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Originally posted by Gary Dallison

Cheers George, i looked up that article but was disappointed to find it contained nothing more than she became an exarch.

On to other things. The Plesiosaur in Maer Dualdon as detailed in Rime of the Frostmaiden. Its awakened recently but doesnt say when it first arrived.

Given the general temperature of the region i'd be tempted to say a Plesiosaur shouldnt be able to live here, its just too cold. But the Ten Towns is a volcanic hotspot so the depths of Maer Dualdon might be warm enough to support a Plesiosaur.

However, a single warm lake is not enough to support an ecosystem including many plesiosaurs that have survived over millennia from the time of the dinosaurs in Faerun. So the Plesiosaur must have arrived by chance or by design.

Its slightly possible there could be watery tunnels in the depths of Maer Dualdon, but they would lead into the frozen environs and so be too cold.

Which means someone put the dinosaur there. The question is who, and for what purpose. Initial thoughts are the Arcane Brotherhood put it there, hoping it would do significant damage to the fishing and scrimshaw busines so that they, or one of their local agents could be hired to deal with the monster and gain huge popularity, perhaps enough to become Speaker and thereby control the entire scrimshaw trade of a town.

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Really going wild here -- what if there's an underwater cavern that was a sarrukh workshop? Several plesiosaurs could have been kept in stasis, in this magically-warmed cavern. The magic is beginning to fade, though, so one of them woke up.

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Originally posted by Gary Dallison

Ta for the bit about Plesiosaurs.

I'm not convinced about the sarrukh lab, as far as i'm aware there is mention of them not being able to survive too far north because of the cold, and that Thaymount / Old Owl Well is the limit of their territory north.
Thus far i've not seen any indication of any sarrukh presence in Icewind Dale, not even any lizardmen which is usually a good indicator of former sarrukh presence.

The Spine of the World has always seemingly been cold (although not necessarily glacial). Ostoria had troubles with the climate here.

I normally use the creator races but this region should be ancient giant territory, its part of the ancestral heart of Ostoria, and there are mentions of giant ruins around here.

So while i could put a sarrukh lab underneath (it would still be a stretch to imagine a single lake could maintain 30000 years of plesiosaurs surviving here without them degenerating due to huge amounts of inbreeding), i think i'm going to have to go with a foreign introduction. It makes sense that the Arcane Brotherhood would want to take secret control of Icewind Dale and extend its territory, then they would have easy access to the giant and netherese artefacts that turn up here.

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But, I'd still want some or any indication of sarrukh presence before placing a lab this far north. I'll keep it in mind in case i find anything sarrukh or other creator race

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Originally posted by cpthero2

Great Reader Dallison,

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But, I'd still want some or any indication of sarrukh presence before placing a lab this far north. I'll keep it in mind in case i find anything sarrukh or other creator race

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I think you may be in luck with that "indication of sarrukh presence". The map at the url below, in the year -34,200DR shows the sarrukh empire of Isstosseffifil appearing to be approximately in the right area that you're looking at.

http://dnd.eizzn.com/

Best regards,

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Its difficult to extrapolate exact positioning for the empires there without any geographic references (and the fact that all the continents are joined up before the Sundering. Isstosseffifil was centred around the anauroch basin, which is quite a way from the sword coast and Icewind Dale. Looking at later versions of the map in the pre official GHoTR i would guess that Isstosseffifil in -35000 DR actually covers only Anauroch and the High Ice (which wasnt present back then) as far north as the mountains and as far west as the high forest.

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Originally posted by Gary Dallison

Yes i'm going with Belhifet being a devil of some kind, providing a link to the portal to the nine hells in Easthaven.

He is a bit like Gargauth in that he dabbles with demons to get that extra edge. If he serves Errtu then Yxunomei (who maybe also served Errtu) could have exposed him and got him thrown out of Baator while she then got exiled by Errtu.

I dont think Yxunomei as an obyrith works, i think keep her as a demon, but i vaguely recall demons like the Palrethee from Monster manual II were a proto version of a Balor that has been replaced. So whatever Yxunomei is she is made from a sarrukh soul and it is different to a marillith, older, less adaptable, being replaced by the marillith. And then there are the Loumara, a new type of demon in the abyss that has the potential to replace the tanar'ri.

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