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Originally posted by Asgetrion

Merry Christmas to You, Milady, and to Father Weirdbeard o' the Greenwood!

I am glad that you're back with us, and hopefully you'll recover completely from your wounds. Maybe you should consider a life in Candlekeep, and quit your work as a Harper agent?

I have a couple of questions to Ed (who will probably grow weary of my "too-much-attention-to-small-details"-attitude ;). Here we go: You have kindly responded to my questions about the Sembian walled compounds, but do they have any kind of wooden gates, or just an "opening" in the hedgerow walls for entrance? How about the moats/ditches - do they usually build bridges over them?

Then about farms and fields... how many acres of land does a typical/average Heartlands family farm? I am an urban person, so it is hard for me to grasp the concepts of medieval farming
You also wrote about "checkered-field" farms... did you mean fields separated by empty spaces/woodlots between them (and connected to each other via corners - sort of like a chessboard with "dark spaces" in between the fields) or smaller fields side by side in a roughly square-shaped area (sort of boxes within a box)? What an odd question, I know, and poorly phrased, but hopefully you understand what I am asking here ;)
Many of the Realms communities (Shadowdale, for example) also seem to have "irregularly" shaped fields... which type of farm field is more common in the Realms - the "checkered-chessboard"-type or "the irregular"-type?

Best of wishes for you and the Hooded One! And thank you for the answers in advance :)

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Originally posted by Kentinal

With medieval farming I can help a little, though the best answer is it depends.

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Originally posted by Wooly Rupert

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Originally posted by The Hooded One

plus a 'flying Dutchman' style ever-sailing-the-air-haunted-vessel

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I'd like to know more about this one, if I may, dear Lady.

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Originally posted by George Krashos

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Originally posted by Wooly Rupert

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Originally posted by The Hooded One

plus a 'flying Dutchman' style ever-sailing-the-air-haunted-vessel

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I'd like to know more about this one, if I may, dear Lady.

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Dragon #124 may have a connection to THO's comments - Ed's articles: "Sailors on the Sea of Air".

-- George Krashos

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Originally posted by Pardan

Another side question I have is: How is Mystra inclined toward Wild Magic and its users(did a write-up of the Wild Mage from 2nd ed. and turned it into a 3rd Ed.specialist wizard)?
Would she rather see it banned or does she accept it as another way to use magic - since it is not inherently evil-tainted like the shadow weave, her stance towards it might be less biased...or isn't it?

Thanks in advance...and also thanks a lot for giving us an amazing setting with yet unsurpassed depth in the first place.

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January 17, 2005: Dearest Woolpert, Ed makes reply to your wild magic queries:

Please bear in mind that what follows is what *I’d* do as a DM, not an official WotC D&D rules ‘ruling’ (there’s something called the Rules Council for that).

The Chosen of Mystra are hampered by dead and wild magic just like everyone else, with three exceptions:

1. Spending Silver Fire.

For ‘brute force’ magics (energy blasts, the creation of magical barriers, healing, and so on) Chosen of Mystra can expend silver fire to manage almost normal effects (and probabilities of effects, though there’s almost always echoing wild-effect ‘leakage’ around their operating spells). Translocation spells (teleportation) are still chancy (though in a wild magic area, silver fire can be burned to create a line intersecting with a nearby ‘strand of the Weave,’ and the Weave then ‘ridden’ out of the wild magic area, in a strange ‘slow teleport’ that third parties see beginning as a fading and shifting of the teleporter, so that, say, Elminster briefly has three heads blended and blurred into one another before he ‘snaps out of sight’), and detection and divination spells nigh-impossible.

2. Feeding Magic With Magic.

Chosen of Mystra have the inherent ability to ‘feed’ one magic into another, draining part of the stored energy of a held or worn item or the entire energy of a memorized spell into another spell, to ‘power it up.’ Because this tends to make magic ‘go wild,’ it’s never done in normal circumstances, but often succeeds in causing a spell to have pretty much normal effect in a wild magic or dead magic area, if a more powerful spell is fed into a lesser one.

For example, Elminster casts a lightning bolt and feels it start to ‘tug wild,’ so he uses his ability as a Chosen to make it ‘hang fire’ until the next round, and during that next round feeds a flesh to stone spell he’s memorized into the lightning bolt. Because of the difference in levels, the lightning bolt is highly likely to ‘go off’ as a lightning bolt, at the end of that second round, though its aim and discharged energy (damage done) may still vary wildly. If El instead burns a ninth-level memorized spell to feed the lightning bolt, it will probably function almost normally. Note that this does NOT appreciably alter the surroundings from being a wild or dead magic area, though doing this thirty times or more would weaken a dead magic area into something much smaller.

3. Feeling Flows, and Familiarity

Chosen of Mystra can sense movements, build-ups, and changes in nature (for example, from a build-up into a discharge) of magical force. This can give them small tactical advantages in a wild magic zone that other beings lack. Also, in a locale VERY familiar to the particular Chosen (such as their usual abode, or a spot where they’ve previously spent a lot of time or cast many magics), their own magical efforts will be at least slightly better than any attempts by mortal spellcasters to battle dead or wild magic because of their familiarity with the presence, precise location, and nature of existing magics, usual local flows of magic, and so on.

Of course, Chosen can call on the Weave to destroy wild and dead magic areas (and planar rifts, too), though this is a long and exhausting process involving the casting of many spells, and ideally the cooperation of several Chosen or powerful spellcasters working together (something akin to several people trying to gather, bunch up, and carry away a gigantic collapsed hot air balloon or fallen field tent or huge parachute, it’s something best accomplished by people who aim their efforts accurately, know what to do, and work together well). It’s not something they can expect to accomplish if lacking many memorized (or otherwise stored) magics, if under attack, or in a hurry.

So most Chosen who find themselves in a wild or dead magic zone will first attempt to get out of the zone, unless there’s some compelling reason for remaining there.

Your next question was: “How do you feel about wild mages, and how would Mystra feel about such casters, who deliberately play fast and loose with the Weave?”

Wild mages have indeed returned in the new Complete Arcane. I make no apologies for introducing wild and dead magic into the Realms in the first place, but when they became a 2nd Ed character class, Jeff Grubb and I both responded with “Uh-oh.”

Why? Well, in short, like spellfire, wild mages can be a campaign-wrecker. Great fun for an encounter or two, but the implications of their presence are far-reaching, so “wild mages” are usually best confined to a rare handful of NPCs - - unless the campaign is a lone wandering PC wild mage adventuring one-on-one with a DM. Consider the presence of wild mages with ‘regular’ arcane spellcasters or priests of any sort in the same party of adventurers. Many accidents waiting to happen. I’m not saying “don’t go there,” I’m saying ‘consider carefully what the character of your D&D play may change into, before you embark on this.’

As for Mystra: The ‘old’ Mystra (LN) was less than pleased with this road of dweomercraeft because of the damage wild mages can do to fellow spellcasters, the Weave, and most importantly to the reputation of arcane spellcasters with others (and therefore, the general attitude [fear] of most intelligent beings of Faerun towards magic and its use).

The ‘new’ Mystra, however, was more than a bit of a rebel as a young mortal woman. Like the keeper of a china shop glumly observing an approaching bull, she’s against wantonly destructive uses of magic, and her alignment gives her a distaste not just for destructive magic but also for deliberately cruel uses of magic. However, Mystra has seen much reckless use of magic by divine spellcasters serving other deities and by selfish mages of various stripes, noted that many of these uses have been both effective and have garnered much respect among the wider populace, and more or less shrugged.

She may be ‘waiting and seeing,’ and she (or Azuth) may well send some of their powerful servants (including Chosen) to curb individual wild mages who seem to turn wholly insane or who “throw their weight around too much.” For now, however, the rare wild mages in the Realms seem free to follow the path they’ve chosen.

So saith Ed. Who seems to never be anything else but busybusybusy, these days.
love to all,
THO

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Originally posted by The Hooded One
[...] There are many styles, as I’ve posted here and elsewhere. There are triangular coins, square coins, circular coins, and oval coins (most Faerûnian coins are actually oval), of several different metals, some pierced when minted (for stringing on rings or cords), and many pierced by merchants in practice (very few are cut in half by merchants, because only a few will be honoured as having any value when this is done).

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Coins of Amn, Cormyr, Luskan, Mirabar, Sembia, Silverymoon, Tethyr, and Waterdeep are considered the best-made in Faerûn, and are most highly valued in trade everywhere in known Faerûn. Cormyr’s coins are very pure metal and of heavy weight, and age well ; Sembian coins are slightly inferior (see p91 of the FRCS, of course, for details of these two denominations).

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Originally posted by createvmind

Hello Mr. Greenwood

I had asked Kuje to relay this but figured he might forget so here I am.

I was curious if a "Spark" from Magic of Faerun can be moved from one location to another or it it connected to the place it's discovered.

Second question is can a "Doompit" from same scource book be purposely created by a mage or combination of casters?

Thanks you and happy holidays

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Originally posted by The Hooded One
The striking itself creates distortion, causing far more “round” coins to be rejected because they’ve ended up oval.

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Ah, the bistros of your city; I remember them fondly . . .

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