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On a midwinter night a millennium ago, legend claims Bright Nydra fell to Faerūn from the trailing lights of the Tears of Selūne in the form of a falling star. She is the winter moon that brings the Marsh Drovers hope and strength as they await the arrival of spring. She claimed to be the daughter of Selūne and Shaundakul and a goddess of hope and renewal.

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Originally posted by Markustay

And just for shouts & giggles... ( )

I was researching a locale in Dragon Magazine #307 when I came across this bit:

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On a midwinter night a millennium ago, legend claims Bright Nydra fell to Faerūn from the trailing lights of the Tears of Selūne in the form of a falling star. She is the winter moon that brings the Marsh Drovers hope and strength as they await the arrival of spring. She claimed to be the daughter of Selūne and Shaundakul and a goddess of hope and renewal.

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That was in the article Heroes of Cormyr, which introduced a few new Prestige Classes (because lord knows we just didn't have enough PrC's in 3rd edition).


Great resource you made there, KanzenAU.

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Originally posted by Markustay

And just for shouts & giggles... ( )

I was researching a locale in Dragon Magazine #307 when I came across this bit:

quote:

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On a midwinter night a millennium ago, legend claims Bright Nydra fell to Faerūn from the trailing lights of the Tears of Selūne in the form of a falling star. She is the winter moon that brings the Marsh Drovers hope and strength as they await the arrival of spring. She claimed to be the daughter of Selūne and Shaundakul and a goddess of hope and renewal.

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That was in the article Heroes of Cormyr, which introduced a few new Prestige Classes (because lord knows we just didn't have enough PrC's in 3rd edition).


Great resource you made there, KanzenAU.

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Originally posted by sleyvas
Oh, and on the idea of the "dragonlaser" being part of the -31000 DR event, its worth a reread of the GHotR entry.

"Each of the seven rings of standing stones dates back to the last days of the Reign of Dragons, when the elder wyrms sought to reverse what the elves had wrought."

So, it was indeed a second event shooting at the moon. Man, those dragons sure are infatuated with the moon. Some shoot it... another breaths its breath upon it to "destroy" it... or was it impregnate it... Wonder if there secretly are some special "dragons" on the moon. Do you think they truly missed, or did they assume that killing Selune (as she is the goddess of celestial entities like stars and comets) would stop the power of the King-Killer Star?

As others have said too, there may have been multiple tearfalls over time, though not necessarily all with globe spanning impacts. Still, some might have caused the deaths of large swaths of local populations. Selune might really be a mean beeyotch when you think about it.

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Originally posted by KanzenAU

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Originally posted by sleyvas
Oh, and on the idea of the "dragonlaser" being part of the -31000 DR event, its worth a reread of the GHotR entry.

"Each of the seven rings of standing stones dates back to the last days of the Reign of Dragons, when the elder wyrms sought to reverse what the elves had wrought."

So, it was indeed a second event shooting at the moon. Man, those dragons sure are infatuated with the moon. Some shoot it... another breaths its breath upon it to "destroy" it... or was it impregnate it... Wonder if there secretly are some special "dragons" on the moon. Do you think they truly missed, or did they assume that killing Selune (as she is the goddess of celestial entities like stars and comets) would stop the power of the King-Killer Star?

As others have said too, there may have been multiple tearfalls over time, though not necessarily all with globe spanning impacts. Still, some might have caused the deaths of large swaths of local populations. Selune might really be a mean beeyotch when you think about it.

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I'm pretty sure as said above it's -35,000 end of ice age, -31,500 Tearfall/Asgorath/batrachi event, approx -24,000 Dragonlaser. Not sure if there's any good lore matching the dragonlaser to a climate event on Toril or to the Asgorath event.

Edit: The "same event" we were talking about was the Asgorath event being potentially responsible for both the SoFS and the Moonsea. Admittedly there is some confusion with the Asgorath event being called the "Tearfall" before the Tears of Selune are created, but I don't think the Tearfall actually refers to these tears - it's the "tears"/blood of Asgorath.

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From page 9 of Giantcraft -
According to ancient giant legends, the sun is home to a great fiery dragon god that led dragonkind in the war against the giants.

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Originally posted by Markustay

I found a quote of interest (once again, while looking for something completely unrelated). Some of my musings about the 'before time' (pre-Sundering) spilled-over into another thread, and this could have gone there, but I feel its more appropriate to this conversation (thread).

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From page 9 of Giantcraft -
According to ancient giant legends, the sun is home to a great fiery dragon god that led dragonkind in the war against the giants.

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I can't believe I missed this before.

The way that it ties into the other thread (the one about Dragon Age) is that there seems to be a time when Celestial (cosmic) dragons and 'gods' were very much one and the same thing. Now, at that time, the 'gods' were probably very different than the ones we know today - all primordials, 'elder evils', arch-this or that, etc. And moon-sized dragons (like the one they built into the Dragonwall over in Kara-Tur).

So maybe Shar and Selūne were actually the same beings as in the Draconic myths - its only human hubris that anthropomorphizes these beings of unimaginable might. By the same token, they aren't really dragons either - they would have just appeared that way in ancient times to their scaly followers. In the Chultan mythos, their 'big bad' is Eshowdow (possibly Shar?), and their 'god of light' is Ubtao, creator of the dinosaurs (so, Saurians, 'scaly kind', etc). The only other bad guy in their pantheon is Sseth, who is an aspect of Set, and also associated with scaly and draconic deities. All these very primitive/ancient pantheons and mythos have scaled gods at their core, and related to their creation legends.

EDIT:
And speaking of Chult, in the original lore, Jazirian was the god that lead the couatls to Chult (from Katashaka), but in the GHotR, it says it was Ubtao that did that. I had assumed that was just to remove Jazirian from FR lore, but what if it was because they are one and the same?

What if Ubtao is Jazirian is Selūne is Asgorath (is Tiamet!), and Eshowdow is Ahriman is Shar is 'The Renegade' (Bahamut/Marduk)?

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Originally posted by KanzenAU

That is almost certainly true, but I'm hoping there's a little bit more to it than that, and that those sorts of things didn't account for Toril-wide, centuries lasting, climate changes - at least not en masse.

I've had a look at the axial tilt (28.89deg) and other parameters of Toril as laid down by Ed in previous threads, and figured out the Arctic Circle should be as low as 61.11deg north of the equator (Earth's is around 66). We know the last ice age extended on Earth extended about as far down as the 40th parallel north (getting right down to Manhattan), albeit 20,000 years ago, so ice being down to such a level isn't flat out totally crazy. But, the greater axial tilt of Toril should also melt ice faster, due to greater sun exposure, so this doesn't seem like enough on its own. While we don't know how much the tilt wobbles, it can't be too drastic, as that would cause widespread environmental chaos.

I wonder if Toril isn't still recovering from an ice age, perhaps the one mentioned in GHotR as ending about 37,000 years ago. At first glance it seems that over that amount of time, given the similarity of Toril's climate to that of Earth, the glaciers should have receded more. However, the GHotR makes it sound like that ice age was no minor thing, and covered the whole of Toril.

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This earliest days of recorded history begin at the end of a great Ice Age, some 37,000 years ago, when the last glaciations largely ended and the great ocean receded to reveal dry land.

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In that case, especially considering the large albedo slowdown effect that amount of ice and snow would produce, it seems possible that they're still receding. There's also the fact that the North Pole of Toril is significantly blocked off from warm ocean currents by large continents in most directions, resulting in far from maximal heating of the glaciers. The Spine of the World would further shield the glaciers from many of the warming winds.

A receding Ice Age as the cause seems to be what I'm going with for now. Interested in others' thoughts! And yes, the Ring of Winter is always an option...

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