The Giant Mushroom Cloud over Faerun

[Tokorona]

It looks 4e Faerun is undergoing drastic changes


[counturl=113]Rich Baker's Post[/counturl]

Anyway, why is Mystra dead? OK, several reasons, some in-world, some meta-management...

1. It's an appropriate (if grim) finish to the story of Cyric's betrayal begun in the Time of Troubles series. Time to move on and tell new stories about Cyric.

2. It's an appropriate (if grim) finish to the story of Shar's jealousy and desire to seize the portfolio of magic. Time to move on and tell new stories about Shar.

(oh, Mystra's chosen die out, except Elmisnter - apparently, they think that having magic not being under the control of one deity is good, when in reality, I imagine MANY PEOPLE DON'T CARE)

Trying to find the cause of this - foudn this thread, which suggests dark times.
(spoilers for the Orc King, a drizzit book.)

- Many old empires have fallen (e.g. Luskan - page 11). Others are named which are perhaps destroyed but perhaps just not prospering (Thay, Mulhorand, Sembia - page 12).
- New ones have arisen (Netheril, the aboleths, and a "discordant and disastrous joining of two worlds") - page 10. I wonder about the last one of this, but it seems to coincide with Ed Greenwood's comments in the final issue of Dragon (along the lines of "most scholars drop the name Abeir from Abeir-Toril, for reasons which will soon become apparant"). The question is, which two worlds?
- The Kingdom of Many-Arrows has flourished and helped bring stability to the Silver Marches region under Obould and his heirs; orcs (and half-orcs) are more accepted than in 1375 DR. The Cult of Gruumsh is de-emphasised in this Kingdom (e.g. page 5 onwards). I presume the dwarves are still around there, too.
- Something regarding this happens at a place or to a person called "Shallows"; perhaps that's what this novel is about, I don't know (page 3).
- Eilistraee and her followers "rose", but presumably failed to achieve what they hoped (page 11). Perhaps Lolth has exterminated the rest of her pantheon? We will have to see what the rest of the Lady Penitent books say.
- Other Good deities may have been killed ("Where are the benevolent gods?" - page 11).
- Oh, and I suppose it confirms that Drizzt at least survives...

http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.ph ... uote][br]2) So High Magic can now kill gods...(pg 158-159 1377DR second paragraph)

3) Tyr killing Helm. Two previously written intelligent deities being Lawful Stupid...Sune goddess of romantic love trying to arrange a poli[t]cal marriage to bring balancer back to the celestial Realms...with Tymora who is fickle...sigh I know the Greeks made their pantheons seem like a soap op[e]ra but does the Realms have this way...
[/quote]
Tyr kills Helm?


From what I've been told, most of the gods are gone (for exmaple, Tyr kills Helm. Yes, you heard me right.), 3/4 of the world's pop. died due to spellplague and the aboleths have come.

Oh, right, Spellplague.

>The Spellplague occurs in DR 1385 when Cyric sneaks into Dweomerheart and murders Mystra. All havoc with the Weave breaks loose, with (if I remember correctly) Savras instantly destroyed and Azuth and Velsharoon shunted into the Astral Plane. Arcane spellcasters throughout the Realms are driven insane and/or other bad things happen to them. (Again, if I remember correctly) only the greater gods survive, and they censure Cyric by placing him under house arrest in his divine realm for a thousand years. There is no mention about what happens to Mystra's Chosen. This is the very last entry in the book

I feel like I've been bukkake'd with stupid.

It's Points of Light, and it's quite frankly why I'm sticking with 3.5e Faerun. YOu can go have your $^# up world, thank you.

[Koumei]

So the people who we actually want dead (Drizzt and Elminster) survive, but they go about killing all the gods? Loviatar is at least 1/3 of why I like FR, possibly more. Now where will I go for my bondage goddess? Oh, that's right, Planescape, because it can't exist in 4E, thus rendering any 4E talk irrelevant.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

For the love of Odin, fix that link so it doesn't fuck up the page!

[Tokorona]

Fixed it and the quote tag, sorry.

EDIT: Oh, right, credit goes to Imban for the title. I just now rememered I haven't given him credit.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

1191655628[/unixtime]]Fixed it and the quote tag, sorry.

Much obliged, brother.

[technomancer]

- Something regarding this happens at a place or to a person called "Shallows"; perhaps that's what this novel is about, I don't know (page 3).

If you're curious, Shallows is a place, it was a small town in the wilds that was destroyed in the opening moves of King Obould's bid to found an empire.

[RandomCasualty]

I dunno, I kind of like the changes to Faerun. It really needed some shaking up. There were just too many good empires, and forces of good. Faerun really needed a turn for the worst. The return of Netheril is pretty cool (presumably with the Shades ruling it).

And I like the streamlining of the gods.

Elminster really should have died though... I hate Elminster with a passion...

[Koumei]

Well, if it's mostly the Good gods who die, and more Evil factions grow and become relevant, then that could be excellent for Loviatar and her worshippers. It just depends if they randomly decide to kill her or not.

[Cielingcat]

Is Loviatar actually interesting beyond "lol bondage goddess"? I'm asking a serious question because I stopped caring about FR long ago and actually do not know these things.

[Username17]

FR has a hot goddess whose avatars/priestesses you can hve sex with for every single alignment, faction, and pantheon in the entire setting. And that's just a shit tonne of hot bitch priestesses to seduce.

It's not just "Loviatar is the goddess of bad S&M goth chicks and Sune is the goddess of good S&M goth chicks" - it's literally every single faction. There's a goddess of "Magic and Hot Bitches" for Good (Isis), Evil (Shar), and Neutrality (Mystra). There's a hot bitch goddess of the Drow and another one for the reformed Drow who aren't as bad.

And for reasons that are bloody obvious, these goddesses get a lot more ink and screen time than the other members of their pantheons. I mean shit, can anybody remember a single thing that Thoth has done in the Forgotten Realms other than "exist"?

So Loviatar, in addition to generating some hot sex scenes if you are in to that sort of thing, has been in more adventures and generated more stories than any of the other gods and goddesses of similar stature in Thay. By a huge margin. And some of those stories are kind of cool, if you're in to that sort of thing.

The "Maiden of Pain" book was the only WotC open call for novel submissions that K and I even considered doing up a proposal for. We wanted to go in different directions with it, and both ended up with stuff to do, so we didn't do it. But it was a near thing.

-Username17

[Koumei]

1191678065[/unixtime]]
So Loviatar, in addition to generating some hot sex scenes if you are in to that sort of thing, has been in more adventures and generated more stories than any of the other gods and goddesses of similar stature in Thay. By a huge margin. And some of those stories are kind of cool, if you're in to that sort of thing.

Yes, this is all relevant to my interests. If some here can openly admit to being furries without Space Marines suddenly appearing and killing them with fire, I'm sure I'm free to admit that I'd sign up for Loviatar's church in an instant if I was in the FR.

At any rate, her main shticks are still "Men suck, so don't give them any good jobs" (so I'd be a paragon of their faith by not even taking them to bed) and "Yay, spankings!" which isn't actually able to be a bad thing.

Besides, she also gets two prestige classes specifically for her, which is 2 more than most gods get. One of them doesn't even suck, losing only 1 caster level in return for more skill points, free whip proficiency, the ability to channel touch attacks through whips and a free domain.

Still, something which many forget but I consider a really important part of Loviatar is that she's big on the whole "Endure what the world throws at you, become stronger as a result, then throw it back. Twice. With spikes." thing.

But I was lured in by the idea of a goddess of spankings, I won't deny it. And the Emperor approves of bondage, so it's all good.

[Cielingcat]

While the Emperor may approve of it ("the loyal servant learns to love the lash"), Chaos actually has a god/dess of sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

I dunno, I've read some stuff about Loviatar, and I think that's a little to hardcore for my liking. (You know, the dancing on broken glass while chanting prayers bit is a little too much for me.)

[Cielingcat]

Oh, actually, I just remembered that 40k also has the Dark Eldar, who are like drow+Loviatar+Chaos, only they're also colossal dicks because they're still Eldar.

[Tokorona]

I actually think I liked Faerun since it was stable. Because I prefer not having to have adventures dealing with "THE ENTIRE WORLD HATES US."

n essence, I think the Points of Light idea is illconcived and stupid. I'd rather the setting lie about it's base and maintain a stable (and overall) good setting so that obscure evil is actually more of a threat, then a "Eh, who cares, it's Evil everywhere."

[Cielingcat]

That would be OK, but the old Faerun was actually at the point where the apocalypse started immediately as soon as you started a game. The setting actually isn't stable, because there's a million doomsday cults which all have leaders with actual Epic Spellcasting. And the only way to make it stable is to have the DM penis extensions go around fixing everything and upstaging the PCs.

[rapanui]

I hated the whole Mystra Runs Magic thing. It made no sense.

[Koumei]

Faerun worked better if you just paid attention to one region at a time, and used maybe a quarter of the shit that was apparently in the region. And scaled everything to the level of the PCs.

That way it's actually a little bit interesting, you feel like you can actually solve the problems (or create your own), then after you're finished with that area, you move onto another.

I'm not saying it's ideal, or even what the authors intended, but I found that it makes it much more enjoyable. Granted, you're basically saying the rest of the world doesn't exist, or you're not letting doomsday cults form or become powerful until the PCs know about them (to stop the "And over in Thay, a cult ends the world. Game over."), but it can make for fun games.

[Cielingcat]

You can totally have doomsday cults in the world; FR's problem is that each doomsday cult has a 30-40th level archmage leading it.

[Voss]

And every archmage that hasn't been bad-touched by Elminster is solely and 100% out for personal power. Which in Ed Greenwood-speak, means laying waste to large portions of the world and enslaving peasants, because thats somehow desirable to folks who wield nigh-godlike power.

Faerun worked better when it was barely detailed, and didn't have whole reams of unrelated crap tacked on the other edges of the central regions.

[JonSetanta]

Well now, that's what you get for tying an entire world's worth of magic to a central point.

Say, a wacky deity with stats. And we all know what happens when deities get assigned stats.

I'd want to play a character that joined one of these FR doomsday cults. That looks like fun, and I hate Mystra and Elminster.That second freak was shoving useless dialogue down my throat in one of the Baldur's Gate(s) (forgot which)
Like I was being forced to get quests from The Big E.
Fuck that.

[Cielingcat]

The best part was at the end where Elminster goes and says "shit dude, you could totally kick my ass now." He doesn't actually say that, but the meaning is the same.

[Voss]

To be fair, even when she didn't have stats Mystra died all the goddamn time. This is something like the 5th or 6th incarnation. The weird thing is, the stupid 'Sisters' (which, sigh. Some many things wrong with these women, not least, an attraction to decrepit old men), were made to essentially back up Mystra and make sure magic doesn't go boom the way its about to with the new Cat-ass-trophic Event. 'Course, El the Child-molester is a backup as well, so whatever.

Because she knew she was going to die again. Which is actually fun, since the period the incarnations survived has decreased each time, from thousands of years to a couple decades (at best).

Anyway, it doesn't make sense that survival of magic its dependent on a excessively mortal deity that has poor survival skills. Especially if IIRC and magic was created out of the conflict between the Goddess of Lobotomies and Darkness and the Goddess of the Moon, which are somehow the creator goddesses of the Realms as a whole.

[JonSetanta]

1191739050[/unixtime]]The best part was at the end where Elminster goes and says "shit dude, you could totally kick my ass now." He doesn't actually say that, but the meaning is the same.

But the designers would never let you fight him, oh no. And that made me stamp my feet in anger.
How dare they!

Then again, maybe that's what the intent was: to deny us Elminster-haters bragging rights.

[Koumei]

I didn't play the BG games that much. But I played NWN a lot, and I really wanted a chance to kill Halaster. He was too annoying by half.