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The Masked Mage
Great Reader
USA
2420 Posts |
 Posted - 11 Jan 2018 : 09:23:48
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So I just stumbled on the fact that the Desert of Desolation books from 1e were set in the Raurin desert.
Anyone else gone through them in the past?
Is there anything there that informs on things in the wider realms?
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Wooly Rupert
Master of Mischief
USA
36779 Posts |
Posted - 11 Jan 2018 : 10:04:20
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| I've not read them, myself... But I believe those modules were originally published as not set in any particular world, then rebranded as FR. |
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The Masked Mage
Great Reader
USA
2420 Posts |
Posted - 11 Jan 2018 : 10:07:30
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| Yeah - I'm looking at the one that brought them all together for the first time, which is where it becomes FR. its set in Raurin and Durpar here. |
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sleyvas
Skilled Spell Strategist
USA
11696 Posts |
Posted - 11 Jan 2018 : 12:51:44
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| Check over the past 2-3 months, and you'll see some Utter East threads where we were talking about that resource, and the fact that it introduces some god possibilities. |
Alavairthae, may your skill prevail
Phillip aka Sleyvas |
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Gary Dallison
Great Reader
United Kingdom
6353 Posts |
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Brimstone
Great Reader
USA
3286 Posts |
Posted - 11 Jan 2018 : 18:05:58
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| I know Mark Taylor has done maps of the area... |
"These things also I have observed: that knowledge of our world is
to be nurtured like a precious flower, for it is the most precious
thing we have. Wherefore guard the word written and heed
words unwritten and set them down ere they fade . . . Learn
then, well, the arts of reading, writing, and listening true, and they
will lead you to the greatest art of all: understanding."
Alaundo of Candlekeep |
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Markustay
Realms Explorer extraordinaire
USA
15724 Posts |
Posted - 12 Jan 2018 : 03:11:08
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My old Hordelands Map (hosted her at the 'Keep) has the locales from that AP on it. I moved it more east then the FRIA had the one town (Bralizzar) because I needed more room to place everything, plus the lore was a better fit there (there was some history and a mention of a kingdom of 'Thommar' which had to be shoe-horned in). Now the desert is divided into three main areas - the Plains of Purple Dust, the Raurin (proper), and the Desert of Desolation. It also divides the lower half of the desert in the same way the GHotR divided Imaskar up into provinces (that latter became 'survivor states').
The DoD itself (the way I worked it in my maps) is a somewhat rockier, 'badlands' kind of desert (like the Stonelands, but hotter and dryer). The Adventure Path winds up riding the border between that region and the Raurin proper, so you have a mix of desert types (the Raurin is more like your standard sandy desert, whereas the PoPD is more like a flat dusty wasteland with periodic break in the purple dust showing plains of glass, where the Godwar turned the sand into glass).
The oddest thing about them (other than the lore that is a bit too similar to things that went on in Calimshan) is the mention of deities we don't have in FR. I've fixed that lore-wise (homebrew, of course) by saying that was all because of the Imaskari research it into the home-pantheons of the peoples they kidnapped. |
"I have never in my life learned anything from any man who agreed with me" --- Dudley Field Malone
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The Masked Mage
Great Reader
USA
2420 Posts |
Posted - 12 Jan 2018 : 04:13:56
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| Could also just say the god names were regional aliases for whoever they line up with. |
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Gary Dallison
Great Reader
United Kingdom
6353 Posts |
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George Krashos
Master of Realmslore
Australia
6646 Posts |
Posted - 12 Jan 2018 : 11:58:41
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Just Realmsify it. The god Arpolo is the the name for (pick a deity - Lathander, Amaunator, etc) in the Raurinese pantheon. Easy solution.
George Krashos |
"Because only we, contrary to the barbarians, never count the enemy in battle." -- Aeschylus |
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sleyvas
Skilled Spell Strategist
USA
11696 Posts |
Posted - 12 Jan 2018 : 12:17:49
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quote:
Originally posted by dazzlerdal
People can worship whatever they want. They can worship the great rock Grandar and erect massive temples to him and offer him daily sacrifices.
Grandar may exist as a rock, he may not. If belief powers deities then chances are Grandar will exist if he gets enough worship.
The desert of desolation module mentions a few ancient temples to gods like apollo. However it also mentions that the religion of durpar is supplanting these and the old temples are being knocked down in the south of raurin.
In the north of raurin the people are nomads and if they are anything like the other desert cultures of faerun they are probably not religious.
So we have temples to gods that nobody worships so what does it matter.
In my adaptation i corrupted apollo and he can be either a famous imaskari artificer or old god of the imaskari, or one of the many unknown mulan heroes that became godkings or perhaps even a famous emperor of the raurin empire or its successor states.
I like Grandar. He reminds me of erections.
But the reason why I pointed out the other is just to open up lore possibilities... NOT (necessarily) to introduce new deities.
@Krash - it was Ra-Pollo .... you know the god who rides the golden bristled boar and uses jungle vines to enwrap the sun to slow it down as it crosses the sky to give the people of the world beneath more sunlight. |
Alavairthae, may your skill prevail
Phillip aka Sleyvas |
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Gary Dallison
Great Reader
United Kingdom
6353 Posts |
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Markustay
Realms Explorer extraordinaire
USA
15724 Posts |
Posted - 12 Jan 2018 : 22:08:39
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Ra works better as Helios (and Aumanator) in the Olympian Pantheon. Horus-Re makes a better Apollo (and Lathander).
Interesting about temples beings 'outside' the Raurin itself (to the south) - I never caught that. I'll have to go back through it. That means the Golden Waters region was once much more 'cosmopolitan' than it is now. Just more fuel for the fire in my 'Dathite' theories. 
quote:
Originally posted by George Krashos
Just Realmsify it. The god Arpolo is the the name for (pick a deity - Lathander, Amaunator, etc) in the Raurinese pantheon. Easy solution.
George Krashos
Why, though? Tyche is/was Tyche. Oghma is Oghma. Tyr is Tyr. Clearly, we already have a bunch of 'Earth' gods. We also have some evidence that the Grecco-Roman Pantheon(s) was present in some form at one time or another in the Realms. I think its a lot more work to keep hiding all these lore tidbits and disguising them, then to just say it was active at one time but is now (mostly) defunct. We even have the perfect piece of canon to do just that - the Imaskari penchant for kidnapping large swaths of people from other worlds and times, with their own unique cultures and gods.
Considering you are one of the biggest Forgotten Realms fans I know, you seem strangely adverse to any sort of 'interloping' (cross-planer contamination). |
"I have never in my life learned anything from any man who agreed with me" --- Dudley Field Malone
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Lord Karsus
Great Reader
USA
3737 Posts |
Posted - 12 Jan 2018 : 22:23:27
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-Only insomuch as it's a stray mention of something (in this case, Apollo, and whoever/whatever else) that was never developed, needs a tiny bit more than just a hand wave to make sense in the context, and basically stands out on its own as an outlier, I'd wager.
-Same thing with, like, that Temple of Odin. It's not "wrong", but it makes you go "huh, how'd that happen", without much explanation. |
(A Tri-Partite Arcanist Who Has Forgotten More Than Most Will Ever Know)
Elves of Faerūn
Vol I- The Elves of Faerūn
Vol. III- Spells of the Elves
Vol. VI- Mechanical Compendium |
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Markustay
Realms Explorer extraordinaire
USA
15724 Posts |
Posted - 12 Jan 2018 : 22:35:17
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To take this a step further, I'm at the point where I think there is really only one group of Gods, who send aspects out to the Prime Worlds they are interested in. The concept of 'pantheons' is a human (or in the case of non-humans, 'racial') convention, which the Gods just roll with, but don't actually care a hoot about. They each have dozens - if not hundreds - of different names, and only the weakest among them - mostly demipowers, but there might be a few lesser powers among them - are single-world entities (in the case of demigods/exarchs, single-world, and in the case of lesser {or other} powers, change that to single-Sphere).
Thus, we eliminate all this nonsense about pantheons, and who belongs in which one, and how does that work geographically, and also all the wonky lore about 'interloping'.
'Godwalls' are NOT what we think they are. They are Portals/Conduits. Basically, divine entry ports from the Astral. And like any good 'door', they are keyed. In some spheres they are closed, others they are open, and in most they are closed but you can 'knock' and ask permission to enter (via Ao). In the case of the Imaskari, they basically locked the door and took down the knocker (or the doorbell, if you prefer). For whatever reason, Ao wasn't 'taking any calls' for a few millennia (probably cleaning-up other messes in a thousand other Crystal Spheres).
Thats the normal way gods enter a Sphere, via the astral (from the Great Wheel). They create an Avatar-aspect and send them. However, there are a number of other, more circuitous routes they can use, like Arcane space (the ethereal), the Plane of Shadows (Shadowfell), or even the Feywild (although i feel like there are other things going on there, preventing that most of the time... the Seldarine?) In something I wrote a long time ago, and I even had one group (the Vedics) entering via the Plane of Dreams. So there is really no 'Godwall', just a door, that needs a 'key', and you only get the key if you have permissions (so YEAH, 'password enabled' LOL). However, there are 'backdoors', as I just pointed out.
And if a God (a multispheric Archtype in the Great Wheel) has built up enough of a power-base on a world, they can even have multiple aspects for that one world (sometimes referred to as 'aliases', but its much more than just that). Because of all this, and how time-consuming managing all these worlds get, most of these multispheric powers nurture 'godlings' - underlings (Exarchs) that can handle their business when they are too busy (elsewhere). These would be all the ascended mortals we see around. Eventualy they just get 'folded' into the god itself, and are merely considered 'saints' or some such (they become proxies in the god's Divine Realm, but with a focus on handling business on their homeworld). This is why we see so many of these gods with 'circles' of other gods around them - they are just departments within a greater hierarchy mortals were never meant to understand. |
"I have never in my life learned anything from any man who agreed with me" --- Dudley Field Malone
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Edited by - Markustay on 13 Jan 2018 19:41:22 |
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Lord Karsus
Great Reader
USA
3737 Posts |
Posted - 13 Jan 2018 : 02:39:18
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-I don't doubt that any deity from any world/setting can show up in another world/setting. They do all the time. For me, as long as there are explanations, I see nothing wrong with it. Like I said, when there's something written in a book that seems out of place without any real information, that's when it gets a Marge Simpsons mmmmmmmm from me.
-Us all musing and coming up with possibilities and explanations and theories, all of that is fun. |
(A Tri-Partite Arcanist Who Has Forgotten More Than Most Will Ever Know)
Elves of Faerūn
Vol I- The Elves of Faerūn
Vol. III- Spells of the Elves
Vol. VI- Mechanical Compendium |
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The Masked Mage
Great Reader
USA
2420 Posts |
Posted - 13 Jan 2018 : 16:46:11
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quote:
Originally posted by Lord Karsus
-I don't doubt that any deity from any world/setting can show up in another world/setting. They do all the time. For me, as long as there are explanations, I see nothing wrong with it. Like I said, when there's something written in a book that seems out of place without any real information, that's when it gets a Marge Simpsons mmmmmmmm from me.
-Us all musing and coming up with possibilities and explanations and theories, all of that is fun.
Agreed. There is no reason any god cannot attempt to establish a following in any sphere. There success would be limited by the rules of the sphere (like AO)... and other limiting factors, like the Imaskari block on the Old gods, etc. |
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Desert Of Desolation
