| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| Gray Richardson |
Posted - 20 Apr 2013 : 23:02:20
I’ve been pondering for awhile now what Toril was like before the Days of Thunder. There’s very little lore about this time period. It is effectively pre-historic, although that’s not to say there might not be some written records or entities who can recall those ages, but nothing we have (yet) been given access to.
There are clues, however, and I think we can piece together or draw inferences about quite a number of things.
Ed Greenwood stated in his November 1, 2006 post over in his scroll, that “As for the geological age of Toril, we don't know for sure. However, I can say that the eldest elves and dragons who've considered the matter, and the best-informed human sages ditto, all tend to hold opinions that suggest Toril is twice as old as the Age of Thunder... or perhaps a LITTLE less.” The Days of Thunder began circa -35,000. At the time Ed wrote that, the timeline had advanced to around 1375 DR (give or take) which gives us an estimate of around -71,375 DR (or a little less) for a start date of geological time. Accounting for the “little less” we’ll round up to -71,000 DR for an approximate start date. Note, this is not the date of the creation of Realmspace, which could have happened way earlier. This is the best estimate of the geological age of the planet Toril.
Now Ed allows for the possibility of error and plausible denial, so there’s nothing to say that Toril couldn’t be millions or billions of years old, similar to Earth (well, with the exception of of some insistent dragons, elves and sages). However, we know that Ao created Toril’s crystal sphere, and that the physics of Realmspace are different from Earth, so I’m going to assume, for the sake of argument, that the elves, dragons, and sages of Toril know their business pretty well, and are probably somewhere in the ballpark of the correct estimate. Anyone who wants to tell the dragons they’re wrong are kindly invited to do so themselves. Please leave the grounds of Candlekeep before attempting to argue with any dragons.
So that gives us about 36,000 years of history to fill in the gaps. The Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide p. 42 tells us this time period can be roughly divided into 2 ages: The Blue Age and the Shadow Epoch. |
| 30 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| Markustay |
Posted - 12 Jul 2013 : 13:56:18
I have it where the Faerzress are corrupted earth Nodes - ones that have 'gone cancerous' (because all the worlds were once part of the First world (plane), and consist of bits of the dying body of Imaar (Ymir). The only thing that keeps the rest from deteriorating is the 'Light of Gaea' (the power of life itself, which merged with the dying Ymir, so that both are now in a sort-of comatose state).
The corruption was begun by Cthon, who has been working toward the destruction of the universe since the dawn of time itself (and beyond). Anything living near 'pockets of corruption' slowly gets corrupted (gets CE). The Drow are the best (worst?) example.
My assumption is that there are also corrupted bits of Fire, Air, and Water Nodes.
Hmmmmm... water nodes... maybe those are our Moonwells/"Pools of..."? 
Folks have tried to 'corrupt' those before, in both the Moonshaes and around The Moonsea (and once again, we see a recurring 'Moon' theme). Maybe once they've been corrupted (alignment-altered), the Moonwells become known as "Pools of..."
An example of corrupted fire Nodes - the 'fire swamps' of the High Moor (and those may be getting a new name soon - I 'reimagined' them awhile back for something...)
I suppose corrupted Air nodes could just be pockets of 'Wild Magic' (remember that stuff? Remember how awful it seemed, back before we got Plague-touched stuff? Wild Magic seems pretty lame by comparison, now). IMG, 'Wild Magic Zones' are more like Eberron's Mournland, so it works well as 'corrupted Air'. |
| Quale |
Posted - 12 Jul 2013 : 09:52:43
quote:
Originally posted by Gray Richardson
Could that be responsible for the mysterious radiation known as faerzress?
In my games it did, the faerzress was a sort of anchor/foundation that bound Arvandor to the Prime, made from the earth nodes. I wonder are there giant ruins on Evermeet. |
| sleyvas |
Posted - 09 Jul 2013 : 18:59:02
Just another thought that comes to mind about Coliar and the possibility that it exploded. The distance between Coliar and Toril is between 100 - 300 million miles. Assuming 200 million miles at time of explosion just for a middle ground...
So, the shadow epoch occurred, during which the "sun disappeared from Toril's sky". What if the cloud of detritus from Coliar's explosion actually blotted out the sun from Toril's sky. What if this is what caused the shadow epoch? What caused Coliar to "explode" (primordials fighting maybe)?
So, the Sarrukh creator race appear in the age of Thunder around -35000 DR and the Batrachi around -33500 DR. What if the Sarrukh were reptile men who escaped magically from Coliar... maybe without realizing how.. maybe on purpose. Not stuck on this idea, but it bears at least looking at.
Four thousand years later in -31000 DR we have the Tearfall. If what smacked the ice moon Zotha was a missile from Coliar (or several such), then it travelled the 200 million miles in 4 thousand years, so it was travelling at 50,000 miles per day (2083 miles per hour). Also noting that around this time is when the Aereee empire arose... and noting that Coliar is filled with Aarakocra. So, perhaps some of the Aarakocra survivors also came along with this from Coliar. |
| sleyvas |
Posted - 09 Jul 2013 : 18:13:23
As long as we were discussing the formation of Toril, I figured it would be of interest to take a look at the other planets. At the same time. I pretty much took each planet and looked at its general nature, size, moons, and if there seem to be indigenous population, what that population was. The planets Anadia, Garden, and H'Catha I'd say could be left out of the conversation due to sheer small size or lack of major indigenous population and distance from Toril. Of the others, 2 of the planets (Karpri and Chandos) are primarily water worlds, one being slightly smaller than Toril and the other being larger than Toril. Karpri would seem to have lots of intelligent sea creatures, and I wouldn't be surprised if there are a lot of portals between Toril and this world.... nor would I be surprised if there was still significant traffic between this world and Toril to this day (and the surface world simply doesn't know about it). Chandos' life forms are almost totally bestial fish (some of which may have developed magical abilities), but I also would not be surprised to find aboleths in its depths.
On the other side of Toril is Coliar, a "world" made up of a huge number of earthmotes and filled with what may be many of the remnants of the creator races.... the question that pops in my head is whether all these floating earthmotes were previously one world that maybe exploded.... and maybe as a result these races fled to Toril. If the world DID explode, could it be that a large chunk of this rock filled with maybe dragon eggs slammed into the Ice Moon Zotha and crashed to Faerun?
Finally, there's Glyth.... which is so alien and far away that I'd pretty much prefer to keep it separate from Toril's prehistory. Whether its illithids are indigenous or simply travelers who settled there is unclear, and I'd be inclined to say that they are interlopers.... though how long they've been there... maybe a few centuries, maybe dozens of millennia.
Planet Anadia - moons - none
Planet Size B - 10-100 miles in diameter
NOTES: indigenous population of some kind of insect/reptile hybrid (anadjiin) that look like "alien" from the movie kinda and some kind of gremlin'ish thing (plainsjan).
Planet Coliar - moons - none
Planet Size G - 40,000-100,000 miles in diameter
NOTES: islands of land around an air core (earthmotes). Reptile and bird species, predominantly Lizardmen, dragons, and aarakocras
Planet Toril - moons 1 plus "Tears"
Planet Size E - 4,000-10,000 miles in diameter
Karpri - moons - none
Planet Size D - 1,000-4,000 miles in diameter
NOTES: water world, frozen poles, seaweed equator. Indigenous population appears to be giant insects, giant arachnids, arctic predators of various sorts, telepathic dolphins, huge whales. Possibly the Shalarin that migrate to Toril came from here. There's also some transplants (aquatic elves, eyes of the deep, some gnomes)
Chandos - moons - none
Planet Size F - 10,000-40,000 miles in diameter
Notes: water world with irregular shaped rock formations like marbles that constantly move and reshape the surfaceland. Most of the population is intelligent, magical fish
Glyth - moons 3 plus rings
Planet Size E - 4,000-10,000 miles in diameter
NOTES: warm planet, acidic rain and smoke atmosphere, surface covered in fires and a weird gelatin. Interior riddle with caves and illithids.
Garden - moons 12
Planet Size A - Less than 10 miles in diameter
NOTES: small earth nodes held together by a giant plant (Yggdrasil's Child).
H'Catha - moons 2
Planet Size C - 100-1,000 miles in diameter
NOTES: flat world, central mountain. Beholder transplants. |
| sleyvas |
Posted - 09 Jul 2013 : 15:40:17
On the idea of plate tectonics driving the separation of the continents.... it could also be other magical factors. For instance, if a small portal to the plane of water were to open within the middle of a section of earth, the resulting pressure could cause the continents to experience earthquakes. Similiarly, a small portal to the plane of earth or fire opening in the ocean could result in magma spilling out and forming a small island without the need for volcanic "hot spots" in the core of Toril. Finally, I know I'd mentioned some of this in this thread earlier, but the death of elemental interlopers would leave behind their base element, which would eventually "degrade" to something more like a pool of water, a chunk of rock, a section of clean atmosphere, an area of melted ice, etc.... |
| sleyvas |
Posted - 09 Jul 2013 : 15:16:28
>>And interbreeding between members of even vastly different species in a magical universe seems much more likely to produce viable offspring that would be ruled out by the vagaries of >>DNA and combinatorial genetics as proscribed under the laws of our own physics. How did the first peryton come about anyway...
On the peryton, per canon, Malar I think created it on the Moonshaes.
|
| sleyvas |
Posted - 09 Jul 2013 : 15:13:17
ok, just reading your next section, good I'm glad to see your putting the magic back into the evolution of Toril. |
| sleyvas |
Posted - 09 Jul 2013 : 15:08:42
quote:
Originally posted by Gray Richardson
I assume that Toril’s Blue age most closely parallels Earth’s Paleozoic Era, from the beginning of the Cambrian Explosion to the Permian-Triassic Extinction Event. Or from about 541 million BC, to 252 million BC, lasting approximately 289 million years.
I like the Cambrian as a starting date, because that's when early molluscs, including gastropods, cephalopods and bivalves first appeared in Earth's history. In Toril's Blue Age, the octopoid aquatic creator race came to prominence, so that it's important that octopi could be around.
And during the first half of Earth's Paleozoic Era, Earth, like Toril, was also a water world. Earth did have land, but vertebrate animal life had not crawled out of the seas until the middle of the Paleozoic, when lobe-finned fish began to venture onto land in the Devonian, becoming amphibians. Amphibians evolved into primitive reptiles in the Carboniferous, and by the end of the Permian you had a diverse speciation on land including synapsids, cynodonts, and early archosaurs. The Permian also saw the return of reptiles back to the oceans as mesosaurs, the first marine reptiles.
I don't know if any land pushed up above the waves by the end of Toril's Blue Age, or if the Blue Age was exclusively marine. By the end of the Paleozoic Era on Earth, Pangea had formed. I suggest that the One Land began to form by the end of the Blue Age, and may have been around for a little bit before the world iced over. In fact, I can think of a zillion theories where the rise of land might be linked to or even the cause of the Shadow Epoch. I'd like to assume there were, at the very least, if not a proto-continent, then some islands around for vertebrate life to evolve on by the end of the Blue Age.
Earth's Paleozoic Era ended with the Permian-Triassic Extinction event which killed off 96% of all marine species and 70% of terrestrial vertebrate species. The causes for the extinction are not known but include such theories as climate change, meteor impacts, release of methane into the atmosphere, coal fires, and other catastrophes.
On Toril, instead of the Permian-Triassic Extinction, the sun is swallowed by Dendar, causing the Shadow Epoch, which I suggest most closely parallels the Marinoan Glaciation during Earth's Cryogenian period, a time also referred to as "Snowball Earth." The Marinoan Glaciation lasted from 650 to 635 million BC or about 15 million years long.
I am going to assume, for the basis of conjecture, that Ed Greenwood's statement about the geographic age of Toril is correct. To reiterate, he said in his November 1, 2006 post that “As for the geological age of Toril, we don't know for sure. However, I can say that the eldest elves and dragons who've considered the matter, and the best-informed human sages ditto, all tend to hold opinions that suggest Toril is twice as old as the Age of Thunder... or perhaps a LITTLE less.”
If that's accurate, then I guestimate that the geological start date for Toril would be around -71,375 DR. Or we could round to -71,000 DR to account for the "LITTLE less."
Assuming that the suggested evolutionary timeline advocated by Toril’s sages, via Ed Greenwood, is correct—and that’s a big assumption; Toril’s evolutionary history may have taken millions of years as did Earth’s, we don't really know for sure—but assuming it’s correct, then that would mean it took Toril less than 36,000 years to accomplish what for Earth required about 304 million years.
Let's round down to 30K years, allowing 5,000 years slack to account for an evolutionary period that was comparable to earlier ages of Earth's history, when life was limited to microbial life. A ratio of 30 thousand years to 300 million years suggests an evolutionary correspondence of 1 Toril year to 10,000 Earth years. That assumes a 1 to 1 mapping, and not a logarithmic scale.
So, 15 million years, becomes 1,500 years, which puts the Shadow Epoch glaciation from roughly -36,000 DR to -35,000 DR (give or take).
At 289 million years for the Paleozoic Era, in Toril time, that would be about 28,900 years, which gives us a rough dating from -65,400 DR to -36,500 for the Blue Age, leaving about 5,600 years to play with, either at the beginning of Toril's history to account for periods comparable to Earth's earlier stages, or on the hind end that could account for a longer period during or after the Shadow Epoch.
I cannot stress enough that this is all just ballparking, just back of a napkin estimating. Using a different correspondence ratio could lengthen or shorten the Blue Age. Likewise the Shadow Epoch. Using a logarithmic correspondence would change things up further. And that's assuming that Earth and Toril's geologic histories are even comparable. Assuming a different age for Toril altogether would throw all these conjectures out the window, but there's no other age estimate to work with, so despite all the many variables and assumptions, this is my best guestimate at the moment.
I understand that you guys are trying to make a Earth to Toril comparison scientifically, but the one thing that throws all of this wonky is the simple fact that magic screws with all science. A lot of races probably simply came to be not through evolution, but rather "the gods created them" or "they transported here magically". So, what may have taken us millions of years, could have been handled by a simple magical portal to transplant species. In fact, another thing that should be kept in your minds is that there are other planets and moons within realmspace, and that portals exist between them and Toril. Its normal that the people of Toril consider it "the center of the universe", but to the gods "is that necessarily true". We don't know when these other worlds were created, nor what their life forms were like during this age. We do know that they can and do support life though. I only state this to keep it in the forefront of your thoughts and not the backside, as I know you KNOW this information in your head, but its not necessarily information that you may be processing when performing your postulations. |
| Gray Richardson |
Posted - 09 Jul 2013 : 14:26:08
You know, if Evermeet contains a piece of Arvandor, some essence, or some fundamental link to the Elven heaven, could it be, then, that the Underdark contains some essence of the Elven infernal counterpart? Whatever that would be. A forgotten Elven Hell, a place of astral interment or imprisonment from their cultural psyche that has been forgotten, or subsumed, or appropriated into a more modern concept by Llolth or Ghaunadaur?
A piece of the Demonweb Pits, perhaps? Or part of the Deep (Dismal) Caverns? A piece of Ghaunadaur's Cavern of Slime? Or maybe the entirety of this former (hypothetical) elven Hell plane, or demi-plane, was sucked into the Underdark, dissolved in the process of creating the cavernouss expanse, incorporated like an ingredient, and, since it's now been gone for millennia, afterwards completely forgotten by the elves.
Could that be responsible for the mysterious radiation known as faerzress? |
| Gray Richardson |
Posted - 09 Jul 2013 : 14:10:58
Whoa.
The Sundering as a ritual intended to create, not just a piece of Heaven for the elves on Toril, but a Hell as well.
I like it. |
| Barastir |
Posted - 09 Jul 2013 : 12:03:48
And maybe the ritual was also intended to create an environment for the Dark Elves' banishment. |
| Gray Richardson |
Posted - 09 Jul 2013 : 06:31:31
Further, if the Sundering, as either its primary mechanism of continent propulsion, or just one of any of its means of tectonic engineering, foamed the magma in the mantle beneath and between Toril's tectonic plates, injecting air into the liquid stone to expand it, pressing the plates into the desired directions, this could have pushed up the continents above the sea.
It could have also foamed the bedrock of those continents, making them porous, like a sponge, or Swiss cheese, leaving huge air pockets and tunnels, vast caverns measureless to man...
The Sundering could have been responsible for creating Toril's Underdark.
Did any Drow at all participate in the Sundering ritual? I know the Dark Elves were excluded, but even if only a few or just one participated in that spell circle... If so, then how ironic! Were the Drow to have inadvertently created the vast underworld they would later be forced to retreat into after their curse and their descent.
In fact, if so, maybe it was some quality of the magic that was channeled through those Drow that caused the spell to go awry or at least different from expected.
Even if no Drow participated, it's still an interesting notion that it could have been the Sundering spell that helped to create the Underdark. |
| Gray Richardson |
Posted - 09 Jul 2013 : 06:12:48
Here's a thought: what if the Sundering was an endothermic reaction, absorbing latent kinetic energy (heat) from the environment to power the work of shifting continents about. And this heat sink drew off more and more heat energy as it radiated backwards through time.
Going forwards in time, it looks like Toril is warming. But the reaction is proceeding backwards through time, so in the direction that the spell is progressing, Toril is getting colder as the spell gathers the power it needs.
Or alternatively, Toril cools simply as a side effect of the spell, with the environment just balancing the equation. Sort of a Newtonian equal and opposite reaction. Like when compressed gas escapes suddenly from a container, it cools the container and the surrounding area. That's the principal refrigerators are based on.
Anyway, the point is, perhaps it was the Sundering that caused the Shadow Epoch.
In fact, if the Sundering was radiating backwards through time, culminating with a terminal/initial tectonic event that saw either a plate separation that allowed lava to bubble out from between them, or one plate piling up ontop of another, creating the Firepeaks through the process of orogeny. If Dendar were imprisoned in the crust of Toril beneath the Firepeaks, or alternatively the violence of their creation opened a planar rift to either the Barrens of Doom and Despair (Toril's Tartarean prison plane where Dendar might have been imprisoned at the time) or Dendar's cave in the Fugue Plane (where Dendar is known to currently reside), the Sundering could have accidentally released Dendar just as a side effect of the final stage of the spell.
A spell that cracked the crust of Toril like an egg at a distant point backwards in time, an inflection point, which, from that point forward began to push the fragmented crust into the current configuration.
Dendar appears to be the cause of the Shadow Epoch. But is actually just a side effect of the end result of the spell, when viewed with the arrow of time reversed. But when seen from the perspective of mortal beings, observers who live in the normal forward in time direction, who see Dendar appear and then the Shadow Epoch happens, it's natural for them to assume causation. |
| Wooly Rupert |
Posted - 05 Jul 2013 : 04:02:38
quote:
Originally posted by Markustay
quote:
Originally posted by Quale
You mean the shadevari, not the malaugrym. Yeah, I guess it's possible with magic, I just find it hard to believe, the Sundering spell would be even more ridiculously overpowered. I think it was subtle, like the butterfly effect, e.g. change a small magma flow in the past. I wonder for how long elves planned Evermeet to exist, will the plate tectonics slow down or stop (that would kill the magnetosphere). In some planar timelines I've seen, the le shay are older than the multiverse, I like your idea cause they don't appear alien enough to be that old, not like the sharns.
PRECISELY how I see Fey/Elven High Magic working - you perform a ritual to achieve a required result ("Save us!"), and the magic uses the Temporal prime (timeline) to find a moment when the least amount of change would produce the required result (in the future). This is how Elves are able to create such insanely powerful results - the magic actually doesn't need all that much power - it has time on its side. To destroy an enemy, maybe all they need do is shift a single pebble a million years in the past (which leads to an undersea earthquake, which creates a Tsunami, etc). However, diverting the main timeline is both draining and risky, which is why they rarely do it (and why the results are usually catastrophic; the 'cure' is often worse then the disease). Just like any 'wish-related' magic, you have to be VERY careful how you word things - the more you rush the ritual, the more likely you will get results that are not at all what you wanted.
That's an interesting idea... And it really works when you consider the fact that elves are one of the only races with a deity of time. |
| Markustay |
Posted - 05 Jul 2013 : 01:20:20
Yeah, the originals were probably something far more primal, but I think as the centuries have gone by, it became a term used for any sort of pre-godwar being (so the creature in the novel wasn't a 'true' Shadevari, but was a type of creature that dated from an extremely early, pre-Sundering, time period, so its not really a misnomer, either).
I wouldn't count it as an aspect, because despite all its power, it still wasn't nearly powerful enough to be counted as something the other description of Shadevari (from F&A) seems to imply. I think its just one of those terms that went from being a specific type of something, to being a general, umbrella-term for the whole category.
Yeah, I'm completely in-love with the idea that all fey (and Elven High) magic is temporally based - it not only explains a lot, but its a pretty cool twist. One might say that fey literally 'live on borrowed time'.  |
| Quale |
Posted - 04 Jul 2013 : 20:08:28
In my campaign the le shay also had such chronomantic powers, additionally they'd built artificial worlds similar to the megaliths from Mystara, that could work with the Sundering going to -71 000 DR, reshaping the Earthmother.
Those were only aspects of the shadevari, I think the real shadevari were primordials, their true form is incorporeal, from the shadowstuff and the ethereal proto-matter Ao used to form the crystal sphere. |
| Markustay |
Posted - 04 Jul 2013 : 17:22:45
quote:
Originally posted by Quale
You mean the shadevari, not the malaugrym. Yeah, I guess it's possible with magic, I just find it hard to believe, the Sundering spell would be even more ridiculously overpowered. I think it was subtle, like the butterfly effect, e.g. change a small magma flow in the past. I wonder for how long elves planned Evermeet to exist, will the plate tectonics slow down or stop (that would kill the magnetosphere). In some planar timelines I've seen, the le shay are older than the multiverse, I like your idea cause they don't appear alien enough to be that old, not like the sharns.
PRECISELY how I see Fey/Elven High Magic working - you perform a ritual to achieve a required result ("Save us!"), and the magic uses the Temporal prime (timeline) to find a moment when the least amount of change would produce the required result (in the future). This is how Elves are able to create such insanely powerful results - the magic actually doesn't need all that much power - it has time on its side. To destroy an enemy, maybe all they need do is shift a single pebble a million years in the past (which leads to an undersea earthquake, which creates a Tsunami, etc). However, diverting the main timeline is both draining and risky, which is why they rarely do it (and why the results are usually catastrophic; the 'cure' is often worse then the disease). Just like any 'wish-related' magic, you have to be VERY careful how you word things - the more you rush the ritual, the more likely you will get results that are not at all what you wanted.
Fey seem to have a natural predilection for time-based phenomena.
As for Shadevari, I think thats just a very general term for 'pre-Sundering' beings, which should include all the Creator races. I don't think thats how it was originally meant, but thats my fix for it. That 'Shadevari' encounterd in the Shadowking novel was really a Batrachi/proto-Sladd entity (so it fits into the greater category of 'Shadevari', along with many other things that haven't been detailed). Liken it to our term 'antideluvian'; things that existed before The war of Light & Darkness. |
| Barastir |
Posted - 02 Jul 2013 : 15:35:19
Nice, thank you very much! |
| Gray Richardson |
Posted - 02 Jul 2013 : 14:13:45
Sorry, yes, I meant the Shadevari, not the Malaugryms. Although, they could be fun too.
Brian James's most excellent article on Sarifal is in Dragon #376. There's some beautiful artwork to accompany it, including a fantastic map of a portion of the Moonshaes.
There's also some good lore in there on primal spirits and archfey. |
| Barastir |
Posted - 02 Jul 2013 : 13:26:57
quote:
Originally posted by Gray Richardson
(...)
We have lore to support that the LeShay's timeline was largely eradicated by the Sundering, which radiated backwards through time. (Read their entry in the Epic Handbook, and see also Bryan's article in Dragon.)
(...)
In which Dragon's number, Gray? |
| Quale |
Posted - 02 Jul 2013 : 11:02:17
You mean the shadevari, not the malaugrym. Yeah, I guess it's possible with magic, I just find it hard to believe, the Sundering spell would be even more ridiculously overpowered. I think it was subtle, like the butterfly effect, e.g. change a small magma flow in the past. I wonder for how long elves planned Evermeet to exist, will the plate tectonics slow down or stop (that would kill the magnetosphere). In some planar timelines I've seen, the le shay are older than the multiverse, I like your idea cause they don't appear alien enough to be that old, not like the sharns. |
| Gray Richardson |
Posted - 02 Jul 2013 : 07:05:33
Now, just throwing out another idea: We know there is an alternate timeline in which the Sylvan creator race, the LeShay, flourished. We have lore to support that the LeShay's timeline was largely eradicated by the Sundering, which radiated backwards through time. (Read their entry in the Epic Handbook, and see also Bryan's article in Dragon.)
Let's say, just for the sake of argument, that Toril evolved more along natural timescales, similar to the way Earth did, and that in the original timeline this took millions or billions of years. Plate tectonics caused bits of land to wander around the surface of Toril forming several combinations of continents, breaking up, and then reforming over several generations of such supercontinents. Eventually at the end of the Blue Age, the continents came together to form a relatively stable, Pangea-like supercontinent: Merrouroboros, the One Land.
Then, circa -17,000 DR, the elves cast the Sundering. The spell radiated backwards through time, rewinding time, breaking up the continents so that they could reform in the current reconfiguration. Ostensibly, the reason the spell had to radiate backwards through time is that if it shifted the continental plates so dramatically all at once, Toril would be ripped in half, and every elf, if not all life on Toril would have been killed had it happened all in an instant.
So to mitigate the vast forces involved, in the same way that you alter the course of an ocean liner by applying small forces over long distances, the spell applied force gently, backwards through time, for thousands of years, because continental plates weigh orders of magnitude more than ocean liners.
But, perhaps the Sundering never actually ended? Perhaps it kept breaking up and breaking up the continents, into smaller landmasses, and then into islands and eventually dissolving them into the oceans, until the land disappeared entirely beneath the waves.
What if the spell didn't stop there? What if it kept breaking up Toril's core until it fractured into bits which ground themselves, backwards through time, into cosmic dust.
Perhaps this process took about 54,000 years, from -17,000 DR back to -71,000 DR.
Now, stop the rewind and press the forward button. Proceeding forward through time, along the new timeline, Toril appears to form around -71,000 DR (the attested geological age of Toril). After an age, little islands begin to appear, that grow into larger islands, rising to form greater land masses, until continents appear, pressing upwards and outwards above the waves to form the current configuration of land masses on Toril that we see today.
If the LeShay civilization had it's origin in the original timeline before the -71,000 DR date, then the Sundering might have truncated Toril's timeline so that Toril didn't exist at the time the LeShay evolved or would have come to be. They were effectively edited out of existence.
But, maybe in the original timeline, some of the LeShay had colonized the Feywild from Toril. Assuming that the Sundering didn't extend to the Feywild, the Feywild's timeline would not have been affected. So, just picking a random date, say the LeShay settled the Feywild 80,000 or 100,000 years ago. In -17,000 DR, suddenly, when the LeShay go to visit Toril, it's a different world altogether. All their cousins are gone. Completely obliterated. The LeShay on the Feywild side remember everything. But the LeShay on the Toril side never even existed.
Any LeShay that currently live in Toril would probably have to have re-colonized Toril from the Feywild sometime after the Sundering circa -17,000 DR. |
| Gray Richardson |
Posted - 02 Jul 2013 : 06:15:01
Well, I'm not saying there would be no stories to tell about that period. I concede there would be some. Don't forget the Malaugryms were around back then. There's got to be some interesting lore to explore about them.
The 71,000 dating is supposedly only the geological age of Toril. But not of Realmspace. There's no telling how old Realmspace is, or how long it was around before Toril formed. That's a sizable unknown which could included plenty of time for stories of the type you want to tell.
There's certainly plausible deniability concerning the 71,000 YA dating. I think the arguments in favor of it are these:
1) it comes from Ed Greenwood himself — so it is official lore, at least insofar as it's what Toril's sages believe;
2) Ed said that "the eldest elves and dragons who've considered the matter, and the best-informed human sages ditto" all tend to hold the opinion regarding this dating;
3) There's no other scrap of lore to suggest any alternate date; and
4) We know that Realmspace was created by Ao—although by some accounts the celestial bodies in Realmspace were created by Shar and Selûne. So evidence of divine creation would seem to be evidence against an Earth-like time-scale.
To expand a little further on the above, the eldest elves and dragons and the best-informed human sages of Toril represent a respectable collection of intelligence and learning. They are surely as sophisticated in their areas of expertise as Earth scientists are in theirs. I think that commands a great deal of deference.
Consider also that they have plenty of techniques available to them to verify such knowledge. They have chronomancy, and there are known time portals, no telling how many unknown time portals. Perhaps someone of their ilk has had personal experience of that era of pre-history.
There are also immortal beings and entities who could have conceivably been alive and personally witnessed the creation of Toril. Ao, Shar, Selûne, Chauntea, the Malaugryms, and some of the interloper gods that come from older worlds, possibly including Annam, Corellon, and Moradin just to name a few.
Additionally, in a universe where the celestial bodies were created by divine or magical forces, the cosmological timescales necessary for the accretion of a planet from cosmic dust and planetesimals, for the evolution of an atmosphere, and the evolution of life into multi-cellular organisms is just not required in the way it was for Earth. And probably not even likely. Because if there are gods waiting around for worshippers to evolve to venerate them and charge their divine batteries, you can bet those gods aren't going to just wait around for the excruciatingly long amount of time it takes for natural processes to do their job.
So, while Ed's assurance that we are unsure is certainly grounds enough to disbelieve the 71,000 year dating if you are so inclined, I tend to find the date fairly plausible. Both because I'm a trusting sort, and also because it's the only date I've got to riff on. Though, I'd certainly be willing to entertain speculation about anything in lore that would even hint at an alternative date. |
| Quale |
Posted - 01 Jul 2013 : 16:54:07
I don't believe that 70 000 years is the true age of Toril, but let's say that it is, that the Blue Age (FR's Paleozoic) started then. The Precambrian parallel would be before that, a fantastic version of how our solar system and planet formed, where sentience existed from the beginning. It was a vacuum at first, they needed raw matter, Selune opened gates and vortices to ether/elemental chaos, and Shar created a gravity well that caused the matter to clump. The gates brought with them elemental life, capable of surviving in such environments, it took time to form the planet as it is now, for everything to settle down so that first native life, possibly the Progenitors, could emerge in the Blue Age. So such Pre-Cambrian age would be very turbulent, not boring. |
| Gray Richardson |
Posted - 01 Jul 2013 : 00:14:39
Just for the sake of argument lets say that the 36,000 years (or so) preceding the Days of Thunder is comparable to the entire span of Earth's history from the Hadean Eon (beginning 4.5 billion years ago) up through the end of the Paleozoic Era. That's 4.25 billion years. Giving us a chronological ratio of Toril to Earth years of 1:118,055 years.
Paleozoic Era at 289 million years = just 2,448 Toril years.
Marinoan Glaciation at 15 million years = just 127 Toril years.
Pre-Cambrian at 4 billion years = 33,425 very boring years where nothing happens other than geology.
So, while there's a certain logical consistency in giving proportional weight to the Pre-Cambrian Era, if you do that, it takes up a disproportionate amount of the chronological time available for writing history. It would not leave enough time for the Blue Age and the Shadow Epoch to unfold in a way that is appropriate for telling stories of life in Toril's primordial seas and of the frozen world that followed. |
| Gray Richardson |
Posted - 30 Jun 2013 : 23:50:27
As for your Cambrian question, Toril's Blue Age strikes me as parallel to the entire Paleozoic Era. The Cambrian period is the beginning of the Paleozoic Era. The Paleozoic Era is notable for the development of complex, multicellular life on Earth during which Earth also happened to be basically a water world like Toril. Different though, in that Earth did have some land, but still, the land of that era did not have any vertebrate life until well into the 2nd half of the Paleozoic, during the Devonian Period.
The Paleozoic Era is divided into 6 subdivisions or periods called the Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous, and Permian Periods. After the Permian, there was a great extinction when 96% of sea life was killed off, and 70% of terrestrial vertebrates died off. The extinction that ended the Paleozoic seems like a good parallel to the Shadow Epoch event that ended the Blue Age.
Prior to the Paleozoic Era, there was only tiny microbial life, mostly bacteria and single-celled creatures in the oceans of Earth. Toril may well have had a few thousand years that replicated the Pre-Cambrian supereon, from the Hadean Eon up through the Proterozoic. And I did leave 5,600 years slack to account for that on the front end, before the Blue Age started.
I'll admit, my dating is arbitrary. It's just that there was nothing much of interest going on in the Pre-Cambrian worth talking about. In the absence of higher life-forms, the Pre-Cambrian is just too boring to allot many precious years of history to. I think 5,600 years is plenty adequate, but others might prefer more.
I see it as a great waste of time — literally (as well as literarily.) Any time that you devote to prior eras of geologic history takes away valuable time from the much more interesting period that begins with the Paleozoic Era (or the Blue Age) when you have living creatures that can form civilizations and have adventures and create stories. |
| Gray Richardson |
Posted - 30 Jun 2013 : 23:16:06
I would think that all species have a collective soul/psyche/spirit that guides/guards/influences them in subtle ways. Whether that spirit manifests an individual personification as a Beast Lord may depend on how much charisma that spirit, or the species collectively, possesses.
Primal spirits do not get their power through belief. Their power arises from some facet of the natural world. Beast Lords derive their power from the collective psyche/soul of their species, and that power waxes and wanes with the fortunes of their species. A Beast Lord's individual power, then, is tied to the success of his species, which is strong incentive for him to protect/direct/influence his species to be the fittest for their ecological niche, and to be fruitful and multiply.
Godhood involves divine power invested by belief, a concept I like to call "numen." Divine rank is a measure of how much numen a god possesses or can muster. Numen is basically similar to the concepts of mana, residuum, incarnum, or other magical resources that one can draw on or channel to produce magical effects.
Divinity is really a template that a being acquires. Any creature or thing can ascend to godhood. People, fiends, primordials, animals, spheres of annihilation, even a potted plant.
I think many beings of power that started out as something else may have ascended to divinity through worship. They picked up a god template from having mortal believers. Thus, primordials like Ubtao, Akadi and Kossuth rank as gods. Certain fiends, like Asmodeus and Gargauth can become gods. And certainly primal spirits can acquire numen. Eldath is a good example. A primal spirit of ponds and springs; through worship she became a demigod.
To the extent that certain Beast Lords have been worshipped by humans or revered by sapient individuals of their own species, they may also acquire a god template with some level of divine rank.
These beings of power may already be powerful in their own right, they may not need their divine rank to manifest great power. And if they were already immortal, powerful beings, they could conceivably survive if their worshippers died off or stopped believing and their godhood evaporated. They draw from two wells. And the loss of access to the divine source of power would not necessarily hurt or inhibit them.
I think the elemental gods even find their divinity annoying. They would probably have just as much power in their own right without the god template bestowed on them by belief. They don't particularly like or care for people to worship them, but people seem to do it anyway, and so they tolerate it.
I don't know if all animal totems worshipped by humanoids necessarily started out as Beast Lords. Some may have. Others may have just been an individual animal that a tribe worshipped and caused to ascend. Some animal totems may actually just be an alias for more familiar gods. So I agree with you Quale, that there are multiple types of origins for animal totems that do not require them to have started as a Beast Lord. |
| Quale |
Posted - 30 Jun 2013 : 21:52:50
I agree partially that animals can have spirits, similar to Okku from Mask of the Betrayer, but other come from animistic beliefs. I think that the Uthgardt or Yuir totem spirits formed when humans had more ''primitive'' ways of worship. With civilization animism sometimes evolves into pantheism, that possibly happened to the Mulhorandi powers, but on another world, or they absorbed the beast spirits like the petitioners.
Also why should the Cambrian parallel be the starting point, the Precambrian environment would be ideal for primordials and elementals, the Permian extinction their greatest attempt to take the planet back. |
| Markustay |
Posted - 30 Jun 2013 : 12:54:09
I am now wondering if your 'Primal Bootstrapping' theory is not something that may have developed from conversations we had on the WotC forums awhile back; I've had similar ideas but called it the 'species overmind'. Since I know my own theories (of just about everything D&D) began with excellent conversations I had with many folk on those boards, my assumption here is that this was something I picked-up from posts of yours (so long ago now I can't remember precisely).
I've connected it to other theories of mine, concerning both the scientific and magical/planer aspects of the universe - that everything consists of smaller 'particles' (no great leap there), and that these particles generate patterns of energy, be it solar winds within a star system, or the way a human brain works. Wahts the difference between cells inside a brain, and billions of people on a world? If anything, humans should be able to generate a higher-order Overmind (god?) then simple cells could.
So deities would emerge from this 'community mind' (spontaneously or through ascension... which is really two sides of the same coin), and Over-gods perhaps emerge from community minds of deities (and so on and so forth). Thus, instead of having higher-order beings always being involved in the creation of lesser-order beings, maybe it is far more synergistic then in previously developed models. I don't think ALL cosmic beings came about this way - it had to start somewhere - but I definitely feel that deities evolved this way.
Now, for some other musings...
I have found, with my limited, self-study of evolution and biology that amazing things have emerged through evolution - things that can almost be called 'magical'. We have barely touched the surface on the senses other species might have (since it is nearly impossible to conceive of a sense we do not have). I have also learned that evolution happens far more quickly then scientists used to believe, if the right stimuli are present - life will find a way.
So if we apply our RW knowledge of various sciences to a magical universe (which ours might be, but thats a whole 'nother line of reasoning), then it seems entirely possible that in a setting where magical spells exist, creatures might develop abilities that are 'magical', which D&D terms 'supernatural'. So not every creature had to be the end-result of magical experimentation - many could merely be mutations that have naturally evolved in unnatural circumstances. For instance, an ancient species/creature which has had to deal with magical catastrophes repeatedly might develop a a natural resistance to all magic.
Think of how biological viruses behave: They become resistant to various drugs and forms of treatment over time because they mutate to become resistant. If we didn't have our science to fall back on, would that not appear to be 'magical'? If several civilizations tried to stem the growth of Araumycos over the course of several millenia, does it not stand to reason that it would become immune to magical attacks? In a magical universe, magic IS natural, and therefor becomes part of the natural processes (like evolution).
Could it be that dragons are so darned smart and powerful because so many species have warred with and hunted them? From the Elves and Dwarves to the Giants, and everyone in-between? Dragons might be the ultimate predator just because we made it that way (in much the same way that science has created super-viruses). What sort of abilities could a creature develop if it had an unlimited palette of abilities to choose from? And where do we draw the line between science and fantasy? Something is impossible/fantastical until we discover it to be real, and then we explain it away with science... so whats the difference? Why couldn't an ability like (natural) invisibility simply be an extension of a psionic, Jedi-like mind trick of "you don't see me"? Why wouldn't that be possible even in the Real world?
The only difference between science fiction and science fact is time... in time, we discover how to do all those amazing, 'super-science' (magical?) things. A simple Bic lighter would seem pretty damn magical to a medieval person. Thus, evolution should NOT be about what we humans have already discovered or think possible - we find species that defy logic constantly - it should be about what we can imagine, and beyond.
Because thats how evolution works - it 'does magic' all the time, every minute of every day. |
| Gray Richardson |
Posted - 30 Jun 2013 : 07:54:55
Beast Lords & Mechanisms for Evolution in a Magical World
Regardless of scale, such a 10,000 to 1 ratio suggests that life proliferated and evolved in Toril’s magic-based universe in fundamentally different ways than are allowed by the laws of physics in our own universe.
But that’s not to say there aren't any parallels. There is an idea in evolution called “punctuated equilibrium” which holds that species stay basically the same for long periods of time until intervening events and environmental changes cause periods of rapid evolution and species diversification.
We have lots of evidence in Earth’s own timeline of such evolutionary “explosions” of life, the Cambrian explosion at the beginning of the Paleozoic era being a very good example.
I think there’s evidence of similar such evolutionary stimuli on Toril, that may have been propelled by magical forces and events. A good example may be the rapid evolution of small proto-dragons and drakes into true dragons following the events of Tearfall circa -31,000 DR. It is thought that a magical spell, or radiation, or side-effect from the primordial Asgorath’s crashing of the ice moon Zotha into the Sea of Falling Stars region may have been the impetus for the transformation.
Similarly, we know of the transformation of the Drow, and also the transformation of the octopoid aquatic creator race into the vertebrate, amphibious Batrachi. Three examples of rapid species change by magical means.
The frequency and amplitude of such intervening magical events or catastrophes (RSE's) might have shortened the duration between speciation events in the punctuated equilibrium model, and the magical forces involved may have magnified the rate, extent, and scope of such rapid speciations when they occurred.
I would suggest that there are several other mechanisms which may have caused more subtle, but similarly dramatic changes in Toril's species over longer periods (a few life times) that may have gone unnoticed because they had no noticeable, immediate cause, or alternatively involved dramatic magical events that were not documented and of which knowledge has not survived to the present age.
Some obvious mechanisms are radiations from the weave itself or "raw magic," or other mystical sources such as faerzress, or naturally occurring portals from the elemental planes or even the far realms radiating mystical energies that changed species.
We can't exclude the possibility of a lot of life having migrated through portals or planar rifts. In the same way that newly formed islands, or ones that have been scoured clean of life by volcanoes or tidal waves, rapidly acquire ecosystems by spores and seeds carried on the wind or dropped by birds, insects and mice rafting in on drifting flotsam. There is plenty of evidence of interloper species arriving by portals. So there may be a kind of natural panspermia that populates worlds through planar links.
Experimentation by “creator” races is another possibility.
And interbreeding between members of even vastly different species in a magical universe seems much more likely to produce viable offspring that would be ruled out by the vagaries of DNA and combinatorial genetics as proscribed under the laws of our own physics. How did the first peryton come about anyway...
And we cannot rule out divine creation. But this need not be the only or even the primary driver of life creation. It's a possibility but we can get to the same place without it.
For instance, perhaps on Toril, evolution is not strictly Darwinian. There could be slight variations in the laws of natural selection and mutation that propel more rapid changes in Toril's species. Call it the law of supernatural selection (paranatural? preternatural?) Perhaps evolution work's closer to Lamarck's theory, for instance, rather than Darwin's rules.
I have another theory which I like to call “primal bootstrapping.” We know that the collective spirit or soul of species on Toril produces primal spirits, some referred to as Beast Lords. My theory is that after a species reaches a certain critical mass (probably about the same critical mass as required for it to be called a species) the collective soul or psyche of those organisms generates a primal spirit, or beast lord, that guides that species in positive ways — directing evolution and providing an evolutionary advantage that exerts magical force on successive generations. A force which subtly pressures the species to get “better” or adapt to fit its environment. Sort of a divine Lamarckianism.
These beast lords, or primal spirits, need not be exactly sentient or sapient. Perhaps they are analogous to a collective intelligence, or soul, in the same manner that an ant colony is collectively smart and directed in a way that none of the individual organisms are individually endowed.
I find myself intrigued with this notion. It’s been brewing in the back of my head for years. But I think it could be a powerful mechanism that might help explain how life on Toril evolved, spread and diversified so rapidly across the face of Toril in only a fraction of the time that it took life on Earth to do so. The existence of such beast lords I think is strong evidence supporting this theory. |
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