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Originally posted by zenmichael

...(you get to see Shade on the day everything went kerflooey).

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Originally posted by Lord Karsus

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Originally posted by zenmichael

...(you get to see Shade on the day everything went kerflooey).

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-One version of about three canon ones.

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Originally posted by zenmichael

can either of you remember off the top of your head the other places those versions occur? i thought the Kemp version was decently ambiguous enough that it'd probably fit with other versions, but now i'm curious. if you could point me in the direction of other "kerflooey day" handlings, i'd appreciate it.

--ok, i just checked the timeline i've been using, and i'm going to guess the end of 'dangerous games' & the realms of the arcane story 'when even sky cities fall'? does that sound right? Again, thanks!

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Originally posted by Dennis


And as pointed out before, the three versions can be considered as three different records of three different scribes/historians. However, the generally accepted version, I guess, is that Shade teleported to the Demiplane of Shadow mere hours before the Fall.

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Originally posted by Dennis


Well, Telamont must have deemed it more as a precaution. He was not certain that Netheril would fall or not. But just to be safe in case the former happened, he teleported his city to the Demiplane of Shadow, given that he, with the aid of Shar, could shift it back to the Prime if Netheril survived.

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Originally posted by Wooly Rupert

I've always been under the impression that taking the city into the planes was an experiment, not some sort of precaution or anything else. After all, a much easier precaution would have been making a safe landing place and just parking the city. It's hard for a place to fall when it's already on the ground.

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Originally posted by Dennis

LK,

Perhaps the divination of Shar (who was instrumental to Shade's survival) didn't extend to the time of Netheril's Fall. That is, if she did bother to cast any.

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Originally posted by Dennis

Has there been any explanation to the publication of these versions other than what I noted above? Or was it just an editorial mistake?

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Originally posted by Dennis

If not Shar, the Terraseer could have forewarned Telamont, explaining it to be more as a possibility (Netheril's Fall, that is) than a certainty. And seeing that there's no harm done if he listened to the Terraseer (since he could shift his city back to the Prime if the disguised sarrukh proved to be wrong), Telamont then teleported Shade to the Demiplane of Shadow. I see the version of teleporting during Netheril's collapse as the historians' attempt to make the event more dramatic than it really was.

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Originally posted by Dennis


What the Terraseer told Karsus didn't necessarily have to be the same thing he told Telamont, who would have demanded more than that cryptic one-liner.

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Originally posted by Dennis

Again, the sarrukh could have explained it to him, stressing it as a possibility (as opposed to certainty). While it's not completely easy to shift his city to the Plane of Shadow, he could do it with nary a harm to his being. True, the Plane of Shadow was a deadly place, but he and his city weren't devoid of defenses, both magical and mundane. Heh, he might have accepted the Terraseer's warning not just for what it meant but also to have an valid excuse to dabble with shadow magic in the very place where it was in its most powerful state. Casting, experimenting with shadow magic in the Prime is totally different from doing so in the Plane of Shadow.) He could have done it alone (sojourning to the PoS to explore the intricacies of shadow magic), but he was safer if the entire city was there to back him up.

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Originally posted by Lord Karsus

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Originally posted by Dennis


What the Terraseer told Karsus didn't necessarily have to be the same thing he told Telamont, who would have demanded more than that cryptic one-liner.

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-Why would Telamont not accept a cryptic one-liner, while Karsus, his intellectual and political superior, would?

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Originally posted by Lord Karsus

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Originally posted by Dennis

Again, the sarrukh could have explained it to him, stressing it as a possibility (as opposed to certainty). While it's not completely easy to shift his city to the Plane of Shadow, he could do it with nary a harm to his being. True, the Plane of Shadow was a deadly place, but he and his city weren't devoid of defenses, both magical and mundane. Heh, he might have accepted the Terraseer's warning not just for what it meant but also to have an valid excuse to dabble with shadow magic in the very place where it was in its most powerful state. Casting, experimenting with shadow magic in the Prime is totally different from doing so in the Plane of Shadow.) He could have done it alone (sojourning to the PoS to explore the intricacies of shadow magic), but he was safer if the entire city was there to back him up.

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-And again, if there's a theoretical possibility of fire sometime in the future, would you evacuate an entire skyscraper? Even if he trusted the Terraseer- and, that's not even addressing that the Terraseer had no way of knowing that the casting of Karsus' Avatar would end as it did- plenty of factors come into play that seem to stress that it was not a move made casually, but rather, one that seemed almost out of desperation. The Plane of Shadows was relatively newly discovered, and Netherese Planeshift spells still in their research and development. We don't know the direct toll that shifting the city to the Plane of Shadows took on Telamont himself, his sons and other political figures in the city, the general populace of it, or the mythallar itself, but saying that there were very few, I think, is completely baseless. In D&D, Planeshifting oneself is a relatively high level spell. Being able to do the same to a party is an even higher level spell. To do so to an entire city, even if augmented by the city's mythallar, is powerful magic on a grand scale. Magic of that type always has drawbacks, Epic (which it was likely not) or mundane. For Telamont and the ruling elite of Shade at the time, there are/were plenty of alternatives that could have been done at less theoretical cost to themselves/their city, if they somehow had information about a future that had yet to happen.

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Originally posted by Dennis

Because he knew that Karsus was an impetuous, mad archwizard. He had respect for his master's genius, but I'm almost certain not much for his attitude.

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Originally posted by Dennis

I don't buy your skyscraper analogy. That's too simplistic for a scenario this huge. Even if planeshifting his city would cost Telamont so much magical strain, he could easily replenish what he'd lose by the fact alone that his strength would be amplified in the Plane of Shadow. They were not shifting to a random place. Were their destination, say, the Demiplane of Nightmares, they might have suffered a great deal. But it was the Plane of Shadow they were heading to, a place where races with natural affinity to shadows are in their strongest, most powerful condition.

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Originally posted by Dennis

True, he was not yet a shade then, but he was close to becoming one. Shadow magic corrupts whoever dares cast it (much like what happened to Aeron Merrith). That time, Telamont was hardly a human. His unrivaled mastery of the shadow magic and the gradual transformation/corruption of his body were as good as natural affinity to the Plane of Shadow. Hence, empowered.

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Originally posted by Dennis


Aye, nothing explicitly said about him becoming more powerful in the Plane of Shadow. But Telamont was hardly an "ordinary" human. So ordinary limitation of the magic in the Plane of Shadow to non-native beings might not be applicable to the Most High.

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