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Markustay
Realms Explorer extraordinaire

USA
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Posted - 30 Apr 2012 :  18:06:36  Show Profile Send Markustay a Private Message  Reply with Quote
If you can get your hands on it, it is one of the more interesting 2e 'Complete' books. Most of the stuff is real over-kill, so thats why its supposed to be DM-only.

Anyhow, I highly recommend you read the section on Sahu - there are at least 2 (Waterdeepian) NPCs in there, and a WD organization is mentioned (the society of anatomists, or some-such). It also contains some other juicy FR lore (like Loviatar's fight with Cyric). A definite must-have for FR aficionados. It is the ONLY source I know that links Zakharan material to FR material directly (the NPCs interact, and are from both settings).

Regardless, good stuff, and it could give you lots of great ideas if you are going to use the EoA.

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


Edited by - Markustay on 27 Jan 2013 16:02:06
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Wooly Rupert
Master of Mischief
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USA
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Posted - 30 Apr 2012 :  18:51:47  Show Profile Send Wooly Rupert a Private Message  Reply with Quote
quote:
Originally posted by Markustay

If you can get your hands on it, it is one of the more interesting 2e 'Complete' books. Most of the stuff is real over-kill, so thats why its supposed to be DM-only.

Anyhow, I highly recommend you read the section on Sahu - there are at least 2 (Waterdeepian) NPCs in there, and a WD organization is mentioned (the society of anatomists, or some-such). It also contains some other juicy FR lore (like Loviatar's fight with Cyric). A definite must-have for FR aficionados. It is the ONLY source I know that links Zakharan material to FR material directly (the NPCs interact, and are from both settings).

Reagrdless, good stuff, and it could give you lots of great ideas if you are going to use the EoA.



I will look into that...

But we have a character from the Dales who is of Zakharan descent, so there's a direct connection there. Holly Harrowslough, paladin of Lathander, has a Zakharan parent (I think her father). Holly was in the books Finder's Bane and Tymora's Luck.

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The Sage
Procrastinator Most High

Australia
31701 Posts

Posted - 01 May 2012 :  01:35:52  Show Profile Send The Sage a Private Message  Reply with Quote
quote:
Originally posted by Markustay

Not sure if he appeared in any Zakhara material (I barely owned any of that), but he was mentioned as the main 'big bad' in The Complete Book of Necromancers, which details the sub-sub-setting of Sahu, The Island of the Necromancer-Kings.
That's the one. I couldn't recall whether it was the "Necromancer" book or an Al-Qadim source. Which is a reminder, actually, that I really need to re-read these older sources.

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Wooly Rupert
Master of Mischief
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Posted - 27 Jan 2013 :  06:14:29  Show Profile Send Wooly Rupert a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Someone else mentioned the Eminence, and made me recall this thread... Still not 100% satisfied with my idea, here, but I'm still convinced that it's going to make me think of something better.

quote:
Originally posted by Wooly Rupert

So, here's my latest thought...

You've got a mage who we will, for sake of simplicity, call Frehd.

Frehd has a thing for ancient Imaskari magic. He's way powerful, way smart, and manages to find the location of one of the lost Imaskarcana -- we'll call it the Sixth Imaskarcana; IIRC, that one is undescribed. It doesn't matter at this point, this is still brainstorming.

The Sixth Imaskarcana is some sort of device loaded with much magical lore, predominantly necromantic in nature. Maybe it's even got something resembling an intelligence inside it already, like the kiira that Araevin found in the Last Mythal books. A necromantic Holocron, if you will.

So Frehd learns a lot from this thing, and gets to be even more of an Imaskari fanboi. He's also getting on in years, and comes up with the nifty idea, perhaps inspired by the unheard prompting of the Sixth Imaskarcana, of becoming a lich with the Imaskarcana as his phylactery.

Well, the process doesn't go so well for Frehd; turns out that you really shouldn't try to use an artifact as a phylactery. He's bound to the Imaskarcana, and in fact becomes the bodiless, free-willed intelligence of the artifact.

Frehd gets to thinking, and since he's already an Imaskari fanboi, thinks that their idea of giving deities the finger was a pretty nifty one. He hatches a rather ambitious plot: to recreate the barrier that kept out the deities of the slaves the Imaskari stole. Except he wants to scale it up, and prevent all divine influence in the reborn Imaskar. Which is the second part of his idea -- he wants to recreate Imaskar, as well, but he wants to do it as a necrocracy, a nation ruled by the undead. Specifically, liches. He wants to found Eternal Imaskar.

So to do all that, first Frehd has to seriously ramp up his power levels. And to do that, he founds the Eminence of Araunt, with Lod as its leader. Lod may not even know he's not the real leader...


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Wooly Rupert
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Posted - 27 Jan 2013 :  06:17:00  Show Profile Send Wooly Rupert a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Oh, and to recap my objective, here: I want to play with the Eminence in the 1370s era; so I'm looking to retcon them to being from Faerūn and to have some goal in mind other than a large Dead Man's Party. This is all, obviously, homebrew.

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Dennis
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Posted - 27 Jan 2013 :  11:41:31  Show Profile Send Dennis a Private Message  Reply with Quote

It's nice to see a power group that would overtly clash with Szass Tam, and the Eminence is so close to doing that...Or maybe, they are, already...

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Markustay
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Posted - 27 Jan 2013 :  16:01:29  Show Profile Send Markustay a Private Message  Reply with Quote
I'm trying to figure out how I can use some of this in my latest campaign, which blends-in stuff from a few other settings.

The one thing I really love is that the Imaskarcana is at the base of everything. I have two ways that could go - it could be like a Harry Potter Chamber of Secrets thing, and the Imaskarkana is like Voldemort's diary. Since Voldemort starts out the series very much like a Lich, its a kind of fitting homage. A piece of the author's essence (soul?) is bound into the book, and its trying to achieve 'true life' by taking someone else's (in this case Lod). BECOMING Lod is the intelligence in the book's ultimate goal - he is slowly subsuming his personality.

The other thing I am thinking has to do with Wooly's idea of having Lod 'sucked into' the book (or whatever form the Imaskarkana takes). What if something already was imprisoned in the tome, and the only way it could agin its freedom was by having someone else take its place? It could be anything from a Imaskari Necromancer to an archfiend to an Elder Evil.

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JohnLynch
Learned Scribe

Australia
243 Posts

Posted - 28 Jan 2013 :  01:09:51  Show Profile Send JohnLynch a Private Message  Reply with Quote
quote:
Originally posted by Wooly Rupert

See, I'm looking at having the Eminence be totally homegrown, and from Faerūn.
Aaah, damn. If it's alright, I'd like to leave my post below "as is" as an alternate take on using the "Eminence of Araunt" in 1370s DR (first detailed as an 1385 DR campaign, but with notes at the bottom as to how to bring it forward to whenever you feel like).



My thinking is this: Abeir in and of itself isn't a bad idea. It's a great setting that has a lot of potential. The problem was wholeheartedly in the fact they merged the Abeir setting into the Forgotten Realms.

One of the key ideas being the Forgotten Realms that TSR downplayed is the idea of there being portals everywhere leading to other worlds and that high level play would involve travelling through these forgotten portals to realms that have been lost to modern day Faerun.

A cool plot for me would be to have inter-world adventures with the Abeir setting (what connection, if any, Abeir has to Toril would be entirely up to you).

quote:
Originally posted by The Sage

My own thinking on the Eminence suggests that the Codex of Araunt [or, rather, the ritualistic knowledge contained within] is, itself, the key [and, the secret founder/backer] of the "kingdom."
I like this idea. And think it works well with where I was thinking.

Background
In 1385 DR Szass Tam forces Yaphyll to perform a divination for him. Presumably the Spellplague won't occur in your campaign. As such she has a vision of a way for Szass Tam to achieve divinity itself. The Codex of Araunt. Szass Tam immediately starts employing divination magic and other means of garnering information when he learns of its location in Abeir. He locates a portal to this world and sends through a small infiltration crew (duped adventurers if you will) and they retrieve the codex for him. With their holy book gone, the Eminence of Araunt starts readying for a war to retrieve their holy book.

Adventure
In the city the PCs are in rumours start circulating of strange undead attacks on respectable businessmen. The PCs investigate (perhaps an ally was the target of one of the attacks) and they find evidence of undead making these attacks. They track down the attackers and finally find the undead in the midst of attacking a magic shop. They defeat the undead but and notice a tattoo on each of them of three vertical slashes.

Alas this is a dead end. Or so they think. They're detained by the City Watch. 1 hour after the battle, the zombies they were attacking transform back to humans (albeit dead ones). The PCs should be able to identify the people. After an investigation into these people they discover these young adults had joined a cult. They discover the crypt that they had been using as their hideout but it's been abandoned. The cult leaders have already left. One of the cultists was a librarian and looking through her apartment for clues the PCs discover notes on the sites of various tombs. These tombs lead further towards the Sea of Fallen Stars and closer to Thay.

The Eminence of Araunt have traveled to Faerun and are starting cultist cells to grant them knowledge of this realm. They're also building up an army of undead to hurl against those who dared to steal the Codex. As the PCs chase the cultists they find more and more bizarre experiments in the cities they travel to. They find half-undead. Undead dogs who go rabid and start attacking people (transforming those people into ghouls and starting a zombie apocalypse that the PCs must destroy). However as they go they learn more and more about the Eminence of Araunt and the fact they're from another world entirely. They also discover that the true target of the Eminence is Thay.

Eventually the PCs find from a Red Wizard enclave that Szass Tam is the one responsible for stealing the Codex. The PCs must join the civil war as the Eminence is forcing Thay to fight their civil war on two separate fronts (one against Szass Tam, the other against the Eminence) as they're not distinguishing between Szass Tam's men and the other Thayan forces.

This is perfect for Szass Tam as it's giving him time to work out how to use the codex to transform himself into a god. The PCs infiltrate Thay and make their way through the battlefields towards Szass Tam's headquarters. They're aided along the way by a couple of Red Wizards while the rest simply attack the PCs.

The plot culminates in the PCs reaching Szass Tam just as he's about to transform himself into a god. There's a big climactic battle and the PCs defeat Szass Tam. However the Eminence of Araunt is still at large. If they're able to take control over Szass Tam's forces they can ally with the other Thayan faction and together they destroy the Eminence of Araunt's armies.

Follow Up
Although the army of the Eminence of Araunt was destroyed. Not all of its followers were. They go into hiding (think Taliban) and continue to be a force that will plague Toril.

Furthermore the PCs have knowledge of portals that lead to a whole other Realm. The Red Wizards are (of course) eager to locate and use these portals to extend their trade network. Other forces in Toril will also be curious of these portals. Such portals can prove to be a security risk for whatever nation they're located in. But they can also prove to be a boon in that they open up new trading partners and possibly new allies. Churches will also want to use these portals to spread their faith to a new world.

Finally Thay is no longer at civil war (or at least shouldn't be after too long). It will not become an undead nation (thanks to the PCs) but it will soon become united and a force to contend with once more.

While Szass Tam may have been stopped, there is still many more threads that need to be dealt with to fuel further adventures.



That's how I'd do it at least. I like the idea of high level play involving other worlds as it helps justify what the high level NPCs are doing all the time (no, Elminster can't go deal with that country's civil war. There's currently an illithid world that's trying to break through to Toril to enslave everyone).

If you want to run this adventure earlier so that its closer to the year your campaign is set in then you can do a couple of things. The easiest way is to say that Szass Tam seduces Yaphyll (in a non-sexual manner) and has her perform a divination for him (at which point she realises what Szass Tam's plans are and is horrified).

However that "breaks canon" and I know not everyone is comfortable doing that. I personally see PCs as "outside of canon" as in they can do stuff that completely contradicts canon and forces the world into a different series of events as those described in the books. As such you could have the PCs find a hidden location that provides extremely obscure information on Abeir and the location of portals to them. The PCs sell or somehow reveal this information to an NPC and it finds its way back to the Red Wizards and Szass Tam. Enough in game time passes to allow the events in the "background" to play out (minus the civil war angle depending on when your campaign is set) and the adventures continue mostly as written above.

DM of the Realms: A blog for my Forgotten Realms adventures.
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Wooly Rupert
Master of Mischief
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Posted - 28 Jan 2013 :  05:21:15  Show Profile Send Wooly Rupert a Private Message  Reply with Quote
My personal Realms would break canon, anyway, with the Thayan Civil War. As I've described elsewhere, I'd spin it more like the splitting of Clan Wolf in the BattleTech universe -- two different factions, one at home, one in Exile, each considering themselves to be the one true follower of the original path. I think something like this gives a lot more potential, because then you have two groups working against each other, and countless other power groups getting into the mix to either seize power for themselves or to weaken Thay, overall. (My Thay-In-Exile would be based out of Mulmaster and would control the Red Wal-Mart trade, which I would also modify somewhat from canon)

I think I'm fine with the idea of Abeir as a different world -- provided that it has no connection to Toril, other than that of portals. In other words, I dislike the idea that both were one world that was split.

So bringing in the Eminence as invaders from another world isn't a bad idea... I don't think I'll run with it, myself, but it's not a bad idea.

I think I'm going to scrap the Eternal Imaskar aspect of my idea. I like the idea of the Sixth Imaskarcana being some sort of necromantic Holocron, and I like the idea of connecting it, somehow, to the Eminence. I'm just not quite there on figuring out what to do with it all, afterward.

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Edited by - Wooly Rupert on 28 Jan 2013 05:23:53
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Xar Zarath
Senior Scribe

Malaysia
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Posted - 31 Jan 2013 :  05:13:39  Show Profile Send Xar Zarath a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Maybe you could make it as such that the Eminence, while a secretive organization, it merely acts as a front to a worlds spanning undead empire?

Everything ends where it begins. Period.



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Alenis
Acolyte

USA
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Posted - 31 Jan 2013 :  10:51:22  Show Profile Send Alenis a Private Message  Reply with Quote
I think it would be interesting if, somehow, Jergal was behind the Eminence. I mean, he was once an incredibly powerful greater god, controlling the portfolios of what Myrkul, Bane, and Bhaal eventually controlled, plus several others that he didn't pass on. And he gave his power up because he was just so bored and fed up with everything. Now, he's the servant of whomever is the god of the dead, essentially acting as their seneschal, but how many ancient, uber powerful gods really want to do that. Maybe it was part of some master plan. After all, he and his church do sanction the creation and use of undead, so long as it advances the cause of death in the world.
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Old Man Harpell
Senior Scribe

USA
495 Posts

Posted - 31 Jan 2013 :  20:49:37  Show Profile Send Old Man Harpell a Private Message  Reply with Quote
quote:
Originally posted by Jeremy Grenemyer

The processes that power these undead transformations are, ironically enough, powered by living souls, which deprives the deities of new souls to collect--not sure how this hurts the deities, but I'm working on it.


It's been a bit since you originally posted, and thus you might have already come up with an idea, but as a thought:

If one isn't particularly fond of what happened to Kiaransalee (erasing her from her follower's memories, etc, but we likely won't see anything of that sort again, anyways)...

Souls originally destined for another deity, originally providing that other deity with the standard benefits of worship, are now actively leeching certain (albeit miniscule on an individual scale) amounts of power/influence from their original god, which is then funneled (knowingly or otherwise) away for the nefarious intent.

Think Richard Pryor's character in Superman (I think that was the movie...been a while, so I could be misremembering). Making it so that his account received every last half-cent currently in circulation in the banking system, making him insanely wealthy virtually overnight. Translate that to small amounts of worshiper's power reversing itself, channeling that tiny amount of power (for whatever reason), perhaps unnoticed (or not!) by the deities who are being skimmed off of. Enough undead, with perhaps greater amounts of power the higher form of undead you are, and you have a virtual font of divine energy for attempted apotheosis or any other otherwise-unreachable goal.

- OMH
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Markustay
Realms Explorer extraordinaire

USA
15724 Posts

Posted - 31 Jan 2013 :  22:28:13  Show Profile Send Markustay a Private Message  Reply with Quote
quote:
Originally posted by Wooly Rupert

My personal Realms would break canon, anyway, with the Thayan Civil War. <snip>
Yeah, Just did some (more) major tweaking to my hodgepodge setting in regards to Thay as well. Its currently a lot like the 1e/2e Thay (pre-Thaymart), but that is a result of a fallen Thayan Empire which once ruled a far vaster territory.

I turned (old) Thay into the a Roman Empire type of thing, and then said the 'High Council' (the Senate) killed-off the Emperor in a "beware the Ides of March" kind of scenario. (Et Tu, Szass Tam, Et Tu?) That sent the Council (The Tahrchionate + The Zulkirate) into a tailspin of backstabbing and power-grabs, until we have the current (1e/2e) situation. That was all about a century ago. I toned-down the magic and undead quite a bit (and stuck the 'Stygia' vibe I used to have down in Mulhorand... for now). I suppose my new incarnation is a lot like The Great Kingdom (Aerdy from GH) After the Ashes (I may even borrow the Animus concept for a couple of tharchions).

As for the Eminenence of Araunt in my Frakensteined Realms... I'm not sure. I say the old (dead) emperor was araunt, that might work (but I could end up with too much of a 'Mordor' vibe for Thay, if I'm not careful). Think 'Governement below the Governement' (quite literally - a powerful lich running things from beneath Thaymount without anyone being any the wiser.

Unfortunately, that turns Szass Tam into Lod, and I don't like him as a lackey. It might work better as new 'cult' coming up out of Mulhorand.

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


Edited by - Markustay on 01 Feb 2013 00:23:46
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The Sage
Procrastinator Most High

Australia
31701 Posts

Posted - 01 Feb 2013 :  01:29:36  Show Profile Send The Sage a Private Message  Reply with Quote
quote:
Originally posted by Markustay

As for the Eminenence of Araunt in my Frakensteined Realms... I'm not sure. I say the old (dead) emperor was araunt, that might work (but I could end up with too much of a 'Mordor' vibe for Thay, if I'm not careful).
Well, the concept of something dead inhabiting a powerful artifact and corrupting the surrounding land isn't wholly limited to just Mordor and the LotR.

One of the fun things about my conception that I presented earlier... is that the kingdom of Araunt is wherever the Codex may be at any one particular time. It's quite literally a kingdom of the dead without borders.

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Markustay
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Posted - 02 Feb 2013 :  16:54:50  Show Profile Send Markustay a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Now that I have had time to think about this, I may make it a 'background plot' - the ancient dead emperor (the one killed by the Thayan council) Araunt is in hiding somewhere - possibly Mulhorand or Murghōm. I haven't quite gotten that far in my thinking as to where he's sequestered himself.

I had some ideas last night as I was falling asleep concerning Nex and Geb (from Golarion), and putting them into Unther and Mulhorand (I've been creating amalgam-nations for my Realms), so I'll see how that goes (as I work on the map it helps my creative juices - I can actually picture armies sweeping over the landscape in past wars). I like the idea of Araunt being the old Thayan Emperor (as an ancient dead/mummy) hiding in Mulhorand (in the City of the Dead, naturally), but that may be a bit too repetitive with Szass Tam. I have to work out the details of the overthrow (perhaps Araunt was a necropriest and Szass Tam was his wizardly adviser?)

EDIT: Instead of the emperor, I could make it a daughter of the murdered emperor. Making Araunt female might be enough of a twist.

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


Edited by - Markustay on 03 Feb 2013 16:34:24
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daarkknight
Seeker

USA
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Posted - 03 Feb 2013 :  03:05:42  Show Profile Send daarkknight a Private Message  Reply with Quote
quote:
Originally posted by Markustay
The other thing I am thinking has to do with Wooly's idea of having Lod 'sucked into' the book (or whatever form the Imaskarkana takes). What if something already was imprisoned in the tome, and the only way it could agin its freedom was by having someone else take its place? It could be anything from a Imaskari Necromancer to an archfiend to an Elder Evil.



Don't we have a derivation of this idea with Shoon VII (IIRC) and the sorceress Argentresses involving the "Tome of the Unicorn?" Shoon VII was able to take over her body after she discovered the book.

"That's it!"
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Wooly Rupert
Master of Mischief
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Posted - 03 Feb 2013 :  05:06:59  Show Profile Send Wooly Rupert a Private Message  Reply with Quote
quote:
Originally posted by daarkknight

quote:
Originally posted by Markustay
The other thing I am thinking has to do with Wooly's idea of having Lod 'sucked into' the book (or whatever form the Imaskarkana takes). What if something already was imprisoned in the tome, and the only way it could agin its freedom was by having someone else take its place? It could be anything from a Imaskari Necromancer to an archfiend to an Elder Evil.



Don't we have a derivation of this idea with Shoon VII (IIRC) and the sorceress Argentresses involving the "Tome of the Unicorn?" Shoon VII was able to take over her body after she discovered the book.



It's not an uncommon idea.

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Markustay
Realms Explorer extraordinaire

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Posted - 03 Feb 2013 :  16:33:53  Show Profile Send Markustay a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Yeah, its pretty hard to do anything with the Realms without it looking like something else already in the realms, or from something else entirely.

Now, you could possibly combine the two - say the Tome of the Unicorn IS the lost Imaskarna.

Thus making Shoon VII the power behind LoD.

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

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Wooly Rupert
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Posted - 20 Sep 2014 :  15:14:48  Show Profile Send Wooly Rupert a Private Message  Reply with Quote
In another thread, I suggested that maybe the Imaskarcana inspired the Nether Scrolls (and dang it, the timing is all wrong for that idea! ). Mentioning those nifty Imaskari doohickeys made me remember this thread... And giving it some further thought, I've come up with a new variation or two.

Keeping the idea of the Sixth Imaskarcana being a sort of necromantic Holocron, and keeping the friendly neighborhood necrodude with the placeholder name Frehd...

Maybe Frehd wasn't a wizard necromancer at all... Maybe he was either one of the people kidnapped and brought to the Realms by the Imaskari, or a descendent of them. Perhaps, in fact, he is a priest of Osiris, the Egyptian god of the dead.

Frehd wants to go back to Egypt. The problem is, when the Imaskari kidnapped everyone, they were not kind enough to leave the door open behind them, and of course all the roadmaps are in another language (and will never fold back into that original, tight bundle. What's up with that?).

So Frehd wants to go back, but does not know the way there. He comes up with the idea of speaking with the dead -- surely, those who originated elsewhere and have passed beyond the mortal veil would know a lot more! Thus, Frehd starts poking his nose everywhere, looking for intelligent undead to chat with.

Unfortunately, no one is able to give good directions. So he keeps looking, and builds the beginnings of his portal network in the process -- after all, he just needs to know where to go. Once he finds the right path, he can use this network to get his assisting undead buddies and his kidnapped people home.

Time passes. Frehd becomes more and more obsessed with finding the way home, but keeps not making any progress. The effect on his sanity is not a positive one... Eventually, Frehd himself shuffles off this mortal coil. But the knowledge and lore he'd learned from Necromancy for Dummies was enough to keep some portion of his mind around....

That portion remembers seeking out intelligent undead, and building a portal network... It also remembers looking for a home. Looking for a specific, lost home, now that part is forgotten or twisted -- just looking for a home is the part that remains.

Then along comes Lod. Loddie finds the Sixth Imaskarcana himself, and thinks to use it. This opens him up to Frehd, who finds a handy new tool for accomplishing his goals. So Lod is forcibly recruited. And Frehd uses Lod to go back to what remains of Frehd's original idea: linking up with intelligent undead and finding (even making, if necessary) a new home. Lod himself is just a tool, not really knowing what Frehd is looking for (partially because Frehd's fragmented mind is no longer sure), but forced to go along with it, anyway.

And the beauty of this spin (at least to me) is that while it does provide a Faerūnian origin for the Eminence, it doesn't rule out the Abeirran connection. Maybe Lod wasn't from Laerakond, but one of his portals took him there, and he spent enough time and was active enough there that to all appearances, that's where the Eminence originated!

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Edited by - Wooly Rupert on 20 Sep 2014 17:28:12
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Markustay
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Posted - 21 Sep 2014 :  18:26:47  Show Profile Send Markustay a Private Message  Reply with Quote
I like that - I like anything that connects Abeir to other (past) lore. We really needed more of that.

So (FR)folks simply became aware of the EoA because of the (un)Sundering/Spellplague - for whatever reason you want to use - and the assumption is thats where they came from. I like the idea of them coming from both worlds; that one of the few 'paths' left open between the two worlds was through death (that the 'closed' nature of Abeir was designed to stop living things from crossing between them, maybe?)

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

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