#forgotten realms campaign setting

[baldursgateconceptart]

Shar vs Selûne

Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting 3e

Art by Matt Wilson

[oldschoolfrp]

Among the powerful, reclusive mages of Halruua, each Elder receives a skyship and the secret of recharging it. (Jeff Butler cover for Forgotten Realms supplement FR16: The Shining South by Tom Prusa, TSR, 1993)

[robotbeetle]

day XXX of wishing Dnd would release official 5e content of the questionable non-european continents they created like thirty years ago and have never acknowledged since. Zakhara, Kara-tur, Maztica, you could've been great and I think of you often.

[disgruntledexplainer]

D&D elves

[atticollateral]

Is anyone looking for another player for an online D&D campaign? I'm SOOO bored and wanna play w/ people. I'm so willing to make new friends online if it means I get to participate in my favorite game >^<

If u wanna PM me w/ game setting & platform (IE. Game Setting: Faerun, Sword Coast & Platform: Discord) I can get back to you with my details & availability ^^ (If you're doing a game and taking new players I will hop in there if you ask, I don't have a to join a fresh campaign!)

[friendlyforestbeast]

I’m king now 💅

This is so dumb and I’ll never finish it I’m sorry

[forestsofcernutis]

Solo roleplaying grants instant gratification if compared to amateur writing, despite seemingly having a lot in common.

If I was writing some cheap fantasy this night, as I sometimes do, I would be thinking about originality and style and characters and other things that make good piece of art.

But if you have dice and some oracles of your choice you can just have fun with little guy that is your PC (or PCs) and your world by stacking tropes from your favourite media together and seeing how will it develop due to dice rolls, because you yourself have no idea what happens next. And nobody cares that story sucks, that characters are cardboard and that "prose" is as bad as in children's fairytales, as long as you have fun.

And if you are simultaneously creative and honest with yourself, you can even challenge yourself intellectually.

[grimbiliah]

I don’t remember if it was NADDPOD or some other piece of media that put the idea in my mind that the circles of hell represented the deadly sins, but I was thinking about it recently for a dnd campaign I’m running and realized it dnd make sense because there are 7 sins and 9 circles.

The main reason I was thinking about this was because in said campaign the players have a necklace with a big gemstone on it in which lived an evil wizard who can’t leave. He’s been in there for a while, and some things have changed while he’s been trapped.

So after I had this realization about the circles and the sins I thought it would be really funny if the wizard remembers their being 7 circles for the 7 sins and is baffled by the fact that their are 9 circles now.

“What, did they add 2 sins? Is murder and larceny bad now?”

I don’t actually know what the two extra sins would be, so lmk if you have a funny idea.

[general-grey]

honestly the current bg3 brainrot feels like such a homecoming to me. i almost forgot how much i loved this setting just overall.

i never had much opportunity to actually play in forgotten realms settings on tabletop sessions which is. fine. homebrew is nice.

but i REALLY REALLY like forgotten realms. and its lore. and i grew up on the drizzt books.

i am so happy to see its reemergence now

[eelslippers]

I so desperately want to run a fall out inspired oceanfaring campaign set in a world based on 1950's scandinavia with some eldritch horrors inspired from terraria

[mogruith]

Phalar Aluve

A slender drow blade impales the stone before you, keeping a silent vigil. You recognise your goddess' rite - a warrior's sacrifice. Only blood, freely given, will honour the fallen. The drow script inscribed on the blade flickers and glows. It rises from the stone, hanging in the air in silent offering. A soft melody resounds through your head - Eilistraee's divine gratitude.

The Drow inscription on this blade appears to have been recently carved. It translates to:

'Though I have to leave you, I will dance forever in Eilistraee's Light.'

[nebulousfishgills]

Honestly, it's not a bad likeness considering my constraints (mostly for scarring and tattoos). I picked the face preset that I think looked most like Olivia Cooke when I held up a picture to it. It's not perfect, but pretty close.

Then praise be my new best friend, Basket of Equipment mod, which allowed me to get as close as I could to Emily's canon outfit (green tank, jeans, and dark boots. There were some actual tank top options but they refused to accept the dyes)

...but then I remember that mods give me the power of gods and I go and mod Astarion again, except this time he looks more like her first husband:

(The white doublet was me having a giggle)

And then, naturally... the 100% canon occurence of them fucking in the woods.

I love this game.

[disgruntledexplainer]

Space travel in D&D (not spelljammer)

So there is a D&D campaign setting called Dragonstar, which is kind of like a space opera but with more magic. (don't worry I'm going somewhere with this)

The general premise is that every D&D world (or at least every 3rd edition / D20 D&D world) is in fact a separate planet in a large galaxy, and some of these planets have developed interstellar travel capabilities. Specifically, there is a grand empire founded by a coalition of dragons from a specific world, each of which takes turns ruling it's entire expanse. The spacecraft are technological, but interstellar travel is achieved through giant magical spheres which can teleport users near, not not exactly to, any planet in the galaxy. Whenever a Chromatic Dragon (one of the evil species) becomes emperor, it begins a massive campaign of horrifically violent invasions to expand it's borders, while whenever a Metalic Dragon (one of the good species) becomes emperor, it focuses on making sure all of the invaded planets are uplifted and prosperous, trying to make up for the actions of their evil kin. The current emperor is Chromatic (a red dragon specifically), and his invasions have just begun. There is a section of the galaxy that is currently unexplored, and it is this section that most other D&D worlds take place in.

This produces an interesting, and grim, situation where all of the countless D&D worlds are under threat of an invasion they are completely unaware of, and are ill-equipped to repel. Except... some actually DO have a chance. There are a number of D&D worlds I can think of who can, and indeed occasionally HAVE, developed space travel canonically, and I think if they formed a coalition they could stand some chance of repelling an invasion. Lets go over a few.

Before we start, though, I want to go over some of the things required to produce at least an inter-planetary civilization, and some hurdles that these planets would have to deal with. First off, the planet would need to develop a viable spacecraft. It would need to be able to get into space, survive the vacuum of space, and get back to the ground. It would also need to have a working life support system, particularly something to refresh the air. Finally, it would need to be able to do all of this after leaving it's planet's orbit. This last part is more of a tall order than one might expect, since the magic on each planet at least theoretically comes from a different (often planet-specific) source. This means that in order to function, the ship either needs to be technological in nature, or needs to run off of a form of magic that will continue functioning in the void between planets.

OK, lets start with the planets which have already canonically developed interstellar travel. For this purpose I am ignoring spelljammer canon, both because it's version of space if incompatible with that given in Dragonstar, and because it's... frankly kinda silly.

You might be surprised to learn that the first planet to develop space travel would be Athas. You know, the post-apocalyptic hellscape where civilization has literally degenerated into the stone age and all life is slowly dying out. However, we aren't talking about the present state of the planet, but rather how it was 14,000 years ago, when the sun was blue and the planet was covered in life and water. During that time, only two sentient species lived on the planet, the Rhulisti (a kind of halfling) and the Kreen (giant praying mantisis); of these, the Rhulisti were the most advanced. They developed a form of mystic tech known as Life-Shaping, which involved shifting the life force around within a creature to produce controlled mutations. While the Rhulisti died out with the coming of the Green Age (or rather deliberately mutated themselves into other species like halflings, elves, and humans), some of them did not. There is a comet called The Mesenger which appears periodically in the sky, which is actually an ancient, living Rhulisti spacecraft. If there are any Rhulisti still on board, it stands to reason that there might be others who left the planet before the Green Age began, and began colonizing other worlds within the system. If this is the case, then the problem of getting into space is solved: they're already there, and they have the "tech" to get back up if they want. They also have a means to get back down and life-support systems as well. Frankly, though, I don't think they're ever coming back down; life on Athas is just way too garbage to bother, and they could probably scavenge all the water and raw materials they need from the asteroid and kuiper belts of their system to live comfortably enough. If the Athas system is invaded, the actual world of Athas would be easily crushed, but the Rhulisti could just hide in the asteroid belt until everything blew over and then just go back to... whatever it is they have been doing for the past 14,000 years.

Next up is another weird one: Dragonlance. At first glance, the world of Dragonlance would seem to be a terrible candidate for a space-faring world; it's technology is medieval, it's magic depends on the presence of it's moons and the nearness of it's gods (at one point the planet got teleported by one of it's gods to another system away from its moons and it's now very confused gods, resulting in almost all of it's magic disapearing, with the exception of magic drawn from the soul or the chaotic energies of the Graygem). HOWEVER, there is one species which can, and likely has, gotten into space: the Tinker Gnomes. Blessed with an incredible intellect and cursed with a complete lack of common sense, tinker gnomes have an ingrained obsession with advancing a particular field of study, the pursuit of which consumes they're (often very short) lives. Individual Tinker Gnomes can advance their field of study by decades within a short period of time, but when they die all of these developments are often lost since Tinker Gnomes rarely read each-other's notes, and nobody else can understand them. In all likelihood, dozens of tinker gnomes have developed, built, and flown spacecraft of a variety of sorts, but all died due to a mistake that any other species on the planet would have been able to point out (like forgetting to add life support or choosing to cushion the fall of their landing ship with feathered pillows instead of... anything else). Perhaps a few HAVE gotten into space... and aren't quite sure how to get back down. I fully expect the orbits of Krynn to be littered with bizarre looking spacecraft and the dead gnomes who once piloted them. Needless to say, Krynn would be a sitting duck, but the floating wrecks might confuse, spook, and delay the invasion for a couple days at least.

Now for the ones who are almost there. The first that comes to mind is Eberron; honestly that world is a mere generation or two from launching a fully-functional spacecraft. This is for several interrelated reasons: Dragonshards, Dragonmarked Houses, Elemental Binding, and Soarwood. Dragonshards are a kind of crystal with magical properties, that come in three varieties, each keyed to a different, useful purpose. The Dragonmarked Houses are trade guilds run by powerful families with the innate ability to use useful but minor spell-like abilities that can be enhanced by one kind of dragonshard to achieve incredible feats of magic, and the guilds themselves often use another kind of dragonshard to help them mass-produce useful magic items. Elemental Binding is a process invented by the Drow and perfected by the Gnomes of Zilargo that involves binding an elemental into the third kind of dragonshard, producing a source of infinite energy. Finally, Soarwood is a kind of wood native to the homeland of the elves which is naturally buoyant in air, so that things composed mostly of soarwood can actually float in the air. All these combined allow the Elves, Gnomes, and the Dragonmarked Houses to collaborate to create wonders beyond any single wizard's ability to produce, including creating airships and submarines. For getting into orbit, elemental binding provides a practically infinite source of propulsion, and Soarwood makes it so that they don't have to worry about lifting something so heavy as a rocket so high up. Theoretically, someone could fly an eberron airship up right now and he would end up in space eventually. Regarding life support, elemental-bound submarines also use an air elemental to cycle and purify the air in the cabin. If the soarwood hull is sealed tight, it should be able to keep everyone breathing inside. Once in orbit, Airships could collaborate with each-other to produce combat space-craft out of metal, which wouldn't need to worry about leaving or returning to the surface and could just spend their time defending. The Dragonmarked could use Dragonshards to enhance their abilities to duplicate a number of classic sci-fi technologies: Lyrander heirs act as pilots or man the weapons (using the stormship binding methods to produce a ring of beta radiation and ionized gas they can direct at targets), Deneith heirs could provide energy shields, Sivis heirs could handle communications, Cannith heirs could act as engineers and repair-men, and Orien heirs could control teleportation circles to bring people aboard without landing (good for combat ships), or be in charge of interplanetary navigation by virtue of their natural ability to teleport. That's right folks, we have our first interstellar civilization candidate! After a couple more generations, the Arcane Congress might be able to develop methods to achieve the things the Dragonmarked can do without marks or shards, but it will work for now. Additionally, even though Eberron magic would NORMALLY only work near the planet, because it needs proximity to the ring of dragonshards floating in orbit to provide energy, a ship fully outfitted this way would have enough large dragonshards in it producing enough magical radiation to make sure that any magic keeping the ship together wouldn't fail, and that spellcasters could still cast spells. Indeed, when in orbit around their own world their spells might actually be SIGNIFICANTLY ENHANCED by the proximity of the enormous dragonshards that form the ring, making planetary defense easy. Dragonmarks don't need Dragonshards to work anyways. Ultimately, all of this together essentially means that the Dragonmarked Houses (specifically they're governing body The Twelve) would dominate the orbit of the planet for a VERY long time, and their military branch, The Blackwheel Company, would be the de facto defenders of the planet. Facing an invasion, I actually think Eberron could hold their own, so long as they kept close to their ships.

Next we have Theah, from the 7th Sea RPG, which was adapted into D&D during the D20 boom. Theah is currently in the age of restoration (AKA Swashbuckling Time), but for a variety of reasons their technology is advancing a lot faster that it normally would. A LOT FASTER. To compound this, they are surrounded by the ruins of technologically and magically advanced species from before humanity's emergence. One species in particular, the Tessera, had developed extensive magnetism-based technologies that included rail guns and even flying cities! Of these species, the Tessera's tech would be by far the most useful for getting the Theans to space: first, the fact that the Tessera were able to get their cities to float using magnetism at all means that Theah's planetary magnetic field must be WAY stronger than our own, enough to support the weight of a city. Second, the fact that they were able to float the cities means that it should be possible to use Tessera tech and the planet's magnetic field to launch a ship into the air, perhaps even into orbit! this would mean that the Theans wouldn't need to spend nearly so much time and resources developing ships to beat their planet's gravitational field, and getting down should be much easier too. All they would need to do is backwards-engineer the tech, which would require cooperation between the Explorers Society and the Invisible College (or rather La Academia de Ciencia del Profeta y Salvador, since most of the scientists of the Invisible College have gone back to their original places of work of the Reformed Vaticine Church of the Prophets in Castile with the deposition of Cardinal Verdugo and the decline of the power of his Inquisition). As for life support, it so happens that while Thean science in in general more advanced than it should be for the time, Thean medical science is leagues ahead of where it should be, and if it continues to be so they should be developing air-scrubbers in no time. Tessera tech even comes with rail-guns as I mentioned, meaning that when Theah does go to space, they may very well go into space armed to the teeth with advanced weaponry. On top of this, they may be able to get larger ships into orbit if they make them out of Dracheneisen, a special material that is as light as a feather but as strong as steel and easily shaped; if they can find more of it in the Drachenberg Mountains in Eisen and Ussura, they could make entire warships out of the material and launch them into space battle-ready, and landing such ships would be laughably easy if they had wings. As for magic... well, most of the magic of Theah probably wouldn't work far from its surface (Bargainer sorcery in particular is implied to require the Barrier to word, as it feeds parasitically off of it and damages it at the same time, while Glamour and Nacht have heavy ties to planes of existence unique to Theah and Pyryem and Laerdom both draw on the power of semi-divine entities to function), and those that don't (like Druid geasa and vaticine Miracles) would not be much use in space, and are notably weaker than magic in other worlds. But the Vaticine Church isn't particularly fond of most magic anyways, so that actually solves a problem rather than causing it. A downside of this is that, like most other worlds, Thean spacecraft would be strictly interplanetary instead of interstellar, but if faced with invasion a Theah so armed could repel it, albeit with some difficulty.

Now for one that would seem to be a good candidate for spaceflight, but isn't. By far one of the most technologically advanced worlds in D&D is the unnamed world in the Dragonmech rpg, which possesses steam-powered mechs the size of cities. Unfortunately, the kinds of technology that world has aren't very well suited to space travel, being large, heavy, inefficient, and ultimately flightless creations, and the fact that they are STEAM powered would mean that they would be constantly leaking precious resources just to keep their ships powered if they made one. On top of that, much of their environment has been completely wrecked by the Lunar Rain (basically their moon shifted in its orbit close enough that debris and entire living creatures began falling off of it, resulting in a searing rain of fine dust and giant meteors and terrifying monsters everywhere, not to mention the enormous tides which essentially washed away most of the other continents on the planet). The inhabitants of Highpoint are in no condition to be developing space-flight right now; they are too busy just trying to survive, and all of their extensive innovations are bent to that singular endeavor. Which is a shame, because they are one of the few planets whose magic would likely still work offworld with no caveats, since it seems to originate from some kind of cosmic energy (AKA the kind of stuff the Dragon Empire would likely be using). One benefit of this, though, is that they have been so busy fighting alien monsters for so long that if the Dragon Empire were to invade, they could probably hold their ground, except against an orbital bombardment, and I struggle to think of a reason why the Dragon Empire would even consider invading such a mess of a world to begin with; if anything they're worse off than Athas, and are a few bad days away of being exterminated by their own moon.

As for other worlds... OK, I know Oerth (Greyhawk) and Torril (Faerun) are supposed to have developed spelljammer vessels according to the spelljammer books, but I just can't see it. Both of them have heavily localized magic systems. Oerth derives it's power from the Great Wheel cosmology and "cosmic balance", so if they went to any world that WASN'T part of that cosmology (like Athas, Eberron, and Theah), their spelljammer engines would stop working, leaving them dead in space with no life support. Torril would have it even worse; their magic originates from the Spellweave, a network of energy that connects all living things ON TORRIL SPECIFICALLY, and over the course of the history of that world the Spellweave HAS LITERALLY DIED MULTIPLE TIMES. But did magic "die" on other worlds? no. This indicates that the Spellweave only provides power to the wizards and sorcerers of Torril, nowhere else, and if they were to travel to ANY other world their spelljammer engines would fail IMMEDIATELY. Even with the wizards of both worlds often being way more powerful than those in the worlds I previously mentioned, this problem would be too great to circumvent. And forget about using technology to produce spaceflight; those worlds are strictly medieval. If invaded, their spellcasters would definitely be able to put up an impressive fight (both worlds boast a surprising number of spellcasters above 20th level, which is pretty rare), it is unlikely they would be able to do anything about an orbital bombardment, or even know that it's coming.

Most other worlds would have similar problems, with most of them having extremely localized magic systems and low tech levels. They would fall like dominoes to the Empire without the aid of Eberron, and maybe future Theah and the Rhulisti if they find a way to leave their respective planets.

[moinsbienquekaworu]

I love worlds with specific rules and tonnes of lore building blocks so I can make my own little guys and put them there. Give me the dollhouse and a dollmaker and let me customise a few things

[synchodai]

"Mystra groomed Gale" takes rustle my jimmies like no other. I get how some people who don't know much about her beyond BG3 may have this interpretation, but if you're like me, a woman who's been playing since the days of AD&D, you'd understand why accusing Mystra of being the bad person in this scenario may hit a nerve.

TL;DR: Did Mystra take advantage of Gale's devotion to her as his goddess? Definitely, she's a Faerûnian deity — they subsist on worship and adulation. Does that make her his abuser? Eh... man, maybe it's high time that a lot of us learn different terminology for unhealthy relationship dynamics other than abuser-victim. I've seen a couple of posts that are really gung-ho about forcing every companion character to be some sort of abuse victim, because that's what they've decided the game is about. I mean, they're free to interpret the game that way, but damn, we're really out here flattening god, the very concept of magic itself, into the role of an abusive ex, huh? A fantastical, nuanced relationship between mortal and immortal set against the backdrop of a rich palimpsest multiverse digested like a YouTube drama video.

Let me try to explain my perspective by going through the history of Mystra, how she's utilized in Forgotten Realms lore, and treated within D&D games in general.

MYSTRA THE MAN-EATER

Since her creation, she has always been depicted as the sexy goddess whose main purpose was to be a wizard player's muse as well as their patron. Back then, D&D (and TTRPGs in general) was a heavily male-dominated hobby, so Mystra (and Mystryl, her avatars, and all her other incarnations) was catered and shaped by that demographic.

Because it's the player characters and Wizards of the Coast who have narrative agency and many of them want to fuck a goddess, they make stories where Mystra comes on to them because their character is just so good at magic. They designed Mystra to be a mysterious, beautiful love interest because they wanted to use her as the crown jewel of their power fantasy of being a super cool and powerful magic man. You can pretty much see this in the Elminster books and the Avatar series with Midnight (one of Mystra's avatars). Gale himself seems to be an exploration of this typical kind of wizard character.

As far as power fantasies go, making the goddess of magic have an intimate relationship with a mortal character is fine. It's the ultimate validation for a burger-flipper when the god and all source of burger-flipping is head over heels in love with them. It also doesn't have to have a sexual component to have "magic" and the magic system itself enamored with a character — depending on the game and DM, Mystra's favor can be entirely symbolic and metaphorical. A fine power fantasy in the power fantasy generation game.

So because everyone literally wants a piece of her, you end up with Mystra having more Chosen running around than any other god. Understandable given what she has to do to maintain her massive portfolio. It fits her as the personification of magic — someone who entices ambitious young spellcasters but burns them out through obsession and overreaching. Consume any Forgotten Realms-related media, and you've probably come across at least one campaign, novelization, or character backstory that use Mystra for the role of sexy sorceress goddess that's the alluring (yet often demanding) patron of some magic man. Whomst amongst our wizards haven't been visited by Mystra in the night ordering him to do plot point, he rolls to seduce her, and she has no choice but to admit that she's actually attracted to him because the dice said so? It was a community inside joke passed around tables: Mystra the Man-eater.

But then some BG3 fans started taking the joke seriously...

MYSTRA THE GROOMER AND WHORE

This piece of dialogue has done so much irrevocable damage.

Some (Galemancers specifically) have interpreted this to mean that Mystra is known to go after young men. She does not. She has more documented Chosen than other gods due to her massive portfolio and power level, but there are just as many female Chosen as there are male Chosen. Minsc, like most of us in this fandom, is speculating and doing so in a way that uplifts Gale at the cost of taking a bit of a jab at Mystra.

"Mystra's a whore. She boned Kelemvor and Elminster and so many of her Chosen, taking advantage of them as a goddess," they say as if she didn't have her romantic relationships all as different people and in different bodies. Her avatar Dasumia was the one who had an intimate relationship with Elminster, and it was the human Midnight (who later ascended to become Mystra) who was Kelemvor's lover (who himself was a mortal adventurer at the time).

This is why Mystra is, how other people put it, "a whore." Because WotC canonized a handful of those stories where different sexy female mage love interests whom otherwise have nothing in common are slapped with the Mystra label for one reason or another. Sometimes they're mere avatars or magical projections, sometimes they're actual people possessed by Mystra, and sometimes they're destined to be the new Mystra but don't know it yet. But those sort of nuances are lost to people who learn their lore secondhand from deliberately provocative tweets and reddit posts, flattening extremely fantastical relationships to clumsily fit a more relatable framing that'll net them more online engagement.

I don't want to argue what is and isn't grooming. But I have encountered arguments taking Gale's mentions that he was "a young man" to mean Mystra groomed him as a child. But I doubt he would have said "young man" if he meant child...

Mystra took off the gossamer veils from her body to fully reveal herself to him — or whatever romanticized way Gale tells you that they were intimate. The man speaks in half-abstraction and metaphors because it's revealed later on in the romance that all their love-making happened outside the Material Plane. They were very intimate, but never physically had sex (or had any physical contact at all because gods are only allowed to interact with mortals through their avatars or projections). If Mystra "groomed" Gale, so did every other god who revealed themselves and made themselves vulnerable to their followers. Shar grooms her justiciars when she brings them into her dark embrace. Umberlee grooms her clerics when she swallows them up and gives them her wet kiss.

MYSTRA IS A FAIR GOD ACTUALLY

Look, gods in D&D-verses are, more often than not, dicks. They have to be or else there would be no need for adventurers to fix wrong-doings if the gods weren't so detached to the suffering of mortals and regularly making earth-shattering calamities.

Mystra, as a patron, is actually one of the more fair and hands-on dieties. She's one of the few gods who rewards benevolent ambition and punishes destructive hubris, knowing the line between the two. In the Elminster series, she (or one of her avatars) assists Elminster in taking down one of her rebel Chosen who has abused her blessing to become a tyrant. Azuth, one of her Chosen, has achieved godhood through her. In fact, she is divinely obliged — forced against her will, some might say — to help mortals she would personally rather smite. There have been so many instances where Mystra has to be the bigger person. As far as gods abusing their followers go, Mystra is low on that list.

There are barely any stories of magic abusing spellcasters, but there are cautionary tales aplenty of spellcasters abusing magic.

ON GALE SPECIFICALLY: HOW IS MYSTRA THE BAD GUY HERE?

Gale is the first to tell you that he "violated her boundaries." Mystra told him not to mess with the Tome of Netheril and he did it anyway, so he's fully aware that the orb in his chest and his fall from grace is his own fault. Mystra didn't cast him aside just because she felt like he was getting too big for his britches. His actions actively endangered her and the Weave.

(Mystra is wrong about certain details on the Karsite Weave if we're going by Forgotten Realms lore, but she's not wrong about its existence being a danger. BG3 takes a lot of liberties with the world Faerûn, so I can't definitively say whether Mystra being wrong was her lying, Larian rewriting canon, or this incarnation of Mystra not knowing the true nature of the Fall of Netheril. I could go on about what effects the Karsite Weave actually would have on magic, but this post is already long enough. )

Gale only starts to resent Mystra when she asks him to detonate himself. Elminster makes it sound like an order, but from the way she doesn't punish him in the epilogue if he chooses to keep the orb, it feels more like a suggestion. If Mystra wanted Gale well and truly dead, she has so many options.

Throughout Faerûn's history, Mystra herself has constantly been betrayed and taken advantage of — her power coveted by ambitious men who claim to worship and love her. Honestly, as far as goddesses with traumatic histories of being killed by ambitious men go, she's pretty chill about Gale. The fact that she allows him to become the god of ambition in the end if you choose that path? Well... let's just say she's not the one who looks like the evil ex who was only with their partner to take advantage of them in this scenario.

CONCLUSION

Mystra isn't the only goddess to have romantic relationships with her followers. I've already yapped on about how Forgotten Realms writers and D&D players love to make goddesses fuck their heroes, and all that pearl-clutching over "power imbalance" and "consent" is moot when the mortal party is actively rolling to seduce the divine entity.

But notice how the male gods rarely have intimate relations with their mortal charges? It's almost as if Mystra was objectified for years by horny nerds to be the sexy sorceress who validates the more important male hero. Fast forward years later, she's now being slut-shamed for all the lore of her sleeping with the more important male hero by a new crop of fans who would love to think they're more progressive than the horny nerds of the 80s, but fall into the same trap. Mystra has so much potential for complexity, but they choose to flatten her because they ultimately don't care about making stories involving complex female characters.

Instead, one of the most powerful beings in Faerûn has no bigger role in this universe than to be your girlfriend or your current boyfriend's evil ex. Wow, the realms of your creativity and respect for women truly know no bounds.

[oldschoolfrp]

Spoiler: The party fights the Tarrasque. (Nick Jainschigg cover art for AD&D 2e adventure How the Mighty are Fallen by Dale "Slade" Henson, TSR, 1996) This supplement to the Netheril: Empire of Magic boxed campaign set bears the label "Arcane Age" indicating an adventure set in the distant past of the Forgotten Realms -- in this case 5000 years before the usual setting in Faerun.