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Actually I believe mention of Shandaular goes all the way back to the FR gray box, however it has almost always carried the same description, namely the portal,the other Shandaular (in the Shaar), and its role as the last city of Ashanath to fall before the total rule of a unified Narfell. Beyond that (and the wraiths that fill the streets) it's been mostly a mystery until now.

The other sources that come to mind are the FR Campaign Setting, Unapproachable East (listed as the City of Weeping Ghosts), and Lost Empires of Faerun, though I believe the latter speaks mostly of the southern Shandaular, known to the Shaaryan tribes as the Council Hills (ah yes, also in Shining South).

Add in my story (with some much appreciated, unpublished lore and advice from Eric Boyd and George Krashos) and that's about all the published lore that I'm aware of.

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Shandaular is first mentioned in the 2E FR Boxed Set.

The Ilythiiri angle came from my suggestions to James to tie his novel into some of the new dates and events that were slated to appear in GHotR (specifically the Ilythiiri presence in Narathmault a.k.a. Dun Tharos).

More information on Shandaular was obtained from the complete and unedited write-up of the "Sunphelm of Shandaular" by Eric Boyd which appeared in a very barebones fashion in the "Shining South" sourcebook (p.59).

When this book hits my shores, I'm keen to see just what James came up with.

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Well, I haven't read the book so I'm not sure where James went with the Ilythiiri angle that I dreamt up a while ago. But I can tell you why I came up with the angle in the first place.

In drawing together the disparate lore on the Rashemi, Narfelli and Raumathari for a timeline on the eastern parts of the Realms (which currently sits unfinished on my HD) I realised that the Narfelli that fought in the Orcgate War didn't come across as the bloodthirsty, demon-worshipping, debased humans that later lore portrayed them as. As such, I surmised that this change in their society had to have occurred after that conflict.

In trying to come up with a reason for why these humans would have been corrupted so in such a short time I reasoned that Dun Tharos was a place of great evil and that when they stumbled across it, that was the catalyst for their path to demon-worship.

I had already placed the elves of Lethyr in the woodlands because I needed their High Magic to stop the spread of the Great Glacier southward and ameliorate the climatic effects of this natural phenomenon (having paid attention to fan comments over the years that no lands/creatures etc should be able to live so close to it) and then extrapolated that they too had stumbled upon Dun Tharos and decided (in typically paternalistic fashion) to exclude "lesser" races (i.e. humans) from contact with the place for fear of what it would do to them. As such, they acted as the guardians of Dun Tharos preventing access to the place to other races.

Of course, the next question that confronted me was why the elves of Lethyr would act in such an altruistic fashion and stay there to take on this role rather than just moving on to other less dangerous woodlands. The answer was the elves of Ilythiir. I reasoned that the dark elves came to the region and built a bolthole of sorts (Narathmault) far away from their normal lands and enemies. They were responsible for the presence and prevalence of demons in the place. Previous lore had established that a portal lay between the region of Ashanath and the Council Hills. The Council Hills were close to the ancestral lands of the Ilythiiri and so I reasoned that this is how they got there. Whilst not stated anywhere, I held (and still hold) the belief that the portal was created by the sarrukh of Okoth - specifically members of the Ba'etith - but I won't go off on that tangent here.

I then surmised that when the Decent of the Drow came to pass, the dark elves were transformed into drow which shattered their magical bindings over a host of demons who ran amok (as demons do) and this coupled with their "change" saw Narathmault evacuated with the surviving dark elves (now drow) heading east and south and forming the current-day Undrek-Thoz. This was also a handy explanation for such a large drow enclave in a relatively remote area away from the normal thrust of the drow diaspora after the fall of Telantiwar.

The elves of Lethyr took on the role they did to make amends for the sins of their dark elf cousins, given that Lethyr was colonised in the aftermath of the Crown Wars with all of the emotional baggage that that conflict generated in the elves.

So in fairly convoluted fashion is an explanation as to the realmslore gyrations I had to go through to set up the premise of an Ilythiiri presence in the region. It was the combination of more than a few pieces of disparate existing realmslore moulded by my own views on the history of the eastern lands of the Realms. However, as with all such creative extrapolations, it may not work for you. If not, feel free to ignore it.

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An insane, evil dark elven "aerthil" (their name for a baelnorn) deep beneath Dun Tharos using magic over the years to connive over, manipulate and control those that walk above. Driven mad millenia ago by the whispers of Wendonai, Derath Sethomiir would make a great behind the scenes protagonist for the region and works very, very well as an explanation for a few things that I've been 'papering over' in my eastern history. Thanks for the hook - it's a good one.

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