone's skeleton. And I could believe it, for the joy of sudden, unexpected things seldom fails. He always had a fascination for strange skeletons, you see. I longed for something like this to happen to me, just walking along thinking about meeting with a skeleton. That must have been most wonderful.
Oh not particularly a skeleton, no, especially not one that smelled quite so ill-cured and had tusks that looked more hobgoblin than holy. But I always had a fancy instead for meeting with a princess. One as in the old stories, lithe and laughing, dark-eyed and fingers covered in rings. Just standing there awaiting a rescue, one of the many things, boots and bedsteads, travel-trunks and turret-tops, among the endless aisles of oddments, small-stuffs, and second-hand castaways.
I strolled on, trying not to expect anything so wonderful would come my way. But then, past two stalls offering for sale cheap gnomish saucepans and those odd lengths of cloth which attic-witches across Waterdeep accumulate, I saw her. Centered among a pile of boots which looked as though they had walked every single step of the road to ruin I saw, poised tall and upright, my princess. She stood there, rendered in ivory and darkstone, her countenance lithe and laughing, dark-eyed with her fingers covered in rings.
It was in that moment, most unexpected and indeed most wonderful."
Maerlond, Master of The Scarlet Pages
A Princess For Ten Dragons
Ch. I, 'I Take To The Market On A Whim'
First published in the pages of the Waterdhavian chapbook Buckle-Board Fancies,
Year of the Helm, 1362DR
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Posted - 23 Nov 2024 : 02:25:16
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Essek Ruskro
Gnomish metalworker. Proprietor of Wrought Before The Gods (forge and front-shop, Rivvon Street, Trades Ward). Specializes in ornate ironwork of the sort that decorates and protects open flames and open windows, as well as houses entry-way bells and covers bird-seed basins. Essek was once a senior student of the master armorer Hilmer, but decided to follow his whimsy into wrought ('delightfully overwrought', as he declares) finework, instead. He can still mend and strengthen armor or shield just as precisely as he was trained, but such things terribly bore him (unless you've got some ornate ironwork to buy, in which case he'll give you a discount on your repairs!).
There is one bit of knowledge that Essek never managed to learn from Hilmer, that of the ways to create animate constructs from inanimate creations. Like the ones old Hilmer has guarding his shop. He has since reached out to other gnomish artisans and mages in the hope that their combined talents might provide a solution, but the best they have yet managed is to convince a wrought-iron lampstand to shuffle from one side of a den to another, so that the daily broadsheets might be better read. Regardless, their work continues.
The Juggler of Jephandar
The court jester of the legendary land of Jephandar (found somewhere in the South according to the northerners, and somewhere in the East according to the southerners) who was given six balls of solid gold by the despotic and cruel king Rothkhor, who told him that if he dropped even one heavy golden ball he would have him drownt and hung, and then laughed cruelly and sent him off to juggle (the king died the very next day, face-down in his morning porridge of meadow-barley, but the poor Juggler was so terrified of being drownt and hung that he kept on juggling forever-and-ever-after).
There are often sightings of The Juggler in various parts of the Realms, when the nighttime sky lights up with the bright flashes of his spinning golden orbs (what some high-nosed and over-learned sages call star-showers or starmetal-strikes). Some have even claimed to have traced such golden lights and found one of the Juggler's dropped orbs, and fame and fortune thereby, but those nighttime sky lights keep occurring which obviously means that The Juggler keeps up with his eternal torment, and juggles his way among the Realms Afar to this very day.
Rolavvra Rose-Hips
Favored Fortune-Sword of Tymora. An adventuress as famed throughout The Vast as any to have come before her. Author of Wild As Candle-Flame ("'Tomorrow' is not a thing. It may come, but you are not promised it. Embrace what matters to you today."), 1218DR.
Skorlstone
A clanless dwarf, well-known in Waterdeep and the region of the Sword Mountains. Close-mouthed, stubborn and sour. Reddish-brown skin and extremely hairy, even for a dwarf. His left eye is scarred and closed, and his right is very near-sighted and squinted.
Skorlstone is the main supplier to the wizards of the Watchful Order and the greater Waterdeep area of bat guano (a spell component necessary among other things for the fireball enchantment, one of the most sought-after offensive spells in any mages' spellbook). He also does a brisk business with trade factors from the granary of The Goldenfields, who value it instead for its properties as a fertilizer. There are of course other local purveyors of guano but their supply is of poorer quality, due to high levels of local rainfall and humidity that act to reduce its potency.
Given that, Skorlstone is extremely secretive and circumspect about where his materials come from. Part of his arrangement with the Watchful Order guarantees his safety from rivals and hired assassins, and it is whispered that he has several warding enchantments placed on him, to fend off attacks and attempts to track him. This is true, although it should be noted that by casting the spells that render him invisible to the tracking efforts of others, the Lady Master Mhair Szeltune has also laid down a condition, unknown to Skorlstone, that allows herself to find him wherever he goes, and so she knows exactly where the source of his supply is located, and would not hesitate to use that information for the good of the Order, if the dwarf should ever become too impossible in his trade demands (the reason she hasn't anyways is that she is well aware that such a seizure in the name of the Order would not exactly sit well with the priests of the Goldenfields, or the independent mages of the city – several of whom are either close to, or are actual members of The Lords).
The Treachery of Lanterns
If you ask any native Waterdhavian where they were on the moonless night of 18 Uktar, they will tell you without fail that they were there to witness firsthand The Treachery of Lanterns.
It was just long enough after that darkened Uktar sunset that lamps and glow-glasses across the city had all been engaged, and folk were huddled around their evening sources of illumination. Supping, sewing, reading the daily broadsheets, tallying the day's take. Enjoying an evening drink. And then, everywhere, all at once, everything illuminant began to go wrong.
Should have seen it coming really, given that on the previous night the bright tiles on the roofs of the House of the Moon turned a tomb-darkened purple, and that many of the days' divinations returned repeated findings of soot and sot.
Most went out at the most inopportune moments (or came alit, in quite embarrassing situations); some changed color or grew queer odor; some fizzled, popped, nickered, nackered, or even burst out into snippet of song; a terrible few spouted forth into raging bonfire or enraged will o' wisp; a whole selection of glimmer-glasses of the houses and street-lamps along Snail Street even grew legs and marched out down the road single-file, bobbing and weaving into the night before disappearing down a sewer hole near to Waterdeep Way. They remained an illuminant-yet-illusive menace to crews from the Cellarers Guild for quite some time thereafter.
The Treachery itself ended not long after the first light of dawn-gleam hit the city, as lamps and lanterns across the city suddenly returned to normal, although the Guard and fire-brigades and Watchful Order firewards remained active for some time afterward extinguishing various awakened blazes. In the days and months since, some of the more dubious land-crows have claimed their suddenly burnt-down buildings to be the renewed work of The Treachery, for which they must be richly recompensed, but the Order and the blackrobes have made a swift dismissal of all such ridiculous claims.
As to what or who was the cause of the night's misfortune?
Theories abound. Chapbooks and sages' tomes alike have been penned with all sort of lurid conjecture. Stage plays have been performed, the wildest of which have open flames on pulley systems, descending far enough into the audience at dramatic moments that hats and hair alike have been set aflame. Every registered wizard in Waterdeep has been queried, the temple of Lathander and the church of Beshaba have made repeated statements denying any involvement, and even the hero Belterym Vhost has had to step forth and vow that his enchanted sunblade was in no way to blame.
No, the gnomes of the city haven't been asked. Nor have they stepped forth to volunteer any information. But then again, why would they?
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The Five NPCs You Meet In Waterdeep
