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Originally posted by dazzlerdal

Number 3 - where was the 4th member of the trio nefarious imprisoned.

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Originally posted by George Krashos

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Originally posted by dazzlerdal

Number 3 - where was the 4th member of the trio nefarious imprisoned.

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Is that like asking who was the 5th Beatle?

-- George Krashos

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I recall overhearing an informal chat in one of the lounges at GenCon, involving Ed and several of the company designers of the time, explaining something about the Trio to a licensee (computer game designer?).
What was said boiled down to this:

The Trio Nefarious were actually FOUR nycaloths who had acquired ancient magic (devised by someone else) that allowed them to "take over" the bodies of other nycaloths for short periods, putting the minds in those bodies into comas. So they could use a borrowed body to fight or do some other dangerous deed, and then discard it for another or for a return to their own. The magic that enabled them to do this also protected their minds from some hostile mind-affecting magics (charms, illusions, and attempts to influence or control), enabling them to withstand some attacks better than a "normal" nycaloth. The three active members of the Trio had overcome the fourth, who was the smartest, leaving the fourth as a comatose body they could all flee into, or take over permanently, if need be.
All three of them had made some sort of blood pact enforcing their loyalty to each other, and they spent much of their time acquiring all sorts of magic items, so as to be walking arsenals of magic with ready access to several hidden caches of magic, so they could take on most archmages and other nycaloths and expect to prevail.
Aside from this cunning and magical augmentation, they were no different than other nycaloths, but were thought by some human and elven survivors of encounters with them to be a more powerful sort or form of nycaloth (hence the "greater" sobriquet).
I'm not sure if this is canon, or was ever put into print anywhere. Ed mainly listened rather than talking (although he never disagreed or "corrected" any of this), and Steven Schend wasn't there, so this may not be "official" Realmslore . . . but I regard it as so.
love,
THO

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Originally posted by dazzlerdal

Thank you wooly for finding that for me (ive been trying to refind it for ages). I dont suppose you know which year it is in.

I personally love it as a piece of lore as it presents so many possibilities and it nicelu explaims the background of one of the modern realms villains as well (1360s modern).

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Originally posted by sleyvas

In death masks, there's a short blurb at the beginning (I haven't gotten all the way through, but wanted to ask this before I forget). The blurb is something along the lines that Elminster's main purpose in Waterdeep is to help some individual whose sanity is scattered (or something to that effect). Just checking is that a reference to Halaster?

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Originally posted by George Krashos

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Originally posted by sleyvas

In death masks, there's a short blurb at the beginning (I haven't gotten all the way through, but wanted to ask this before I forget). The blurb is something along the lines that Elminster's main purpose in Waterdeep is to help some individual whose sanity is scattered (or something to that effect). Just checking is that a reference to Halaster?

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No. Another famous wizard. Surprising, but famous. He likes swords and hounds.

-- George Krashos

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Originally posted by CorellonsDevout

I'm going to have to keep this all in mind.
So is it offical that the Realms novels are coming to an end, and we will have to look to the DMsGuild for updates?

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Originally posted by Wooly Rupert

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Originally posted by CorellonsDevout

I'm going to have to keep this all in mind.
So is it offical that the Realms novels are coming to an end, and we will have to look to the DMsGuild for updates?

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I still haven't seen anything to that effect, anywhere.

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Hello again, all. Ed was offline for the better part of a day (an electrical storm fried an aging iMac power supply, and he was too busy with other things to swap the hard drive out into ANOTHER aging iMac, so as to get all his Net ISP settings back), but he's surfaced now, just in time to answer Zanan's query:


Spells are written in an everchanging "pidgin" language derived from Auld Wyrm/Auld Wyrmish (sometimes called "Auld High Wyrmish" or "Old Draconic"), words augmented by runes/sigils that carry their own magical charges AND have a meaning in an incantation, akin to modern real-world picto-symbols for access, washrooms, this or that banned, et al (though they usually mean something like "that phrase [of the incantation, just spoken] is validated and empowered thus" or "empowered and comined with [the next phrase of the incantation") which is why "read magic" was a different spell than "comprehend languages."
An incantation is "read" by enunciating the words of the incantation, and visualizing (or touching) each rune/sigil AS the name of the rune/sigil is uttered, as they occur in the written spell (which releases their "trigger" magic to affect ("steer and shape") the building power of the natural forces of the world that is being raised and combined by the incantation into an eventual effect.
The language of the incantation (not counting these rune/sigil names) consists of verbs and articles mainly of elder draconic origin, plus a vocabulary of nouns (and a few verbs and articles) added by many workers-in-magic down the years. Some of these added words are elvish, some are human, and a very few (gems, mainly) are dwarven or from the gnome tongue. This language, like all languages, changes over time, as many new words are added, a few are forgotten, and a few fall out of favour. Many of the newer words are "nonsense" words coined by individual human mages, that get taken up and used by others; if someone used to wielding the Art ("arcane magic spellcaster") reads a spell scroll or written spell without actually casting it, the meanings of the words are conveyed faintly to them, unfolding in their brains (which is how someone can trigger not just explosive runes, but a harmful or beneficial glyph).
The point is that the spell CRAFTER (not caster, if they are different beings) must know/feel/be able to visualize what each word represents, be it a thing, a force, a transformation, or a desired result (for instance, the incantation phrase "aumma drood hethtarl [barrander] khehk'tal" literally means: ruby (the gem), melt it, to produce only a red vapor and heat, [name of rune, that means: applying the flesh-affecting ability this derived chemical possesses, to all of the energies of the building spell], unchanged in effects). So it's quite possible for a drow caster to use drow words in an incantation, or a dwarf to replace some words with dwarven runes (different from the "power runes"/sigils of the spell), or any spellcaster to use a family or personal nonsense word that THEY know the meaning of, when writing down spells.
So the answer is: there's no one "language of magic," but there's a jargon for incanting that's perhaps 40 percent nonsense words ("nonsense" to non-workers-in-magic, as in: invented, not part of any merely spoken language), 30 percent human, 12 percent elder draconic, 8 percent elven (various dialects, usually old word forms), and 10 percent drawn from all other tongues.
A speaker of any of these tongues who does not have the gift of handling the Art could "sort of" understand "their" words in an incantation, but only partially (for instance, an old drow word for "violent fall" of a stalactite [the equivalent of "crash down on whatever's below"] might be used in an incantation to mean "dash down" [that is, I want this my spell to violently and damagingly smash something down on what's below]; the meaning is similar but not identical, and could be misunderstood out of context).
In the "good old days," game designers actually sat down (often over drinks), and discussed all of this, so we'd be on the same page when writing, even though the early publishing codes prevented anything really specific being printed about "casting spells/working witchcraft." This has ALWAYS been "how it's worked in the Realms," with Ruathlek being an illusionist's "code" version of wizards' magical lingo, and I got TSR staff designers to agree to this back in 1986, but . . . personnel change, companies change, agreements get forgotten and new people never even know they exist, and so on . . .
Work for you? Post right back if you have more questions, and I'll be happy to talk this through.


So saith Ed. Who DOES think about all of this stuff, folks. Truly.
love to all,
THO

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