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Penknight
Senior Scribe

USA
538 Posts

Posted - 14 Mar 2009 :  02:43:40  Show Profile Send Penknight a Private Message  Reply with Quote  Delete Topic
In my campaign, I have an elf that's not a part of the Crusade that wants to reclaim the city of Lothen. I've read the entry in Lost Empires of Faerun about the orcs from three different tribes populating the city. The entry doesn't say that the whole of the three tribes are there, though. My question is this... is it feasible? How many orcs are present in the city, especially with the fey'ri using orcs and the elves there? I'm wanting to lay this out as well as possible, and I'd appreciate any help. Thanks!!

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Hoondatha
Great Reader

USA
2449 Posts

Posted - 14 Mar 2009 :  03:39:37  Show Profile  Visit Hoondatha's Homepage Send Hoondatha a Private Message  Reply with Quote
I think the best answer to this is whatever you want to make it. The most recent info on Lothen was LEoF, and as you say, it was left vague to give DM's a lot of leeway. So it's as easy or hard as you want to make it.

It's at least conceivable that a band of determined and smart mid-level characters could retake the ruins. Remember, most of the orcs will be average guys; dangerous in overwhelming numbers, but squishy if you use hit and run tactics, and Lothen doesn't have the gates/fiends/phaerimm/kitchen sink that makes Myth Drannor such a death trap. It might even be able to get the three tribes fighting each other and have them do the majority of the PC's killing.

On the other hand, you could make Lothen an orc fortress, as impossible to retake as Hellgate Keep was for centuries. Build it into a epic (NOT the book) goal, something characters would plan and scheme for years to pull off as the climax of the campaign.

Speaking purely as someone who's given the concept of the two northern High Forest realms a great deal of thought, it will probably be easier to take the ruins than to hold them. The northern High Forest is one of the most dangerous places in Faerun purely because it's on the primary horde path for orcs out of two or three different mountain ranges. I've long thought that the reason Aryvandaar was able to conquer so much during the Crown Wars (at one point holding off essentially the entire world) was because they were forged into superb warriors by bashing horde after horde into the ground. Living there either makes you very, very good or very, very dead.

Personally, what I'd do is let the players take over the ruins without too much trouble, provided they're smart, somewhere around level 10, give or take. Then I'd give them a ticking clock. Have a diviner come them (or have a PC diviner and/or priest get a vision) saying that the next orc horde is coming in X years [2-5, probably], and it's headed straight for Lothen.

So they've got their city, and they've got 100,000 orcs on their way to take it back. Sit back and watch the PC's try to line up allies, grow powerful, sabotage the horde, etc. Not to mention fight people to inhabit the city! If they survive, they'll have proven themselves to their new subjects and the North at large as being worthy of leading Lothen's rebirth.

If not... well... there's always hasty teleports to distant lands, or those blank character sheets across the room...

:)

Doggedly converting 3e back to what D&D should be...
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sfdragon
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Posted - 14 Mar 2009 :  08:27:22  Show Profile Send sfdragon a Private Message  Reply with Quote
I forget, lothen, is it one of those ruins in the silver marches???

why is being a wizard like being a drow? both are likely to find a dagger in the back from a rival or one looking to further his own goals, fame and power


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Penknight
Senior Scribe

USA
538 Posts

Posted - 14 Mar 2009 :  14:34:17  Show Profile Send Penknight a Private Message  Reply with Quote
quote:
Originally posted by sfdragon

I forget, lothen, is it one of those ruins in the silver marches???

It's in the western High Forest. Markustay was kind enough to link me a map of the area since I couldn't find it anywhere else.

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Penknight
Senior Scribe

USA
538 Posts

Posted - 14 Mar 2009 :  14:36:15  Show Profile Send Penknight a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Thank you for the information, Hoondatha. If you have any more advice or anyone else does, please let me know. I'd like to hear it. Also, was it the orcs that lead to the fall of Lothen? I know that the demonic horde never made it there, so what was the final conflict that lost them the city? Was it Earlann?

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Edited by - Penknight on 14 Mar 2009 15:14:13
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Hoondatha
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USA
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Posted - 14 Mar 2009 :  16:15:18  Show Profile  Visit Hoondatha's Homepage Send Hoondatha a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Technically, Lothen was part of Siluvanede. However, after the Seven Citadels War Siluvanede ceased to be an independent empire. Conquered by Eaerlann with help from Sharrven, it became a subsidiary of Eaerlann.

I checked LEoF, and it does say that the Hellgate Keep hordes never got that far south. Personally, I don't buy it. The tanar'ri did too thorough a job of destroying the rest of Eaerlann, as well as Ammarindar. At the very least a large enough feint was made against the city to cause its inhabitants to flee. Since it was so far south and west, they'd have a better chance of escaping, which might mean that a larger number of "Eaerlanni" survivors were actually from Lothen.

My own thoughts on Siluvanede predate LEoF, and are somewhat less dark than the LEoF write-up. Basically, I pegged the pre-Seven Citadels Siluvanede population as arrogant and confident, but most of them weren't actually evil. Only the very top echelon was actually corrupt and looking to recreate the Vyshaan empire. When the daemonfey arrived, they stayed hidden and worked with this top group, which is why so many fey'ri are noble scions.

This changes the Seven Citadels War somewhat. The Arcorar high mages arrive in Eaerlann, and fairly quickly discover what the daemonfey are up to, leading to a fast invasion by both Eaerlann and Sharrven. Neither of the moon elf empires want to give a second Aryvandaar any chance to re-appear.

Faced with invasion, the common folk of Siluvanede rally to their leaders, who are by this time all secretly fey'ri. But they're still basically good people, and when the fey'ri secret escapes some time during the war, the common folk rebel. This leads to an interesting three-way war for several years, with the fey'ri fighting Siluvanede's populace, and both of them fighting the Eaerlanni and Sharrven. Some hard and fast negotiations forge a separate peace between all the elves. Faced with the wrath of the entire High Forest, with no one to hide behind, the fey'ri lose soon afterward. A few escape, to be hunted to the end of their days by vengeful elves, the remaining are either killed or imprisoned.

There isn't a lot of canon about the Seven Citadels War, and the above still fits with what's been published. What I like about it is that it clears the way for a genuine melding of the two empires. It's no longer a military annexation, a simmering occupation. I imagine most of the gold elves being intensely shamed by the fact that their leaders had been corrupted right under their eyes. The Eaerlanni in this case become liberators and defenders, and, since they have proven in their own eyes their inability to wisely choose their own leaders, it makes sense that Siluvanede would have turned to their fellow elves for leadership.

All of this is rather long-winded and backstory, but it does serve an illustrative purpose: you need to decide what kind of relationship the former Siluvanede had with the rest of the world. In my campaign, no one would blink at the refounding of Lothen, since it was actually a city of Eaerlann. (Actually, they'd both cheer and shiver in equal measure, but a description of the fairly major changes I've made to the info-void that is Eaerlann is beyond the scope of this thread)

But if you're taking the version of Lothen from LEoF, or even pumping up its dark past, your elf PC might find it very hard to find any elves to join him, especially since he'd be competing with a re-born Myth Drannor for immigrants. Or you'd attract the worst of the worst, looking for a place that would be embracing the city's dark history. Which might be a problem if the PC is, say, a lawful good.

He might even get blow-back from other elves. After all, elves hold onto their history tightly. They'd never let a Vyshaan rise to lead anything, and they might have the same opinion of Lothen. Depending on how dark you decide to make it, it might actually be easier to found a new city on a completely new site. Unless the PC frames it as some version of: "My great grandfather was [some high mucky-muck] in the old Lothen, now I want to redeem his name, and the name of my family and the city they served."

I've given the High Forest a lot of thought, so I'm sure to come up with more, but this post is long enough already. How about posting some of your thoughts on how you see this possibly playing out, to give us something to build upon?

Doggedly converting 3e back to what D&D should be...
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Penknight
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USA
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Posted - 14 Mar 2009 :  16:43:53  Show Profile Send Penknight a Private Message  Reply with Quote
*Sent a PM to keep my players eyes out of campaign information.

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George Krashos
Master of Realmslore

Australia
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Posted - 15 Mar 2009 :  08:57:33  Show Profile Send George Krashos a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Hoondatha, that's exactly how I'd envisaged Siluvanede in my musings. Great minds and all that ... I'd like to think that we've corrupted enough elven realms over the centuries without having to tar every sun elf as a secret fiend worshipper.

-- George Krashos

"Because only we, contrary to the barbarians, never count the enemy in battle." -- Aeschylus
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Zanan
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Germany
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Posted - 15 Mar 2009 :  10:31:34  Show Profile  Visit Zanan's Homepage Send Zanan a Private Message  Reply with Quote
quote:
Originally posted by George Krashos

Hoondatha, that's exactly how I'd envisaged Siluvanede in my musings. Great minds and all that ... I'd like to think that we've corrupted enough elven realms over the centuries without having to tar every sun elf as a secret fiend worshipper.

-- George Krashos



Indeed! For a change, it could be someone corrputed to the worship of Lolth via ... say a lilitu/yochlol fiend of blasphemy? Or possibly a brachina fiend of blasphemy of Baalphegor?

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Visit my "Homepage" to find A Guide to the Drow NPCs of Faerûn, Drow and non-Drow PrC and much more.

Edited by - Zanan on 15 Mar 2009 10:35:17
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Hoondatha
Great Reader

USA
2449 Posts

Posted - 15 Mar 2009 :  14:57:29  Show Profile  Visit Hoondatha's Homepage Send Hoondatha a Private Message  Reply with Quote
George: I agree completely. I think a lot of sun elves are too proud for their own good, but they are still good, and there's a fair amount of skill and history backing up the pride. After all, Siluvanede was over 8000 years old when it finally fell; far, far older than any human realm, and living in a much more dangerous place to boot.

I've always found it interesting how little was published about the nations of the High Forest, even though Eaerlann/Siluvanede lasted more than a century longer than Myth Drannor. It's always been hints and whispers, some of them contradictory. Even within the same book, sometimes, like Netheril, where Eaerlann was described both a weakling nation and a powerhouse. It gave me the freedom to do a lot of thinking, and what I posted about Siluvanede was one part.

Plus, I just like the idea of a civil war in the midst of larger war. If I ever do a campaign set back in time, I might just develop that era for it.

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Duneth Despana
Learned Scribe

Belgium
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Posted - 02 Aug 2015 :  00:26:01  Show Profile Send Duneth Despana a Private Message  Reply with Quote
The Nameless Dungeon was one of the Seven Citadels of Siluvanede ('Final Gate'-Rich Baker) and called the Sleeping Citadel (not a color, or metal, you'll note). So that leaves four to go...

« There is no overriding « epic » in the Realms, but rather a large number of stories, adventures, and encounters going on all the time. [...]. Each creative mind adds to the base, creating, defining, and making their contribution to the rich diversity of the Realms. [...]. But Ed built the stage upon which all the plays are presented. Thanks Ed. » -FR Comic no.1
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Duneth Despana
Learned Scribe

Belgium
273 Posts

Posted - 25 Aug 2015 :  18:23:33  Show Profile Send Duneth Despana a Private Message  Reply with Quote
quote:


Lothen, City of Silver Spires, circa 1370 DR, Part 1


This magnificent city of silvery stone once marked the southern border of Siluvanede. Before Eaerlann annexed it, Lothen was a center of studies for the Siluvanedenn. The rampaging hordes from Hellgate Keep never reached the City of Silver Spires, so Lothen was spared from the devastation wrought by the demons elsewhere in the High Forest.

Today, Lothen's slender stone towers till stand strong, but the great city is populated by orcs from the Tanglethorn, Sharpspike, and Horned Lord tribes. Orc druids have converted several of the old elven temples into temples of Malar, and the forest around Lothen is filled with beasts of Malar that serve as spies and sentries for their orc druid masters.

Far below Lothen lies a stronghold of House Dlardrageth, which occupies several long-forgotten conjuring chambers.


The city is small, barely a quarter of a mile across at its widest point. Picture, on a broad hilltop in deep woods, a cluster of tall, thin stone towers with flaring bases (familiar with a Staunton-pattern chess set? look at a bishop, with its base sweeping up to a ring surmounted with a stylized mitre—yes? Okay, replace the mitre with a tall, slowly-tapering-thinner cylinder (like a candle), topped with a conical point (roof) and flagstaff, not crenellated battlements around a flat roof . . . and you have the “look” of Lothen’s towers, which are studded irregularly [that is, at various heights, some of them on the interior spiral stairs, not just at each floor, and adjacent towers seldom have floors at the same height as each other] with tall, narrow windows up and down the length of their upper “rises” [the soaring cylinder above the ring, and yes, the towers have the rings like the chess pieces; several Amnians who’ve seen the towers of Lothen have described them as “a lot of giant candlesticks, with fresh candles in them”]). A few of these towers were built without internal stairs, but rather had a central open shaft and an “elevator” akin to a Tenser’s floating disc that rose up and down the shaft; of these, only two discs still function, and one unreliably; most have been replaced by pulley-cage elevators enspelled with feather fall for safety reasons. None of the towers have external doors above ground level; rather, their uppermost cellars “let out” into “the ways” of the city (its network of streets, wagonyards, and stables), which rise to the surface in seven “gatehouses.” The gatehouses are defensible stone structures sharing a uniform architecture: a circular stone-roofed “house” that covers the ramp up from the ways, and has a broad, flexible log portcullis resembling a real-world “roll-up-into-the-ceiling” garage door, moved by ropes and pulleys (and that can be locked in the down position with wooden crossbeams dropped into sockets at the bottom and midway up, on the inside of the door, that the door is then latched to with swiveling “hands” of stout wood that pivot down from the inside the door to clamp onto the beams, trapping them between hand and door. Around each gatehouse are stone walls planted with thorn-vines and “strangling vines” (carnivorous vines that clutch at creatures who get too close) along their outsides only; viewed from directly above, they take the shape of elongated ovals (like many real-world pharmaceutical capsules), with the long axis holding the “road approaching the gatehouse.” Along the tops of the walls are set ballistae that can fire down into the interior of the oval, out into the forest around, or “along” the oval to menace the approach when the outer gates are open. So the gatehouse “proper” (the entrance to the underground “ways”) is at the inside end of the oval, and the outer gates (formerly pairs of “swing outwards” elaborate enspelled lattices of structure entwined with growing plants, but now merely pairs of stout wooden vertical-log doors that swing outwards, rolling on wooden wheels; like the gatehouse doors, they can be braced with massive inner treetrunk crossbeams if the city is under attack). Viewed from the air, Lothen covers an area the shape of a closed-in (that is, no holes) numeral eight (or if you prefer, a large oval that overlaps a smaller oval, the smaller oval directly northeast of the larger one). There are seven gatehouses, six spaced evenly around the arc of the larger oval, and one at the “head” or midpoint (away from the larger oval) of the smaller oval. Above ground, Lothen is unwalled and a riot of food-garden plants, many of them gigantic vines that have been trained up lines affixed to windows in the towers, down which young and nimble inhabitants clamber to harvest vegetables, seeds, and herbs. Not all of Lothen’s “spires” are of the same height or radius. Twelve “great towers” are about ninety feet across and taller than the rest, but another thirty-two towers are much smaller and shorter—and two additional great towers and six smaller ones lie in ruins, blasted and fallen (in long-ago spellbattle, elves fighting elves) long ago to leave their exposed stone “roots” (which were shunned by elven inhabitants and have become thickly overgrown). The towers of Lothen are all of “silvery stone” for the same reason the surviving ones remain sturdy to this today: they were built of quarried stone blocks that were fused together by spells that provided great heat and pressure, and at the same time allowed elven spell-artificers to sculpt and smooth the stone, to form solid one-piece but intricate masses of stone (think “vitreous” or “glass,” but not transparent glass). Some tower windows have sheets of “clarified” and even in some cases tinted mica fused into place across the window openings, but most were fitted with translucent plant membranes (like giant, see-through leaves), made to grow over window-openings and open only when gently and properly manipulated (and braced with wooden hoop-and-stick assemblies, when it’s desired that they stay open). These membranes usually remain closed, permitting air currents to pass through them, but absorbing moisture (so it never “rains in”). In winter, when the membranes curl up and wither (new ones will grow in spring) interior shutters are slid into channels around a window, rather like a sliding real-world chalkboard is slid into guide-channels that support and hold it in place, to cover the windows (these may be of wood, slate, or sheets of spell-fused stone).

Below ground, Lothen is a labyrinth of broad, sweeping stone-lined tunnels (walls and floors made of smooth blocks of fitted stone holding up shaped “overarch” blocks that form a ceiling, everything unmortared to let water seep freely through) that form “the ways” of the city (about forty to sixty feet below grade). The “ways” go around the “roots” of towers, not under or through them. Doors in the walls of the “ways”, defended and enspelled in various ways (and it’s rare for such a door to not have, at the very least, an inner “lip” that makes it impossible a door can be forced inwards without destroying the door, and a “chime” doorbell/alarm that signals elsewhere whenever a door is moved into or out of its frame [i.e. opened]), open into the subterranean entrance halls of the city towers, or into storage chambers (daenen, or pantries/larders) that slope downwards. Most of these doors are small (wide enough for two elves to pass through at once, hip to hip), and most of them open out of alcoves in the walls of the ways that were built as stopping-places for wagons, or out of “wagonyards” (side-caverns opening off the ways, in which wagons are stored, parked, and worked on). Most daenen and other storage chambers are accessed from tower entrance halls, not directly from the ways, and there are also secret passages leading down from towers into family vaults (almost always “treasure safe-storage,” not burial, though tales of undead lurking in some of them argue that tombs were hidden in at least a handful of these “secret ways”) and occasionally to deeper chambers that are either natural caverns (usually maintained as water-collection cisterns, their walls carpeted in carefully-tended plants that absorb “taints” [waterborne pollutants and poisons]) or secret meeting-places (like the “forgotten conjuring chambers” used by House Dlardrageth). Lothen was built where it is because of “sweetwater” (pure, clean water) filtering up into some natural caverns here in the form of a “seeping spring” that made for lush plant growth and provided ample drinking and agricultural water. Sanitation in Lothen consists of “throne” toilets that have a woven (think wicker, but with living, still-flexible broadleaf rushes, not dried and hardened fibers) basket of harlmusk beneath. “Harlmusk” is a plant that looks like a thick ground-lichen rising into eruptions that look like irregularly-planted Brussels sprouts, and it feeds on the excrement of humans, elves, dwarves, halflings, gnomes, orcs, and most omnivorous mammals. So the smells and disease of raw sewage is unknown in Lothen; when a harlmusk threatens to outgrow its basket, the basket is simply carted off into the forest and dumped, some of the harlmusk and a little forest loam being put back into the bottom of the basket (or a new basket, if the living-rush-weave is too worn or “open” to hold weight any longer), and put back under a throne. As a result of years upon years of this practice, the forest around Lothen is lush indeed, attracting many birds and small furry forest creatures, and the elven inhabitants got very good at “gardening” the forest, with many trails, encouraging the most daily useful (and valuable) edible plants and herbal-source plants to grow amid their towers, and hardier and less often used plants farther away. As a result, edible woodland animals have always been plentiful around Lothen - - and as a result, foraging orcs, hobgoblins, and marauding monsters (such as owlbears) have been frequent visitors, so the young of the city were led by veterans on frequent patrols (often traveling largely aloft, along networks of tree-boughs, for the local elves could “garden” trees like anything else, and so, over time, shape such networks as desired) to drive away or eliminate such dangers. However, Lothen was a city of scholars, who largely turned their back on overt and devout worship of the elven gods (the “temples” of Lothen are “groves” in the gardens amid the towers, little open spaces with altars that are walled and roofed by elf-reshaped living trees) and sought instead to understand and tame all life and natural forces through experiment and research (what we would term botany, zoology, climatology, alchemy, and the study of magic). The acquisition of knowledge, practical and otherwise, consumed the days and attention of the elders of this city, not defense or conquest of territory or military readiness. It was largely abandoned in the end because someone (intentionally or more likely inadvertently, not knowing the properties of what they were dabbling in) unleashed two local “scourges” (plague-like diseases of minor power, that exhausted themselves before even reaching the boundaries of Lothen). One consumed paper, including the plant weaves many Siluvanedenn were experimenting with. The other ate away, or “twisted,” dweomers: that is, the substance and effects of already-cast magic (either “permanent” operating enchantments, or “hanging” magics that were awaiting future triggers to go into effect). The Lothren elves could find no escape from these scourges, nor solutions: paper records melted away with horrifying speed, and their spells (excepting only those that took immediate, non-lasting effect when cast, like battle magics) started to fail, fade away, or do unintended things. So eventually they all fled, save for a handful of the younger ones who had little personal use for either magic or paper. When orcs next came marauding (on a regular forage raid, in strength and well-armed because bands of orcs that ventured into the vicinity of Lothen so often vanished), that handful didn’t last long.


Discovering a city that was theirs for the taking, with abundant food animals, the orcs decided to stay rather than pillaging and moving on. Some of the band went “home” to fetch the rest of their tribe (the Tanglethorns), and the subsequent disappearance of this tribe from its usual haunts didn’t go unnoticed by their traditional foes, the neighboring Sharpspikes, who sent scouts after them. The result was a nasty little summer-long war for control of Lothen, that ended when Horned Lord orcs, led by orc druids of Malar, showed up in force to take the city from the other two (by-then-battleworn) tribes. House Dlardrageth welcomed all of this as cover for their own activities and a deterrent to anyone else showing up to contest the silver spires, who might discover them, and as entertainment. However, elves of Eaerlann were horrified to discover what had happened to Lothen, and some of them launched a raid of their own, hurling many spells at the orcs. Most of those magics went awry, causing the elves to retreat in consternation, deeming the city “cursed” or “tainted” (and therefore “lost” for the time being to some mysterious evil greater than “a few grunting orcs”). Yet the elven spells took a fearsome toll on the orcs, reducing the Tanglethorns to a few dozen and the Sharpspikes to even fewer, shattering their tribal pride and reducing them to lurking, skulking hand-to-maw survivors. The Horned Lord orcs were more numerous, so more of them survived, ninety-odd in all. However, with many elders and war-leaders among the dead, they fell deeper under the sway of their druids of Malar, who instituted “purity hunts” of “disloyal” Horned Lord orcs to cement their own power. These hunts have made the druids feared and hated (but instantly obeyed), and reduced the Horned Lord orcs to around seventy - - even before a power struggle among the druids pitted Horned Lord orc against Horned Lord orc, in a vicious war that’s still going on and has brought their numbers down to around forty. Human druids of Mielikki and Silvanus concerned with the western High Forest saw a chance to weaken, drive out, or even eliminate the orcs, and “raised the forest against them,” sending in all manner of wild woodland beasts (including many of what most humans deem “monsters”) to overrun Lothen. The orcs fought (and ate) as orcs do, withstanding the onslaught but taking heavy losses—so that by the time the spring of 1370 DR begins, only a few dozen of them (in all, including all three tribes) survive, at about the subsistence/roaming foraging bands level. They have fortified nothing, improved nothing, and are now too few to transform the towers and ruins much even if they wanted to; even starting forest fires won’t do much in damp, misty Lothen, with so much stone (and some fauna that will react to fire by seeking to extinguish the fire, as opposed to fleeing). All of which leaves Lothen lush, full of abundant wildlife (and I do mean WILD life), and ripe for the taking. As Hoondatha has said in another thread: easy to take, not so easy to hold (not only will another horde eventually come Lothen’s way, there are orcs - - and others - - who know that “Lothen’s a battleground” right now, and some of them listen to wild rumors and think it must be a battleground because there’s something valuable there to find. Which of course, if you DM anything like I DM, there is. :} Lots of valuables, in fact, even if all of them might not SEEM valuable, at first glance, or might (rightly) seem just the first part of something greater that must be found and pieced together, piece by piece (like the Rod of Seven Parts), to make something greater.



I think Ed's answer deserved reposting here.

« There is no overriding « epic » in the Realms, but rather a large number of stories, adventures, and encounters going on all the time. [...]. Each creative mind adds to the base, creating, defining, and making their contribution to the rich diversity of the Realms. [...]. But Ed built the stage upon which all the plays are presented. Thanks Ed. » -FR Comic no.1
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Markustay
Realms Explorer extraordinaire

USA
15724 Posts

Posted - 25 Aug 2015 :  18:52:29  Show Profile Send Markustay a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Note that because of some weirdness between maps and editions (and even lore), the city has 'migrated' north, and the region the orcs 'control' (and I use that word VERY loosely) is a very large swath to the south of the City.

We tend to picture 'capitals' as being centered in their countries, but they are usually not, and more often then not, right on an extreme border. Such is the case with Lothen and the Orcs.

The way I picture it currently, One tribe is totally in control of the city, and the other two (and perhaps several smaller ones) mostly stick to the forest to the south, and only pay 'lip service' to Lothen.

And once again, the High Forest orcs and the high forest elves are in a state of détente. They are not friends, but they don't go out of their way to kill each other, either. There are far more pressing matters in the High Forest then political intrigues with your neighbors (who you may need to call upon against threats from within and from without).

"I have never in my life learned anything from any man who agreed with me" --- Dudley Field Malone


Edited by - Markustay on 25 Aug 2015 18:53:21
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Penknight
Senior Scribe

USA
538 Posts

Posted - 25 Aug 2015 :  19:36:47  Show Profile Send Penknight a Private Message  Reply with Quote
I appreciate your reposting his reply here. I know that his reply helped my group to picture the city better, and we were able to reclaim the city in my campaign. It wasn't easy, and even when I moved from Tennessee to Kentucky, my group still had orcs and other things to contend with trying to kill them (and my character who wanted to reclaim the city, as it was his home before the Nameless Dungeon became his place to stay along with his sister with the rest of the imprisoned fey'ri). The drow that are active in the High Forest worked behind the scenes also, and when there was an interlude between the fighting, Telethian and his group worked to get political alliances with the dwarves, the Silver Marches, and even Evermeet.

Yeah, Evermeet was the most difficult to persuade, believe me. Telethian spent time locked up in a cell that didn't allow magic to function, lucky that he wasn't killed period, and they sent someone else that Evermeet approved of to oversee the city being cleaned up, the forest examined, the group Telethian travels with came under heavy scrutiny, etc. There was one point where one of my players mentioned that the elves were worse to deal with than the orcs, and that's when I felt I was doing things right.

Ah, running that during the elven crusade was so much fun for all of us. My players went from first level to epic level through the real world years that campaign took us. It's one of the campaigns that my players remember most fondly along with an elven campaign I ran during 2E that was set primarily on Evermeet. Kymil Nimesin caused so much grief for the island in so many ways, and I have big descriptions of the island and brought everyone to life for my players. Sometimes I really miss playing those campaigns with them, but when I look at my newborn daughter and she smiles at me, I know I made the best decision of my life when I moved. :-)

Please forgive me for any typing errors that might have occurred in this reply. I'm writing this on my tablet, which leads to some issues with grammar and spelling.

Telethian Phoenix
Pathfinder Reference Document

Edited by - Penknight on 25 Aug 2015 19:37:57
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Bladewind
Master of Realmslore

Netherlands
1280 Posts

Posted - 05 Oct 2015 :  17:01:17  Show Profile Send Bladewind a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Was searching for heights of buildings and found this gem of Ed lore. Brilliant!

So the tallest tower in Lothen was about 90ft tall, standing on a hill of similar height; if I read Eds words correctly (appearing at the horizon at a distance of 12 miles if standing on a 100ft high hill as well).

My campaign sketches

Druidic Groves

Creature Feature: Giant Spiders
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