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 Cataloging All Known Canon Conflicts

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Lhynard Posted - 17 Jul 2017 : 18:36:25
Alae!

I believe that this is my first topic on these forums, so I'll quickly introduce myself. I am one of the admins at the Forgotten Realms Wiki. One of my focuses there is on matters of verisimilitude in the Realms.

In this topic here, one of the difficulties mentioned regarded "fixing" so-called conflicts in Realms' canon. One of our tasks over at the FR Wiki is to record (though not fix) such conflicts within related articles. Sometimes, we do suggest "solutions" to these conflicts, but when we do so, we clearly state the alternatives.

Here are a few examples:
I would like to start a list of all such known conflicts, major or minor, so that we can be sure to record them on the FR Wiki. To this end, I am starting a project page over on the Wiki.

I would like to ask this community to either add directly to my list or post here describing the canon conflict.

It would be most helpful to me if you provide sources, for example, "Sourcebook A states on p. M that Elminster's favorite food is asparagus, whereas Sourcebook B says on p. N that he prefers Brussels sprouts."

Thanks for any help you can provide in starting such a list!
28   L A T E S T    R E P L I E S    (Newest First)
Markustay Posted - 24 Jul 2017 : 01:41:16
I just had another thought - now that we've had 4e and 5e come around with its own (sometimes weird) lore, this changes things. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, especially when we have the ability to alter (retcon) stuff.

What if the cavern was actually a prison for something? What if the drow let it out, by accident?

WHEN does Shar make her first Realms appearance, POST-War of Light & Darkness?

Maybe not ALL the primordials were caged on Abeir...
Markustay Posted - 23 Jul 2017 : 06:01:10
"And in their insanity, the worshipers of Ghaunadaur opened a Gate to another universe - a dark void of chaos and madness. And from those depths crawled Ibrandul, the creeping chaos. The thing that moves in darkness, feeding off the very fabric of reality. The great devourer ate the living stone & earth of Faerűn, consuming it, and in time a colossal cavern the likes of which has never been seen before was hollowed out from the firmament. And with this nourishment, the creature brought forth its progeny - the Imbrandlin, the 'lurkers in darkness', who moved outward from the Great Cavern of Bhaerynden, creating a vast network of tunnels under the Shadowed Lands as they fed. Other Drow joined their brethren, and together they created the Empire of Telantiwar, to replace that which was lost during the descent. But all was not well with their new domain. In the end, the Ilythiir who settled the complex found that the appetites of Ibrandul and its kith could never be satiated, and the monolithic monument to the insanity of the drow weakened, and began to crumble. In those days the dark Elves were still long-lived like their surface cousins, and they did not act with haste, but in the end they abandoned their home, in groups large and small, over the centuries, as more of the complex fell in. On High Harvestide in the 2400th year after receiving Lolth's Blessing, a final, great heaving destroyed the ceiling of the cavern itself, burying the city and the few drow foolish enough to have remained. What few survivors there were fled east, and north, the tunnels used by their predecessors long sealed-off. And so passed the second greatest kingdom of Dark Sylvan Elves, lost children of the Fey, and so went any future hope of them acting in a unified fashion ever again. Gods have mercy on their souls."

---- From the journals of Pharos the Baelnorn, keeper of the Calimemnon Crystal, and last of the true Ilythiiri
George Krashos Posted - 23 Jul 2017 : 01:03:31
quote:
Originally posted by Markustay
Could this be when they first began using Faerzress? Could that have had a deteriorating effect on their original magic? The two were incompatible? Like I said, lots of fun conjecture we can do here.



Maybe it was a consequence of the first big religious conflict in drow society/culture. Nihilistic Ghaunadaur worshippers "blowing up the world" ...

-- George Krashos
Wooly Rupert Posted - 22 Jul 2017 : 20:29:14
If it was only part of the cavern, it's not the Great Rift. Both entries refer to that.
Markustay Posted - 22 Jul 2017 : 18:26:01
Its easy-enough to just say that parts of the cavern had begun to collapse during the first date, and those parts were evacuated. Over time, other parts were abandoned (ostensibly, because of further collapsing... knowing Drow, they probably just kept stupidly digging/modifying their tunnels regardless). The tunnel complex surrounding the Great Rift is insanely extensive, going for hundreds of miles in every direction. I can definitely see the main cavern being evacuated, and then the Drow just kept pushing out into the side-tunnels, widening/creating them as they went, and eventually the dwarves show up, and the few drow 'hold-outs' that were still around simply fled at that point.

As I said, I can see it taking a very long time to happen, especially considering there is a geological factor as well. Its like trying to put a precise date on 'The Fall of Rome'.

Now, as to why the 'Drow magics' somehow failed to maintain their support, we can have all sorts of fun with that. We've seen some evidence of other large Drow complexes suffering similarly (though not nearly as spectacularly) whenever magic ran amok. Dwarves build so that the stone supports itself, but in most cases, the drow just prop stuff up with magic (and I did read that somewhere). Could this be when they first began using Faerzress? Could that have had a deteriorating effect on their original magic? The two were incompatible? Like I said, lots of fun conjecture we can do here.
Wooly Rupert Posted - 22 Jul 2017 : 18:08:37
quote:
Originally posted by Markustay

That one never bothered me - I feel 'it works'. Technically (maybe), the first part of the second quote should have been under the entry in the first quote - I just assume that item took place between those two days, and was 'completed' as of the dwarves arrival at the rift.




It makes sense that the cavern collapsed, the drow fled, and the dwarves showed up later... And that is the easiest fix.

But it's not what the text says. It gives two dates for the collapse of the cavern and the formation of the Great Rift.

BRJ himself acknowledged it as a discrepancy:

quote:
Originally posted by Brian R. James

quote:
Originally posted by Wooly Rupert

Now, I can buy that the empire struggled and stuck around for 1200 years after the cavern came tumbling down. But, we have two references to it having collapsed, and the second uses the phrase "newly formed" -- which doesn't apply to something 1200 years old.
The c.-8800 DR date is from Shining South p. 170. The c.-7600 date comes from Races of Faerűn p. 11. Doesn’t exactly resolve the issue, but that’s where the discrepancy came from.

Wooly Rupert Posted - 22 Jul 2017 : 17:56:18
quote:
Originally posted by Zeromaru X

How long is an elven generation? If elves live 750 max. (according to 5e), for them 1200 years are like 3 generations (3 human generations are like 70-80 years). You could say that empires of long lived races then to live more than those of the short-lived races.



That's still saying that X happened, and as a result, Y happened 3 generations later. That's still a hell of a long separation between the two.
Markustay Posted - 22 Jul 2017 : 17:47:23
That one never bothered me - I feel 'it works'. Technically (maybe), the first part of the second quote should have been under the entry in the first quote - I just assume that item took place between those two years, and was 'completed' as of the dwarves arrival at the rift.

I actually have some really cool (IMO) lore to go with the dwarven arrival, having just 'fled' something in the Yehimals, and its all related to my (ancient) Zakhara lore. I am starting to eagerly await the CandleKanon Wiki.

EDIT:
The GHotR entries that bother me the most are these -

quote:
c. –31500 DR
Under the wise leadership of Zhoukoudien, batrachi power reaches its zenith. The High One’s reign ends when he is slain in battle by the titan thane Omo.


quote:
c. –30000 DR
The great giant god Annam All-Father marries Othea, a lesser demigoddess of Toril. Their union produces eight terrestrial children. Ostoria, the Colossal Kingdom, is founded by Annam in honor of his sons.


Thus, a Titan appears in the histories before the parents of the first titans got together.

Note the capitalization - thats part of my solution for that. The first was a Celestial (First World) Titan, and created whole-cloth as part of the 'least' (near-mortal) tier of the Primordials. The later, Torillian ones were born in the normal manner of procreation, and were fully mortal (because at that point, it was post-Sundering and 'Death' had come into the universe). This isn't even much of a stretch - the Planescape Titans WERE 'bigger, grander' (and more ancient) versions of the terrestrial ones (and there is some evidence that such exists for most of the Giantkin). I would assume any D&D worlds with Titans would have their own, terrestrial (Prime Material) variety, and there could be differences between them. Most of the originals (Primal Titans?) are forced to stay where they are in the Outer Planes, and many are even confined in Carceri. I just checked Wikipedia, and it refers to these PS Titans as 'Greater Titans'.
Zeromaru X Posted - 22 Jul 2017 : 16:26:58
How long is an elven generation? If elves live 750 max. (according to 5e), for them 1200 years are like 3 generations (3 human generations are like 70-80 years). You could say that empires of long lived races then to live more than those of the short-lived races.
Wooly Rupert Posted - 22 Jul 2017 : 16:15:04
Here's a canon conflict that has long bugged me -- these quotes are from pages 16 and 19 of The Grand History of the Realms

quote:
c. –8800 DR
The Great Caverns of Bhaerynden collapse, creating the Great Rift [–9000, –7600].


quote:
c. –7600 DR
The drow empire of Telantiwar falls with the collapse of the great cavern of Bhaerynden. Drow refugees claim lesser caverns to the north, south, east and west of the newly formed Great Rift, establishing cities such as Llurth Dreier, the City of Ooze.
— The dwarves return to their ancestral home, now the Great Rift [–8800, –6000], and establish the Deep Realm. In the millennia that follow, the Stout Folk of the Deep Realm become known as the gold dwarves.


You could say that the cavern's collapse triggered the fall of Telantiwar, but that's a hard claim to make with 1200 year span of time between the two listings. A lot of empires never make it to 1200 years, much less spend 1200 years in decline.

Edit: Oh, hey, post 30,000!
Markustay Posted - 22 Jul 2017 : 15:36:48
From what I gathered, the LFR was producing tons of detail for the Realms, which went against what the 4e team had intended (the 'lore lite' approach). Thus, the 'divorce' (and I remember it as well).

They claim it was due to 'consistency problems', but at the end of the day, it was because they didn't want to have to once-again keep track of tons of canon... canon they had recently threw in the toilet themselves (in order to obliviate the need to do any research in their own Realms writings). This part is only somewhat conjecture, since they DID say that was their goal with the 'New Realms' in those podcasts they were doing when 4e came out: "We wanted to get rid of the feelings of entitlement" {grognardise}. They wanted a 'clean slate', and then the LFR people started filling it back up again, when all they really wanted from the LFR team was throw-away references in one-off adventures.

I had another continuity glitch I was going to mention, but now I can't recall it*. There are TONS of map-related ones, but those are mostly edition-related mistakes (so the map in question would be just plain wrong in that regard).


*It just popped back into my head - Urml, in/near the Wetwoods. Eric Boid 'fixed' it by creating 'Ermul' on the FRIA map (so now we have two different sets of lore, for two different - but nearby - settlements). The inconsistencies were caused by the EXTREMELY problematic Swords of the Iron Legion.
Markustay Posted - 22 Jul 2017 : 15:22:08
The ruins of Amathtar, down in Luiren (or in Dambrath, depending on who you ask... which is the crux of the problem).

We have one set of lore for it in the original The Shining South supplement, and then a completely different set of lore for it in the 3e Shining South book.

I managed to merge the two in an article I had planned to write for a CKC, but of course that never happened. Maybe with this new venture I'll finally be able to do something with it.
Zeromaru X Posted - 20 Jul 2017 : 00:12:06
I do prefer the way they handled the Sundering stuff in LFR than in the actual novels...
sleyvas Posted - 19 Jul 2017 : 14:08:02
quote:
Originally posted by KanzenAU

If only t'were that simple! Some of that page are season 3 or later: eg. ADCP3-1 was made in 2011, ADCP5-2 in 2013.

It also sounds like a fair amount of 2010 adventures, if not all of them, are non-canon from the CK post I linked above. LFR adventures stopped being announced in Dragon Magazine at the end of 2009, the announcement that nothing more was going to be canon was made at the end of Q2 2010, they kept paying writers for Q3 2010, and then it was all done by the start of Q4 2010. Because they essentially cut off support half-way through the "2" season of 2010, I wouldn't be surprised if WotC now operate from a perspective of none of the "2" adventures being canon - it seems the easiest approach, because many of the adventures build into each other.

I might be wrong, but for my purposes I'd play it on the safer side and say all of 2010's LFR material wasn't canon.

Someone could probably reach out to Chris Tulach for a clearer opinion though, I think he managed LFR for WotC. (Edit: I have done so, I'll let everyone know if he replies - though I think he works on Magic now, so he may not know what the current D&D team thinks).



So the Epic 5-3 where you kill Entropy and Epic 6-1 wherein Shar actually has kidnapped Selune would be considered non-canon then. I wonder if this might not be a case of time altering due to the sundering.
KanzenAU Posted - 19 Jul 2017 : 13:30:03
If only t'were that simple! Some of that page are season 3 or later: eg. ADCP3-1 was made in 2011, ADCP5-2 in 2013.

It also sounds like a fair amount of 2010 adventures, if not all of them, are non-canon from the CK post I linked above. LFR adventures stopped being announced in Dragon Magazine at the end of 2009, the announcement that nothing more was going to be canon was made at the end of Q2 2010, they kept paying writers for Q3 2010, and then it was all done by the start of Q4 2010. Because they essentially cut off support half-way through the "2" season of 2010, I wouldn't be surprised if WotC now operate from a perspective of none of the "2" adventures being canon - it seems the easiest approach, because many of the adventures build into each other.

I might be wrong, but for my purposes I'd play it on the safer side and say all of 2010's LFR material wasn't canon.

Someone could probably reach out to Chris Tulach for a clearer opinion though, I think he managed LFR for WotC. (Edit: I have done so, I'll let everyone know if he replies - though I think he works on Magic now, so he may not know what the current D&D team thinks).
Zeromaru X Posted - 19 Jul 2017 : 12:43:41
So, basically we can say, all LFR until 2010 is canon, and all afterwards is non-canon...

So, this makes all the adventures in this page canon, and the ones in the main page non-canon.
KanzenAU Posted - 19 Jul 2017 : 08:28:57
I can't remember exactly where this was said either, but I do remember it being said. It happened in early 2010 from memory, with WotC moving away from LFR to its Encounters program. LFR continued to run, but everything was done by community volunteers, not WotC. Although this was done with WotC's endorsement, they no longer did canon approvals and thus declared everything from a certain point non-canon (at a guess, sometime in 2010). I imagine the early stuff is still canon though, because it went through a full approval process.

A quick search told me that the original info about this was on the now defunct Wizards boards (which hosted LFR originally), but this CK post provides some insight.

If taking the later LFR material as canon, there would be some huge canon conflicts to deal with - for instance, the EPIC series tells an entirely different tale about breaking the darkness over Sembia compared to the novel The Godborn.

Edit: Looking back at old Dragon magazine issues, I notice that the last time LFR was given any fanfare was in December 2009, which seems to coincide with the release of the last adventures with the code of "1", as far as I can tell. My guess is that anything with a 1 code was canon at the time (whether the current WotC team deem it canon now, I don't know), but anything with a later code is not. For example, I would guess module CORE1-17 is canon, but CORE2-1 is not (let alone series 3 to 6 taking place in 2011-2014).
Lhynard Posted - 19 Jul 2017 : 07:16:47
quote:
Originally posted by Mirtek

4e LFR was supposed to be canon at the beginning, it was one of their big selling points of the newest living campaign. However it was officially divorced from canon after a short period and was not canon from there on (which much later allowed them to cut lose with their epic finale)
What do you mean by "it was officially divorced from canon"? Where is such a statement found?
Mirtek Posted - 19 Jul 2017 : 05:35:17
4e LFR was supposed to be canon at the beginning, it was one of their big selling points of the newest living campaign. However it was officially divorced from canon after a short period and was not canon from there on (which much later allowed them to cut lose with their epic finale)
Lhynard Posted - 19 Jul 2017 : 01:05:46
quote:
Originally posted by George Krashos

The founding of Valashar isn't canon conflict. Steven Schend confirmed he got the dates wrong in LOI and fixed the dating in EotSS.

-- George Krashos


Exactly. If you read the note in the link, that's what we explain.
George Krashos Posted - 19 Jul 2017 : 00:16:34
The founding of Valashar isn't canon conflict. Steven Schend confirmed he got the dates wrong in LOI and fixed the dating in EotSS.

-- George Krashos
Diffan Posted - 18 Jul 2017 : 22:17:23
quote:
Originally posted by Zeromaru X

quote:
Originally posted by Lhynard

Are there officially published paper or digital materials from the LFR?



At least, there are digital materials for 4e LFR. Those materials were supported by a few Dragon articles.




Exactly, thank you! I was wondering if the conflicts in these adventure paths were canon or not and them being so make certain plots way more relevant to the current Realms. I wish someone would put them in chronological order for easier reference than a giant list of LFR adventures (where many are amazingly awesome to play through) to pick from, lol.
Zeromaru X Posted - 18 Jul 2017 : 03:51:16
quote:
Originally posted by Lhynard

Are there officially published paper or digital materials from the LFR?



At least, there are digital materials for 4e LFR. Those materials were supported by a few Dragon articles.
Zeromaru X Posted - 18 Jul 2017 : 03:48:49
When I started my "Returned Abeir" project (update or create articles about Returned Abeir) I asked the administrators of the wiki the same (I do not remember if I asked this to Lhynard or BadCatman), as much of the information about Laerakond is in the LFR adventures. They say that, at leasts using their canon policies, LFR is canon.
Lhynard Posted - 18 Jul 2017 : 03:27:26
Our canon policy over at the Wiki is here:
http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Forgotten_Realms_Wiki:Canon

In short:
quote:
"Canon", according to Ed Greenwood, is any published source relating to the Forgotten Realms campaign setting. This means that if it is for sale in paper (or digital) form then it is official Realmslore.

I don't personally know much about the Living Forgotten Realms. Someone before my time added some pages about it to the Wiki, but they have not been touched in years, and I have never personally seen it used as a citation for any articles on which I've worked.

Are there officially published paper or digital materials from the LFR?
Diffan Posted - 18 Jul 2017 : 00:57:34
So do the events in the Living Forgotten Realms campaigns count as Canon?
Lhynard Posted - 17 Jul 2017 : 19:12:25
Thanks for the reply. You raise a great point.

In general, I'll take anything really and sort through whatever I get.

But I should note that the wiki cares about matters of lore, not game mechanics ("crunch").

In the case of your specific example, the Simbul is stated from the very beginning to be a sorceress of great power. (See, e.g., The Seven Sisters, pp. 9, 38.) The lore has been consistent through the editions, to the best of my knowledge, though the crunch has changed. On the wiki, we use the terminology used in the sourcebooks to describe the lore in the body of the article, but in our "infobox" we have a 2e and a 3e tab where some of her crunchy stats are given in brief.

We strive to make the articles read as if they were in-universe. "Level" and "class" are not concepts that exist within the Realms. They exist only around the RPG table.

So, yes, to clarify, the conflicts about which I am primarily concerned regard lore.
Wooly Rupert Posted - 17 Jul 2017 : 18:55:51
The parameters of what is perceived as a conflict would be helpful.

Look at the Simbul, for example: in 2E sources she was a mage. The 3E FRCS made her a sorcerer. Now me, I call that a retcon, because mages and sorcerers are two very different beasts. It could be argued, though, that she was always a sorcerer, but no one realized that sorcerers and mages were different.

And she's just one example. A lot of big name characters have had wildly different levels and classes, even within a single edition.

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