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Originally posted by Moonharp

Here I have an icidental question that popped into my head as I read this thread... I had not been able to find the answer anywhere in my tomes of lore.
Was Abeir-Toril ever the victim of a large natural cataclysmic event? I mean things such as a meteorites, volcanic overheating, toxicity in the atmosphere... And if there was, what effects did it have?

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Thousands of years ago, the heavens assured Mistledale's future prosperity when a falling star plowed a hundred-mile-long, thirty-mile-wide swath through the elven woods. The trees never regrew in the scar where the star had fallen, but the land proved amazingly fertile once the Dalesfolk put it to the plow.- FRCS, p. 133, Wizards of the Coast, 2001.

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Originally posted by Vangelor

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Originally posted by Moonharp

Here I have an icidental question that popped into my head as I read this thread... I had not been able to find the answer anywhere in my tomes of lore.
Was Abeir-Toril ever the victim of a large natural cataclysmic event? I mean things such as a meteorites, volcanic overheating, toxicity in the atmosphere... And if there was, what effects did it have?

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Why yes, Virginia, there has been a significant meteor impact on Toril. Ye Olde FRCS has this to say regarding Mistledale:

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Thousands of years ago, the heavens assured Mistledale's future prosperity when a falling star plowed a hundred-mile-long, thirty-mile-wide swath through the elven woods. The trees never regrew in the scar where the star had fallen, but the land proved amazingly fertile once the Dalesfolk put it to the plow.- FRCS, p. 133, Wizards of the Coast, 2001.

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So it seems to have been less devestating than many disasters, at least for humanity, over the long haul. One doubts that the elves felt especially blessed. Which just goes to show you why using High Magic to acquire meteor iron is a bad idea - no matter how much you admire Sahandrian.

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So, while a meteorite would certainly be something to see, I doubt divine influence would be attached to it.

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Originally posted by Gray Richardson

I remember reading somewhere that adamantite ore is usually obtained from meteorites. Off the top of my head, I don't remember if that was in Volo's Guide to All things Magical, or if it was maybe in the 3E DMG. But if true that might indicate that dwarves might know a lot about meteorites due to their strong cultural interest in mining and metalurgy.

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Originally posted by Forge

Bear in mind that in most instances pre-technology, these kinds of things were written off as divine in nature, and in a world where the gods are a definite and tangible force, it makes sense that they actually BE supernatural/divine, except in a few instances. If nothing else, it makes sense that the Gods would be part of preventing cataclysm from befalling their faithful except as instigated by the faithful of another diety.

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Originally posted by Brimstone

IIRC Mark Taylor awhile back was musing on Toril being frequently struck by meteors and THO agreed with his idea. That the scars of the impacts are all over the place. Star Mountains being one example. The Moonsea being created by a meteor strike is another.

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Originally posted by Ayrik

The 2E FRA had an entry for "Star metal" in the treasure tables. No description beyond it being a tiny scrap worth an outrageous 10000GP. As reference, "King's Tears" and "Star Rubies" commanded the next highest value, 5000GP.

The name "Star Metal" suggests a metal with meteoric origin. (Unlike "Star Ruby" named for the unusually rare and brilliant sunburst-like pattern of the crystal which sets it above "ordinary" rubies worth a paltry 1000GP each.)

The value of "Star Metal" suggests it's far more than a decorative curiosity. Perhaps it can be mixed into potent alloy for manufacturing weapons and armours. Perhaps it can be an exotic component for spells and rituals. Perhaps it's a wonderfully exotic alchemical reagent.

Numerous other references to "meteoric" metals were scattered throughout 1E and 2E. Invariably described as the stuff that went into a magical weapon, armour, or item. It was quite common to read generic "made of mysterious unknown metal which fell from the heavens" fluff text for magical adventuring gear. I think it's a legacy inspired from mythology, Tolkien, etc. Metal forged in the lights of the celestial heavens, exposed to strange cosmic radiations, etc.

3E evolved towards focus on the pure mechanical +bonus aspects of things, what stats it had mattered, what it was made of didn't.

What does Spelljammer lore have to say about meteorites? Are they mined (or rather, pursued and caught) to gather ordinary or extraordinary resources - or are they just navigational hazards?

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Originally posted by TBeholder

As to meteoritic iron, maybe some interesting properties come from being dropped?

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Originally posted by Brimstone

IIRC Mark Taylor awhile back was musing on Toril being frequently struck by meteors and THO agreed with his idea. That the scars of the impacts are all over the place. Star Mountains being one example. The Moonsea being created by a meteor strike is another.

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If one chunk dropped in the middle of Faerun, many other impacts should be of the same origin.
IIRC the Tears of Selune were formed by the single catastrophe when the dragons tried to go all deathstar on King-Killer and missed?
Then most would not been captured on stable orbits, indeed. Most stones would fall either back or somewhere on Toril.

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Originally posted by ericlboyd

Star metal is defined in Volo's Guide to All Things Magical, page 51. It's another name for metallic meteorites.

Note that I named the range of hills that stretches from Berun's Hill to the Twilight Tor as the Star Metal Hills.

Implications to be worked out by the DM.

--Eric

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Originally posted by Gary Dallison

I think the wyvernwater has a lump of star metal at the bottom of it and I wouldn't be surprised if the wyvern crown was made of the stuff.

I'm still musing over the crystal grot but I recall the monarch mordant growing into an emerald tree when it crashed, what about something similar with sapphires in the stormhorns

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Originally posted by Wooly Rupert

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Originally posted by Gary Dallison

I think the wyvernwater has a lump of star metal at the bottom of it and I wouldn't be surprised if the wyvern crown was made of the stuff.

I'm still musing over the crystal grot but I recall the monarch mordant growing into an emerald tree when it crashed, what about something similar with sapphires in the stormhorns

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The Monarch Mordent is not true emerald; it's not a precious metal or gemstone at all. It's more of an organic ceramic material.

Elven spelljammers are grown from starfly plants, and even after being grown into the shape of a Flitter, or Man-O-War, or Armada, they still continue to grow and have to periodically be pruned.

The Monarch Mordent has not received that kind of care in centuries, and being shot down by a demon means it's no longer in one piece -- so its scattered pieces have grown wild.

One does have to wonder exactly what happened to the helm that powered the ship -- Dretch has been looking for it but hasn't been able to find it. This implies that either the wreckage of the ship was scattered over a wide area -- or that someone came along afterward and did something with the helm. It could also be that the ship had some odd variant helm. It's too big for a crown of stars, but it could have had something unique or experimental on it.

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Originally posted by cpthero2

Master Rupert,

So, I really never did get into Spelljammer at all. I think I read a couple of things online years ago, but that was about it.

How does it associate with the Realms meaningfully?

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Originally posted by Wooly Rupert

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Originally posted by cpthero2

Master Rupert,

So, I really never did get into Spelljammer at all. I think I read a couple of things online years ago, but that was about it.

How does it associate with the Realms meaningfully?

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Spelljammer was meant to be a way to connect the big settings of the day: Greyhawk, Dragonlance, and the Forgotten Realms.

Dark Sun and Ravenloft were around, too, but the idea of connecting them with magical space travel really didn't work well. Ravenloft is a demiplane, and a spelljamming helm would cause issues on Athas, so they weren't part of the overall goal -- though we did later find out that the Mists can reach into space to grab people.

So part of the design plan was that the big three settings were all contained within the larger Spelljammer setting... Spelljammer was literally what was going on over the heads of the folks on the ground on Faerūn.

But actual meaningful interaction? It didn't happen. They did push some Spelljammer stuff in, for a year or two, but such efforts petered off after a while. Later references popped up in places, but Spelljammer as a setting was quietly shuffled off to one side and forgotten.

Spelljammer was my first love of D&D settings, but it had its flaws. One of them was the fact that despite the intent of connecting the settings together, there didn't seem to be any coordination at all between the creative teams. Because of this, we have Spelljammer lore in the Krynnspace supplement that flat-out contradicts known Dragonlance lore (and some really weird ideas that I think never should have seen print), and Spelljammer lore in the Realmspace supplement that is entirely disconnected from any Realmlore (like a missing Moonshae castle or a group of Moonshae assassins never mentioned anywhere else).

I'm not sure there was an overall vision of where to take the Spelljammer setting after its initial development, either... There were some disconnected modules, a couple that tried to make a larger narrative, and that was about it.

I think another issue with Spelljammer was that too many people were thinking of space travel in real-world terms, and just couldn't accept things like someone strolling about, unprotected, on the deck of their wooden ship as it orbits a planet. That wasn't a design flaw, but it was something that helped doom the setting.

So, tl;dr answer: they pushed some Spelljammer into the Realms here and there and then forgot about it as Spelljammer was forgotten.

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Originally posted by Brimstone

IIRC Mark Taylor awhile back was musing on Toril being frequently struck by meteors and THO agreed with his idea. That the scars of the impacts are all over the place. Star Mountains being one example. The Moonsea being created by a meteor strike is another.

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Originally posted by sleyvas

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Originally posted by Brimstone

IIRC Mark Taylor awhile back was musing on Toril being frequently struck by meteors and THO agreed with his idea. That the scars of the impacts are all over the place. Star Mountains being one example. The Moonsea being created by a meteor strike is another.

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Yeah, we were discussing whether a lot of the things that have happened to Toril might not somehow be related to meteor strikes.
Some ideas that we were passing around

Halruaa's mountains and Lake Halarrah (spelling?).

The Star Mounts

The collapse that caused the great rift and the underground river that exits out the landrise (and possibly the shift that cause the landrise itself).

The jagged Priador's in Thay possibly being part of meteoric strikes (there may be multiple odd sources of magic throughout Thay). Perhaps some sources of volcanic activity in Thay are because of things buried beneath the surface rather than what we would traditionally consider as the cause for volcanic activity.

There were some more, like something near the Evereska.

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Originally posted by Ayrik

Star Metal on the Realms might vary from place to place.
Perhaps relatively "plentiful" in a place like Halruaa and consequently not as precious. While truly extraordinary in a place like the Moonshaes or the Underdark. (Unless the Star Metal has magical properties somehow "attuned" to the region where it fell?)

Chunks of iron ore might float around Wildspace or the Flow. Or drift through the Phlogiston into Realmspace from impossibly distance/unreachable spheres. Some ordinary, some extraordinary.

Steel is already rare and precious on Krynn, meteoric steel even more so. It is entirely absent on Athas. But steel of any grade is a subpar choice on Oerth where mitril and adamants are seemingly abundant.

Various spells (like fallen meteor or meteor swarm) cause meteoric substances to fall from the sky. Perhaps these are sometimes metallic? If so, I imagine Star Metal could be "found" on demand and consequently be less expensive on high-magic worlds (like Toril).

Planescape imposes physical and magical propertied on planes, places, and worlds - along with all the materials which come from them. A sword made of prized Baatorian Steel is a nearly worthless and powerless pointed object (worse than a local wooden stick) in Arvandor. This logic might apply to Star Metals, awesomely potent on some Primes but utterly unexceptional on others.

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Originally posted by cpthero2

Perhaps not as "precious", locally, but the purchase power parity of materials in other consumer markets that don't possess that kind of currency is still valuable.

Great economic effects.

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D&D sometimes preempted the obvious player strategy of getting rich by profiting from commodity value differences between settings.

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Such modern thinking is not properly adventurous (or medieval)!

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Originally posted by Ayrik

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Originally posted by cpthero2

Perhaps not as "precious", locally, but the purchase power parity of materials in other consumer markets that don't possess that kind of currency is still valuable.

Great economic effects.

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Yes and No.

D&D sometimes preempted the obvious player strategy of getting rich by profiting from commodity value differences between settings. Such modern thinking is not properly adventurous (or medieval)! More importantly, it's hard to keep it from quickly evolving into a game-breaking exploit. Adventurers are supposed to be lean and hungry, if they're fat and jaded then they get too picky about which adventuring opportunities are worthy of their attentions, the DM loses a powerful narrative (and motivational) tool.

So spells like teleport (with or without error), gate, worldwalk, planeshift, even time travel sometimes refer to ohysical/magical laws somehow transmuting stuff from origin into equivalent stuff at destination. A common steel blade from the Realms turns into a common bronze blade when taken to Krynn, a common obsidian blade when taken to Athas, etc - whatever sort of item basically has the same value and stats in this different world. Only permanent magical items remained (mostly) unchanged, but they are universally rare and precious items in every published setting anyhow.

Many DM's routinely ignored this whole idea, most authors seemed to conveniently forget it. Others enforced (or exaggerated) the idea without mercy, they forced old-school RPG thinking on their players (ie: no "free" gold just because spellcaster; if you want gold then you gotta go adventuring, killing, or stealing; and if you get too much gold then your lifestule expenses will suddenly inflate).

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Originally posted by AJA


So, meteorites are:

[ SPELLJAMMER ]
Meteorites are pieces of Realmspace's crystal sphere cracking and chipping and hurtling off through the void until they sometimes impact in Faerūn. Why is the crystal sphere decaying and how can it be fixed? Go boldly forth, young adventurers!

[ MATTERS OF FAITH ]
Meteorites are from the Tears of Selūne, which occasionally fall down to Faerūn, either at the inscrutable whim of a god or the nudge of the giant and terrible Sky Dragons that 'everyone knows' fly around up there in the void.

[ DND SCIENCE~! ]
The sun of Realmspace is a giant gate to the plane of elemental fire; when the borders between the planes of elemental fire and elemental earth (or quasi-elemental minerals) sometimes blur, the sun burps forth meteors which then sometimes crash into Toril.

[ I GOT YER EPIC CAMPAIGN RIGHT HERE ]
Meteorites were summoned in fell ritual in the ancient Days Before Record, by archmages of the vast and fallen empire of your choosing, to strike at their foes. Such powers are now lost to mortals, which is why all meteor strikes and starmetal deposits in Faerūn are hundreds or thousands of years old. Look out, it seems someone has re-discovered the methods of those terrible summonings!

That sound about right?

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