54 replies to this topic

[Kish]

Mystra favouring good aligned mages became a plot point though; she was forced to change her ways by Ao himself.

Now this is even worse -- since it implies that Ao too takes sides... And Realms are turning into Christian-Judeic clone with 'good' and benevolent supreme being at the top and arcane magic potentially dispenced to good-aligned creatures only, as a reward for 'good behavior'.

The fact that Ao told Mystra she had to stop favoring good-aligned mages over evil ones implies that he takes sides and is good and benevolent?

Incidentally, why are you putting "good" in quotes?

Oh, and what are you referring to regarding using sex to transfer powers? I've personally never heard of anything like that.

That's an incident in one of the Avatars' trilogy books between old El and Midnight.

Um. An incident where Elminster had sex with Midnight? I...can only guess there were pages left out of my copy of those novels. (Probably an entire chapter, as that not only never happened but would have made very little sense in the novels I read.)

It does not make him immune to making bad decisions IHMO. Or maybe he is being pressured into adding this absolutely (IMHO) illogical and cartoonish material by the audience they are targeting -- I have no idea, but the whole Chosen of Mystra plot maketh me weep in frustration and wish they all just die quickly....

Favoring humans over demihumans is much, much worse pre-3ed. Gary Gygax himself once explained quite openly that demihuman level limits were there to keep the demihuman races in their place as supporting characters.

[NiGHTMARE]

Now this is even worse -- since it implies that Ao too takes sides... And Realms are turning into Christian-Judeic clone with 'good' and benevolent supreme being at the top and arcane magic potentially dispenced to good-aligned creatures only, as a reward for 'good behavior'. What happens to the freedom of will?

You seem to have misunderstood me. Ao intervened to STOP Mystra favouring good people, not the other way around. Ao is the very embodient of balance.

Well -- you indicated yourself that Chosen are  all humans (with a drow being a weird flux)

Actually I pointed out they're 1/4 elven...

lately elves are being basically marginalised and near wiped from the face of Toril.

Lately? I thought the elven retreat was in effect when the Forgotten Realms was first published. In fact, in 3E the retreat has recently ended - Elves are beginning to return to Faerun.

That's an incident in one of the Avatars' trilogy books between old El and Midnight.

Having read the Avatar trilogy only a month or so ago, I can say quite categorically that there is no such incident. The only man Midnight sleeps with in any of those books is Kelemvor, with whom she was in love.

You may be thinking of Elminster: Making of a Mage, in which Elminster and the original Mystra do indeed "do the business" together. That had nothing whatosever to do with any kind of transfer of power, however.

It does not make him immune to making bad decisions IHMO. Or maybe he is being pressured into adding this absolutely (IMHO) illogical and cartoonish material by the audience they are targeting -- I have no idea, but the whole Chosen of Mystra plot maketh me weep in frustration and wish they all just die quickly....

Eh, you seem to to be under the impression this is all something new. It's always been like this - the seven sisters were around in 1st Edition, though back then there only five of them (Alustriel, Dove, the Simbul, Storm and Sylune - no Laeral or Qilue). I believe at least a couple, maybe all of them, were characters Ed and his friends used during roleplaying seesions back before the Forgotten Realms had even been officially published. In other words, there's not much chance of them being killed off any time soon (though of course Sylune is already dead...)

[NiGHTMARE]

As far as I'm aware Evermeet wasn't destroyed - the elven queen sacrificed herself to save it. But the tree of life was destroyed in the process (yes, BG2 having a second tree of life in Suldanessellar was rather silly), with only a single seed surviving. That's why the elves are returning - to plant the seed and grow a new tree. So it isn't the end, it's the (re-)beginning .

Incidentally, 3rd Edition has brought not just one but two large new groups of elves to the Reams - one lot returned from the Abyss (at least, I think it was the Abyss - it could have been another demonic plane) after being enslaved by a demon for millenia, the other lot until recently hidden a way in a demi-plane. I'll post the details later if anyone's interested.

[Xander77]

People who are annoyed by magic being dependant on gods in FR, should never check-out Dragonlance.

Oh, and demi-human level restrictions were retarded no matter which way you look at them. Elf's were far better then humans in 2e, and elf fan-boys were around for decades...

[Stone Wolf]

The level restrictions are one of the changes for 3E that I actually like. An xp modifier for races was my favorite choice, depending on what bonuses the race got.

[dorotea]

But the tree of life was destroyed in the process (yes, BG2 having a second tree of life in Suldanessellar was rather silly), with only a single seed surviving.

I think you are refering to the 'Tree of Souls' not the 'Tree of Life'

In the magic of the Sundering, the souls of almost all the spellcasters fused with the Weave, then were torn from the lifeless bodies by the uncontrollable magical force unleashed upon the land. Corellon and the Seldarine pulled those souls and their threads of magic into the Tree of Souls, and to this day High Magic is possible in its presence.

Although it was indeed confusing. Having a Tree of Life in Suldanessellar was a very very silly idea. (I ended up replacing it with another 'Grandfather Tree' -at least having another Arakhor in Tethyr sounds less crasy than another version of the Corellon's Tree of Souls...)

Incidentally, 3rd Edition has brought not just one but two large new groups of elves to the Reams - one lot returned from the Abyss (at least, I think it was the Abyss - it could have been another demonic plane) after being enslaved by a demon for millenia, the other lot until recently hidden a way in a demi-plane.

Not sure about the Abyssal folks... but the other group must be Siluvanede and its mythal city? The golden elves who had left after the Six Crown War?

[Arachnos]

The abyssal type elves could be the feyri (who until recently had been imprisoned in some kind of stasis), although they have devil blood in the rather than demon (i think).

The elves returning from the demiplane will be the star elves, who have been forced to retreat from their demiplane home back to their ancient homes in the yuirwood in aglarond. (see Unapproachable East for more details).

[NiGHTMARE]

Nope, I'm not talking about the feyri (also known as the daemonfey) - IIRC there are only a couple of dozen of those, so they don't really count as a "large group" .

I believe the subrace I'm referring to is called the ghost elves, but I don't have any official material with me ATM so I could be wrong. I know there was an article about ghost elves in Dragon #313, but whether they're the group I'm talking about or something else I'm not sure.

[Arachnos]

Never heard of the ghost elves so cant help with that one.

There were the elves of Myth Adhofaer who moved themselves to some demiplane where they use the temporal characteritics of the plane to build up their numbers and martial skills for the time when they've forseen that the elven race will need them most (when they'll return to buttkick for goodness)

[NiGHTMARE]

'Twas indeed ghost elves I was talking about. I had thought them to be Realms-specific, but it seems they can be used in any D&D setting.

Ghost elves dwelt on the fringes of elven society.  They made their homes amid the ancient roots of the forests, rarely making contact with other races.  Over time the ghost elves grew more and more isolated, eventually becoming little more than a legend.

Thousands of years ago, during the elven civil war that led to the fall of the drow, the ghost elves maintained their isolation and remained neutral in the great racial struggle.  After the defeated drow retreated into the Underdark, they schemed against their distant cousins and soon launched an assault on the ghost elves.  The very shelter that had kept the ghost elves safe became fiercely contested battlegrounds.  The peaceful ghost elves were no match for the seasoned dark elven troops and were easy fodder for the sacrificial altars of Lolth.  They were virtually wiped out in the blink of an eye.  The other surface elves were either unwilling or unable to aid the beleaguered kin, something the ghost elves have never forgotten or forgiven.

Help eventually arrived - from an unexpected source.  As the defenses of the last settlement were collapsing, an alient entity calling itself Thule appeared and offered to save the ghost elves in return for their service.  Appaled at the slaughter of their people, the ghost elven leaders agreed without a second thought, signing the contract that Thule proffered.

They were foully tricked.  Thule revealed himself as the Archduke Thulikzt, a pit fiend of almost godlike power, and took the ghost elves to his home in th Nine Hells of Baator.  There he enslaved them, slowly destroying their spirits and their strong connection to the land.  The ghost elves called upon their deities to aid them, but to no avail - Thulikazt's bargain was binding.  For hundreds of years, they toiled for the archfiend, and thousands were slaughtered in savage arena battles and pointless experiments for Thulikazt's pleasure.  Ghost elven historians call this time "the Tempering".

Countless centuries passed and Thulikazt grew lax, allowing his slaves (whom he believed to be completely broken) to take up arms and join the Blood War.  The ghost elves learned the arts of war and conquest from fiendish generals and hellish sorcerers.  They became Thulikazt's elite bodyguard, drawing admiration and envy from other fiends.  This would prove the archduke's ultimate undoing.

The ghost elves secretly contacted their master's enemies and offered to serve those lesser fiends in return for aid in destroying their hated master.  Greedy for the services of Thulikazt's elite troops, the baatezu lords formed an alliance to lay siege to his citadel.  The ghost elves used the battle as a distraction, killing Thulikazt and opening a gate to the Prime Material Plane in the confusion.  When the fortress finally fell, the fiendish generals found only Thulikazt's mutilated corpse and a note of thanks.  The ghost elves had won their freedom.

Fearing fiendish retribution, the ghost elves searched high and low for somewhere to hide.  It was then they noticed a startling change within themselves: By severing their connection to the earth, Thulikazt had accidentally gifted the ghost elves with a strange connection to the Ethereal plane, granting the most powerful ghost elves the ability to slip between the material world and the Ethereal Plane.  Upon coming to grips with their newfound powers, the ghost elves set about creating a portal to the Ethereal Plane, and one stone at a time they transferred meterials to the Ethereal Plane to build their new homes.

Today, ghost elves livspellholdstudios.nete on the Ethereal Plane.  Their cities are usually built deep in woodlands and all are at least partially underground.  Due to their long captivity and the dangers their settlements attract, their society has a strong martial bent.  A thousand years have not cooled the anger of the devils humiliated by "elven treachery", and even today they seek out and destroy ghost elves wherever they can.  For their part, the ghost elves launch preemptive strikes against their enemies whenever possible, relying on their hidden cities for defense.

I could swear I read somewhere that there's a portal to a ghost elf city somewhere in the forest of Tethyr, but I'm probably just imagining things .

[Archmage Silver]

A very interesting part of Realmslore.

[Kish]

Incidentally, why are you putting "good" in quotes?

Because that's what BBC does when they mention 'terrorists'. We are talking about alignment, and I prefer to make sure I mean technical alignment only.

Technical alignment only? What's that mean?

[Archmage Silver]

If that hasn't anything to do with HK-47, I have no idea.