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Jamallo Kreen
Master of Realmslore
USA
1537 Posts |
 Posted - 13 Oct 2005 : 21:38:13
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Which Realms novels go into "deep history" -- events which happened tens of thousands of years ago (or even on a geological time scale)? Quite a few books have passages dealing with events several hundred (even a few thousand) years in the past, and the Arcane Age series was supposed to be ancient history, but where does one turn to learn the deep history of a city twenty thousand years old, or to discover what the saurians thought of the Crown Wars? That sort of thing -- mind-shaking revelations that "man was not the first and shall not be the last...."
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Wooly Rupert
Master of Mischief
USA
36804 Posts |
Posted - 13 Oct 2005 : 22:46:14
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| To the best of my knowledge, the only novel that even goes a few thousand years into the past is Evermeet. I don't think anything before the coming of the elves to Faerūn has been covered in a novel. With the Realms, there has been a noticable tendency to stick with the here and now, and to not delve too deeply into the past. |
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Winterfox
Senior Scribe
895 Posts |
Posted - 13 Oct 2005 : 23:23:20
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| Cormyr: A Novel, done in the same format as Evermeet, does go back a bit into the past. But probably not to the extent you're looking for. Oh, and to my understanding, some of the Elminster novels do, as well. |
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Ignorance Personified
Seeker
USA
78 Posts |
Posted - 14 Oct 2005 : 04:53:25
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Here is a link to WoTC's official Chronological Listing of Realms Fiction: Hope it helps.
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=books/fr/fictionlist
As an aside, the first Elminister novel (Making of a Mage) goes back rather far and is a decent read. But, as the previous two posters mentioned, Cormyr and Evermeet are probably the best places to start. |
Carthago delenda est. |
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Jamallo Kreen
Master of Realmslore
USA
1537 Posts |
Posted - 14 Oct 2005 : 18:54:50
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quote:
Originally posted by Ignorance Personified
Here is a link to WoTC's official Chronological Listing of Realms Fiction: Hope it helps.
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=books/fr/fictionlist
As an aside, the first Elminister novel (Making of a Mage) goes back rather far and is a decent read. But, as the previous two posters mentioned, Cormyr and Evermeet are probably the best places to start.
Thanks for the link. I didn't consult the list because I am not sure how recently it was updated. Since the publication of Serpent Kingdoms and Lords of Madness an opportunity has opened up to do a lot of "deep history" writing. Consider, for example, the aboleth -- when a mind flayer reads the mind of one of them (as occurs in an Elaine Cunningham novel) what awesome depths of history are revealed?! If an aboleth has feasted on space-going and plane-hopping adventurers, its personal accumulation of knowledge must be immense -- perhaps bordering on the overdose of knowledge which drove Karsus insane in his dying secods (or centuries...). How puny the vaunted "antiquity" of humans becomes in comparison to such a timespan! The grunting, ragged human savages of Cormyr: A Novel were survivors of Netheril, and Netheril arose more than 25,000 years after the first saurian empire declined.
Ordinary day-to-day Realms history presents a great opportunity for "Lovecraftian" fiction. When the scope is expanded to take into consideration tidbits like, "Who ... or what ... wrote the runes on the crystal sphere of Realmspace ... and when?" and suchlike matters, the antediluvian speculations of Ignatius Donnelly and Helena Blavatsky seem laughably tame.
I'm going to visit King Tut's grave goods on Halloween. Maybe I'll pen some Realms fanfic for the occasion. Or maybe I'll spare the world that particular horror!
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I have a mouth, but I am in a library and must not scream.
Feed the poor and stroke your ego, too: http://www.freerice.com/index.php.
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Deep histories?
