#d&d lore

[faeries-fires]

🌼☀️ Seasons in Waterdeep 🍂❄️

I found these descriptions of the seasons in the city in the Waterdeep: Dragon Heist book and I thought I'd share it with fellow Gale fans:

🌼Spring🌼

In Waterdeep, early spring tends to be cold and damp. Misty rain falls for days on end. It’s common for fog to settle at night and last through the day. As the weather improves, the city attracts more visitors, and the streets become increasingly crowded as summer approaches.

☀️Summer☀️

Summers in Waterdeep are quite comfortable, and it’s a great time for citizens and visitors to congregate outside. The markets are busier than at any other time of year. Sometimes, though, warm air pushes up from the south and settles in the valleys north and east of the city. This air gets trapped, creating a hot spell that might last days or weeks. Activity in the city slows to a crawl, since Waterdavians are unaccustomed to such heat.

🍂Autumn🍂

Throughout autumn, wagonloads of food arrive in Waterdeep from outlying farms. Without this bounty, city folk would starve during the winter. Cold, howling sea winds remind Waterdavians that winter is near.

❄️Winter❄️

Waterdavian winters are harsh. As snow piles up around the city and ice fills the harbor, trade grinds to a halt and the city seals its gates. Citizens willing to brave the cold still gather in local taverns and festhalls, but few venture outside the city walls.

[keicordelle]

Baldur's Gate handles Ilmater's faith much better than any other source I've seen of it, I'm very impressed. 2e Ilmater lore was just awful

[itsabardknocklife]

Things the Baldur's Gate Fandom Needs To Know About Mystra

The current Mystra is the third Mother of Magic and she was originally a mortal human woman named Ariel Manx.

Ariel was the second daughter of a wealthy merchant and she liked to sneak out at night to go partying in the clubs.

While out clubbing one night, Ariel - known as Midnight among her friends - met a conjurer named Tad who introduced her to magic and brought her to Mystra's temples.

When Ariel was 21, she attracted Mystra's attention and began to feel as though she were being watched. Whenever this happened, she found that her ability to cast spells increased and that spells that she once found difficult were much easier.

In 1358, when Ariel was 26, the ALL gods were cast out onto the Material Plane by Ao because Bane and Myrkul were being little shits and making yet another power grab, like they do.

The Original Mystra was extremely Unhappy about being thrown out of the heavens and tried to march back up the Celestial Stairway to reclaim her place of power.

Ao did not take kindly to this, and promptly had Helm kick her ass.

Unfortunately, Mystra dying is Bad For The Weave, and Ao had to replace her.

He picked Ariel.

When she was 26.

Immediately after she kicked Myrkul's bony ass in a duel that took place in the sky over Waterdeep.

In order to make the transition easier, Ariel took up the name of Mystra so that

27 years later, Cyric and Shar conspired to kill her so that Shar could take over as the Mother of Magic and spread her Shadow Weave over the land.

Instead of granting Shar control of the Weave the way she hoped, the new Mystra's death/disappearance caused the Weave to collapse, taking the Shadow Weave with it and kicking off what is known as the Spellplague.

Unlike the last two times Mystra was killed, everything went kind of nuts. Magic faded, blue fire raged across the land, killing everything it touched and then raising them into ghouls, the landscape became warped, it was Bad.

The only good thing to come out of the Spellplague was the Dragonborn, who were released from thousands of years of enslavement as a result of the blue fire blowing everything to shit. Hooray for the dragonborn!

Anyway.

Over the next hundred years, things calmed down and the magic… sort of returned, but there were a lot of changes to how magic worked. The Mother of Magic was a non-entity, her presence unfelt even by the famed Elminster of Shadowdale.

At least, not until 1479, when he found her possessing a bear and guarding a hoard of magic items she'd stashed while mortal.

She sent him out to go find new candidates to become her Chosen, and he came back a few weeks later after gorging on the magic of a few of Mystra's other Chosen and gave her enough juice to "return."

Three years later, the Second Sundering started when Bhaal's last two descendants fight to the death and resurrect him as a result.

At this point, ALL the gods are out there recruiting people to become their Chosen right, left, and center. It's a race to become the strongest god in the pantheon, with the winners being decided based on who has the most followers.

This goes on for five years, with the Second Sundering coming to a close in 1487. This was when Mystra became fully restored as a Goddess, with the Weave returning to its original strength.

Over the next two years, MOST of the gods drop their Chosen like they're hot and go quiet, resulting in the rise of clerics as mortals struggled to understand why the gods' behaviors changed so drastically from before.

Mystra was actually one of the few who kept in contact with her Chosen while a few others (such as Ellistraee and the Dead Three) chose to remain on Toril in Avatar form.

In the year 1491, Gale Dekarios of Waterdeep finds the Netherese Orb and has his silver flame (the mark of Mystra's chosen) consumed by it.

12 years after Mystra - once the mortal woman known as Ariel Manx - recovered from her near-death experience.

Please, I am begging you. Stop portraying Mystra the Ultimate Evil and Gale as her Innocent Victim. Their whole relationship is so much more complex than that. Mystra put so much trust in Gale and simply asked that he not cross her boundaries in return, and Gale, in his own words, "sought to cross [those] boundaries." He's a man who heard no and decided that he wasn't going to stop trying until that no became a yes.

I'm not saying Gale is the villain in this, but I am saying that both Gale and Mystra are complex individuals who are both flawed in different ways, and reducing them down to Good and Bad is doing them a disservice.

[karniss-bg3]

What do you think Kar'niss can even eat? I mean, spiders have a strictly liquid diet so to speak, so do you think he can still eat solids or would he be stuck with things like broths, blood, etc

I've touched on this prior but the long and short of it is, I think in terms of canon it'd be a strictly blood diet if we're going by lore. I've not found any other evidence that suggests they can or desire to eat anything other than what is needed to sustain their bodies. Assuming none of the digestive organs in their humanoid torsos still function, then they'd be incapable of consuming solids as the arachnid tubes that transport such nutrients are too narrow to carry anything thicker than liquids.

At best we can assume they may have similar saliva to feral spiders which can break down and liquify internal organs for consumption. That said, if someone wishes to feed him solid foods, it can easily be explained how he's capable of doing so just by making his upper digestive system functional. I suppose it's up to the writer how they'd wish to proceed, but if we're speaking strict canon it's likely blood only.

Thanks for the ask!

[wanderingnork]

Gith Deep Dive: The Illithiad, The Mind Flayer Trilogy, and the Forerunners

Ask and ye shall receive: this option won the poll on what I should deep dive first. Two thousand words later, please enjoy.

We all know the basic story of the gith: a massive, terrifying illithid empire was brought down by a slave revolt led by a warrior named Gith. The unified rebellion tore apart the empire, but then fell to internal fighting, leaving the githyanki and githzerai forever separated. It's virtually identical in every source, with only tiny changes. Whatever happens after that, this is the one thing everyone can agree on.

But where did the gith come from before the illithids?

ORIGINS

Over the course of D&D history, we get a few glimpses into the earliest days of the gith, before they were even called that. No real attempts were made in 4th or 5th Edition to get into the deep history of the githyanki, but 2nd Edition (2E) and Edition 3.5 (just 3.5) both give us a look. First, back in 2E, the book Planescape: A Player’s Guide to the Planes (p.12). Here, the gith are simply originally from the Prime Material Plane, in a place called Gith—notably, the legendary figure herself is absent from this telling, although she's not missing from "A Guide to the Astral Plane" and other 2E sources. Probably a case of discontinuity. Unsurprising, considering just how many 2nd Edition Planescape books were published!

As for 3.5, we get several tastes of the possible origin story. First, there's the empire of Zarum, on the world of Oerth (home of the Greyhawk campaign setting). It appears in three linked sources for the Chainmail Miniatures game (Chainmail Miniatures, Set 2: Blood & Darkness; Dragon #294 – Chainmail: Underground Scenarios; Dragon #298 – Wizards' Workshop: Chainmail). Zarum is no more than subterranean ruins now, with its crumbled former capital serving as a drow outpost, and only hints of its mysterious inhabitants remaining.

In the "Invasion of Pharagos" campaign concept, published in Polyhedron magazine #159, a small planet is presented as the ancestral home of the githyanki. The long-dead body of their patron goddess, a deity of patience and perseverance who was killed at the height of Gith's rebellion, still lies buried and forgotten under the crumbling ruins of their greatest city. There aren't many further details given, since the focus of the article is on githyanki PCs and how they would participate in the invasion as Vlaakith's servants.

Finally, the strangest origin theory of all comes from the Lords of Madness sourcebook. Here, it's revealed that the illithids are actually a species from the future. Under attack by an unknown and terrible enemy, they traveled backwards from the end of time itself to reestablish their empire in the past. They might have enslaved the gith progenitors upon arrival. Or the alternative: "The base race from which [the githyanki and githzerai] derived is unknown; gith progenitors might have been brought to the distant past from the illithid empire at time’s end…" (p.73)

That's a whole lot to unpack right there.

-

Regardless of which of these, if any, is the true story, there's a source that allows us to meet these earliest gith—quite simply called the Forerunners.

Continued below the cut, because this is so incredibly long.

THE ILLITHIAD

The Illithiad is a huge volume for 2nd Edition D&D which sets up a lot of the illithid lore we take for granted these days. The various illithid Creeds, the society, Ilsensine, the biology, all of it had its full genesis here. Of course, it discusses the gith. The details of the githyanki are typical and unexceptional, although it includes one of the most spectacularly spooky pieces of githyanki art ever.

(Credit to artist James Crabtree.)

The Illithiad supports a trilogy of adventures, the "Mind Flayer Trilogy," in which player characters undertake a quest to stop illithids from destroying every sun and star in the multiverse.

Yeah.

While the first adventure just sets up the whole production, introducing the illithid plot and giving the adventurers reason to take action, it's in the second adventure of the trilogy (Masters of Eternal Night) where the Forerunners make their appearance. The player characters, after an extended journey while an unnatural winter rages around them, discover an ancient, crashed illithid ship in the center of a crater. In the first area they enter, they discover the skeletons of humanoids and an illithid who died in combat. A player can identify a skeleton as something like githyanki and githzerai, but the text reveals the truth: the skeletons are far more ancient than that. They're the remnants of the forerunner species. The ship crashed during an escape from the gith rebellion.

Dozens of skeletons litter the ship. Some still in prison, many with holes punched in their skulls by long-ago tentacles, some with weapons in hand. One eerie discovery in a chamber full of supplies for taking care of thralls is a sealed elixir of youth. In 2E, the elixir of youth could make a humanoid drinker younger by two to five years. Although an illithid could certainly use this, since it's qualified as a humanoid in that edition, the presence of the elixir among other supplies intended for thralls would suggest it was also designed for their use. I don't really want to go too deep into why this is awful, so I'll leave it to your imagination.

-

Finally, though, we meet some living beings. In the garden of the ship, there's a single surviving forerunner, kept alive by the strange temporal magic of the ship. Anyone who speaks the modern gith language can manage to communicate simply with him: his name is Bomwe and he has no concept of a world beyond illithid control. The players can get little information out of the terrified man, and if they convince him to accompany them he'll obey any mind flayer without question.

Deeper inside the ship, a group of forerunners, armed and wearing "headmeshes" that protect against illithid psionics, is on the verge of overcoming a group of illithids. The DM narration is clear that if the players don't get involved, the forerunners have an 80% chance of victory. It's a guarantee if the players do jump in to help. This group, prior to the crash millennia ago, was part of the rebellion, and they were ready to win.

The leader of the group is fascinating. Going by name of Nilton, he wears illithid-skin-leather armor, a headmesh, and carries a spiked club—armed to the teeth by ancient standards. He can read a little of the illithid script, which usually requires four tentacles as well as psionic ability. He has the morale level "Fearless," meaning that barring truly exceptional circumstances he will never flee from a foe. In his statistics, he has a psionic power called "molecular rearrangement," which in its most potent form allows transmuting lead to gold or metal to glass merely by thinking. Most commonly, though, it's used to temper and strengthen weapons. A psionicist with weaponsmithing abilities can create a magic weapon simply by thinking. (Complete Psionics Handbook, AD&D 2nd Edition, p.35)

-

This gives some sense of what the rebellion under Gith might have looked like. Slaves armed with whatever they could carry, wearing the skin of their former masters for armor, with leaders capable of reshaping matter with their thoughts and withstanding any fear the illithids could throw at them. If Nilton is representative of an average leader, one can only imagine what Gith herself would have been like.

Given what we hear in the game Neverwinter Nights 2, that Zerthimon crafted the first silver sword for Gith, perhaps he did it with the use of psionics—transmuting a piece of wood or bone into a weapon fit for a queen.

TO PENUMBRA

Although Nilton will assist the characters during the remainder of the exploration of the ship, he's not mentioned again directly in the adventure. Nor is he mentioned in the opening of the final adventure of the trilogy, "Dawn of the Overmind." Hard to believe he wouldn't try to come along, though, considering that the adventurers are on their way to stopping the rise of a new illithid empire.

This adventure carries players, aboard a nautiloid ship, to the distant planet of Penumbra. It's an artificial construction, a planet-sized disc hovering in space that was once the seat of illithid power at the height of the empire. It's here that we meet the modern forerunners of the gith: the branch of the species that never left the world once ruled by the mind flayers. From here on out, I'll just refer to them as the Penumbrans.

Unlike their downright skeletal cousins among the modern gith, the Penumbrans just look like gaunt, long-limbed humans. They have black eyes, bone-colored skin, and slightly pointed ears. Only one in a hundred Penumbrans possesses any real psionic ability, unlike their universally-psionically-gifted ancestors or modern cousins. Due to the sheer size of Penumbra, millions of Penumbrans live on the disc. Some live in kingdoms, some in clans, and some—like the villagers in this adventure—live subsistence lives surrounded by monsters in the dark.

See, Penumbra's sun has been almost fully blocked out by the illithid construction. The entire planet exists in perpetual twilight, meaning that the Penumbrans all have night vision. Their eyes glow like cats' eyes in firelight (and yes, that's in a sidebar).

No one on the disc has any memory of the rebellion thousands of years ago, or any idea that they have strange cousins living on other planes. Their language is close enough to the modern gith langauge that a character who speaks it can communicate basic ideas. But, all things considered, the Penumbrans are almost a completely different species. Their role in the adventure is to set the players on the right path and give them a refuge from the dangers of Penumbra.

Although the village's chieftain has a psionic longsword, these aren't the silver-sword-wielding pirates and matter-shaping monks that players know and love. These are shepherds and weavers, who raise alien sheep and wield bronze swords at best. For players who don't plan to stay on Penumbra after the adventure is over and the illithids are stopped, the Penumbrans are just a poignant vision of what the gith elsewhere in the multiverse could have become.

MUTATION

This is where that vision takes a turn for the tragic. In the lair of one of the adventure's major villains, a pair of bizarre "tumerogenesis tanks" can be found. Any character who makes the fucking boneheaded decision to drink from the tanks (or worse, dive in) suffers a massive seizure. Then, if they're unlucky enough to fail a "system shock" roll, they start violently mutating. Their organs might climb out of their body, bits of their bodies might explode, and—my personal favorite—an arm might simply drop off and crawl away of its own accord. On the other hand, they might gain a wildly beneficial mutation: weapon invulnerability, psionic powers, and more.

Of course, this is a fun hazard and temptation for impulsive players. But it's a starkly disturbing piece of lore. While the githyanki and githzerai all hold strongly that it was their own will that gave them the strength to overcome the illithids, there's a chance that some of the ancient forerunners were put through genetic experimentation to change them into a better fighting force. Psionic, spiritual, and physical gifts, as well as changes to the body, could all have resulted from experimentation.

The Penumbrans, looking so human and lacking in gith psionics, might well be the forerunners who were never put through this mutation process.

Historical records from the period have all been destroyed. And, according to sources in all later editions of D&D, the consensus is that the forerunners acquired their power simply by ambient exposure and selective reproduction by illithids. Still, this idea lingers—that maybe the illithids truly created their own worst enemy.

If that's true, the gith may never escape the touch of their most hated enemies, even if they were to wipe out every mind flayer in the multiverse.

[crystal-overdrive]

Call to Bane

This ritual is a calling, not an invocation. Suitable for postulants and regular connection, this ritual does not force Bane to come (truly, not even an invocation could force anything upon the Lord of Tyranny Himself), but opens a connection between Him and a seeker.

Take a black, five-fingered candle, fashioned especially for this purpose, and light each finger, from the smallest to the thumb, while intoning:

One finger for Strength One finger for Knowledge One finger for Fear One finger for Power One finger for Tyranny

When the candles are lit, say: 

Five candles. Five virtues. Five digits on the black hand of Bane. 

Adopt the orans position, and say:

Bane! Dark Lord, He Who Takes Action, He who took his Godhood by might,  Heed my call.  Kneel, prostrate yourself before our Lord:

I, your faithful, come to you in terror and submission.  Ready to spread your darkness,  Ready to become that which I fear. 

Lord, bless me with your power.

Listen for his response, or any message he may have for you. When you are ready, open your eyes, give thanks, and extinguish the candles.

[andauril]

Lae'zel's reaction to Mindflayer!Tav is honestly the most real one. She knows the Mindflayer isn't Tav anymore; this is the tadpole, having completed ceremorphosis. The person you used to be is gone. What is left is the tadpole, and your body, twisted beyond recognition. The Mindflayer might have your memories; it might even think it is you, but they're not the same person. Like, Gale proposing to Mindflayer!Tav is cute and all, but the man should honestly know better.

Does this mean Mindflayer!Tav is automatically evil? No. Omeluum is a good example of a friendly Illithid. But Omeluum is also not its host. The Emporer is not Balduran either. At best, Mindflayer!Tav (or Mindflayer!Karlach, etc.) is an extreme case of partialism (where something of the Host's mind is left over instead of being completely subsumed). This is also likely the case with the Emporer. TL;DR: Lae'zel would not love you as a worm and I love her for being real like that.

[miradelletarot]

LORE/TIMING HELP!

OK BG3 and Forgotten Realms/ D&D people! I need your very high intelligence rolls tossed my way! So! I am trying to establish a semi-accurate and realistic time frame for between Acts 1-3. Possible (though very mild) Act 3 spoilers (not pertaining to anything patch 5 b/c I haven't gotten there yet so PLEASE don't discuss anything of that here...but general stuff may be mentioned so please proceed with caution).

So, in Act 3, if we don't play as Gale, we meet Tara on the roof. Now, She was left back in Waterdeep so assuming there was no Greater Teleportation spell available to her, it would take her about 45 days to get from there to Baldur's Gate. (Source) I can't recall anything being mentioned anywhere that anything like this was available, but if I'm wrong please lmk. Obviously, actual gameplay doesn't take this long, but I want to focus on what could actually be a realistic timeline. Think of any D&D campaign and you are gonna have fighting days, resting days, travel days, even shopping days. This is (sorta) reflected in game, but you can just play and play, and get thru everything in days frankly. I have spoken to a few people and some have said 1-2 months while others have said only like 2-3 weeks have passed. Which brings me to my next point: Weeks are separated into tendays (literally...10 days in a week). A month, is about 3 of those (with a few odd days tossed in through the year) which you can see in the image below. You'll notice that the events in BG3 take place just before Feast of the Moon (not important i guess, but interesting!) **more after the image**

So, if that's the case, that would put BG3 events taking place within a month's time, but even that seems short. There's so much to explore, so many people to help, etc etc. I had estimated (generously I'm sure) that each act took about 2-3 tendays each which would give us a roughly 2.5 to 3 month timespan. If this only goes for a 2-3 week span, then Gale is certainly rushing into the whole idea of marriage tbh lmao!! Like "babe, i know we have only dated for like a tenday, but marry me?" xD though, to be fair, even if we go for the 3 month (very generous) timespan bbygirl is still rushing into things, but I think we can give him a pass since they all fought for their lives and all lol. I just wanna get everyone's big lore dump info on this matter b/c I honestly wanna know, AND I am gonna use it to help time parts of my next fics. The timing is kinda important to help me plan things and also to make sure I am not doing some weird time dilation head canon shit that could mess everything up in the world LOL

[effelants]

Thinking about Withers' note in the epilogue

So, "dark sun", I think we're all fairly confident that that's in reference to Cyric (or is it??? WHAT IF SOMETHING ELSE???? but then there's also a lot of other Cyric references in the game, so I'm fairly confident about this take tbh).

But what is "white sky"?

Any theories, any ideas? I'm coming up short (read: "I have ideas, but legitimately all of them are too dumb and/or far-fetched to print"), and I'd hate to just assume that because I can't think of what it could be, it's just there for poetic effect djfkghsdg

[tinkerbitch69]

Some ramblings I came up with while thinking about the best faction in D&D’s Planescape: The Bleak Cabal!

If nothing holds meaning, then pain serves no purpose. It doesn’t teach, it doesn’t punish, it doesn’t spur growth or change or redemption. It’s just pain. It just hurts. With no reason to, it just hurts…

So why not try to soothe them? why would you want people to hurt?

[timeforelfnonsense]

Do you like d&d? Are you someone who plays bg3 and wants to learn more about lore but feels overwhelmed by how much of it there is? Might I suggest my friend, Mark’s podcast?

Mark is our d&d groups main dm and a professional voice actor (as well as one of my favorite people in the world). If you are wanting to learn more about the forgotten realms or looking for a good sleep podcast I recommend it.

The most recent episode is about the city of Waterdeep. Home to everyone’s favorite shoe eating wizard.

[leomonae]

- The Illithiad

[crimson-hope]

Hmm I was thinking about making a short racial lore guides for the game before it comes out. Many people do know about d&d races but there are people coming into bg3 blind.

Just simple things like elves being considered adults culturally when they're 100 despite being physically adults at around the same age as humans.

Just for rp reasons.

[karniss-bg3]

Speaking of Aranea... have you seen Chwidencha? They failed Lolth's test too, but after seeing those, I think it's definitely better to be a drider. The creep my out on a different level lol

Huh, I haven't. Let me look it up.

.

.

.

WHAT IN THE--!

[corkyjettscorner]

I read some D&D lore, to better understand Baldur’s Gate 3, and I found out that drow have a good goddess, Eilistraee. She’s a very cool goddess, she protects all drow that escape from Lolth, and promotes harmony and love between all races. She eoncourage her fellow drow to go on surface and live in peace with everyone. So now I made a cleric-paladin that worships Eilistraee, and I want to see if there are different dialogues lines with my beloved Minthara! 😻❤️

[crystal-overdrive]

Prayer to Bane

I hear you in the cries of the oppressed, In the screams of the fearful, In the stomping of your boot upon Toril. Dark Lord, We call to you who are already here. May we be aware of your presence. Awaken this in us who speak your name in reverence.

A cold fire, you sit my heart’s centre. A marching army, you tear through my soul. A searing claw, you rend through my life. A black hand, you force me to my knees. An obsidian stone, you are my anchor.

In destruction I am renewed, In oppression I am freed, In pain I gain clarity, All to serve him once more, A faithful slave under Bane’s Black Hand.