Secrets of Thay: #Realmslore Ep1 (Extended Audio) (Patreon)

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FULL TRANSCRIPT

Ed: [00:00:00] It's got some of the best craftsmen in the world. Uh, it's got a lot of wealth and resources. Um, it's got, you know, huge muscle if it, it could, if it could ever focus that muscle in one concerted thing.

Ivan: Hi, my name's Ivan, and in this episode of RealmsLore Ed Greenwood and I are going to be discussing all things Thay. But what do we really know about Thay? Well, we know it's home to the infamous red wizards, but honestly, that's where most people's knowledge ends. In this episode, we're gonna be talking about things like, what does life look like in Thay?

We're gonna be talking about Szass Tam's motivations and about things that you're probably gonna wanna remember if you're running a game involving Thay or the Red Wizard. Ed Greenwood also just released a publication on Dungeon Masters Guild co-developed by Alex Kramer and Alan Patrick, and it's called Thy Land of the Red Wizards, and I'll put a link to that in the description.[00:01:00]

Don't forget, you can also find extended cuts of all of our realms, law videos, including much, much more on Ed's Patreon. I'll also include a link to that

Ed: below. Fans of d and d. Might know what the Eastern

Ivan: Heartlands are, the fans of d

Ed: and d might know what they is and fans of d and d might know something about, about the Red

Ivan: Wizards.

But what I wanna do today is I wanna kind of do a deep

Ed: dive into

Ivan: who are the red wizards of they, um, what makes them so influential and powerful in this geographic area of the realms. And, uh, some of the things that people might not know. And then talk about also the new publication that you have coming out called Thay Land of the Red Wizards.

Um, by the way, there will be links to that down in the description. Um, you can find it currently on Dungeon Masters Guild. As you see, they are doing print versions, uh, but you can also get PDFd very affordable, um, and a lot of really cool content. Um, that being said, why don't we just start off and would you mind giving us a very quick primer on, uh, who the Red Wizards are of stay in case people just don't know?

Ed: Sure. Okay. [00:02:00] So for most people who live in the realms, the Red Wizards are the sinister group. Of people from somewhere in the east who are generally bald, as in they shave their heads, they generally have tattoos all over them and they, the tattoos may be magical and they generally wear red robes of some sort.

Uh, and there's some sort of ranking system, but they're not quite sure about it. And they know that Thay, uh, also has other people in it. Number one, slaves. Thay is still a slaving empire now. It's not like it used to be when they ran around all the realms capturing people and they needed tens of thousands of slaves to do everything because the more recent innovation is undead, as in you change any say in who gets [00:03:00] killed.

And that of course a lot of slaves get worked to death, um, gets turned into one dead, so you no longer need tons and tons and tons of slaves. And now slaves are sort of like a status symbol for wealthy thy in families. You know, how many slaves do you have? Oh, look, I have a slave who, who can write, you know, sort of thing.

Uh, it's a status symbol. Um, and, and an inkling of this has sort of, uh, seeped out of thy to the rest of the realms. And what the, the other thing that people know about, say the general man in the street whose woman in the street who is nowhere near thy say along the sword coast somewhere, is that they're ruled by some undead, Nero or lit, something like that, called Zam, who is a mighty and very long lived and that he commands.

A whole bunch of, [00:04:00] um, red wizards and they sort of run the country and they're very arrogant and they're very powerful and they're very ruthless. But the average person on the Sword Coast would probably never see a red wizard, and Noah was a red wizard. What they would see is merchants, merchants from thy who are there to, um, sell stuff that they produces and they's really good on, on silken textiles, you know, superior textiles and already sewing clothing, perfumes, scents, wines, um, sweets, uh, jewelry, luxury goods.

And what say needs a lot of is raw materials in particular, um, large amounts of say, have been logged and not regrown in time. And there have been, although the red wizards can control the weather, and they do. So the, the, um, stereotype of Fay [00:05:00] is this desert where long lines of slaves die in the sun while overseers flog them to death in long lines as they cross the parched desert.

That is a stereotype that is out of date. It was once true in parts of Thay, but, but say, needs lots of lumber and it needs, uh, endless food and everything. Uh, so the, the merchants are everywhere trying to get deals because why produce it yourself when you can get it for cheaper and easier? Because if you don't care about losses on the way back to say, as long as they're not like 70%, so you've lost your, you know, um, but if you don't care and you're not buying things that are gonna per.

because if you want exotic fruit and vegetables, you're growing them at home. So you don't care how long it takes something to get back to say, then you can get real barons and they do everywhere. So [00:06:00] that's what the average person elsewhere. And by elsewhere, I mean not a neighbor of they Moran and Aron and in Anter and the Great Dale and Miam nearby countries who either fight with, say all the time, or have to look over their shoulders to make sure Thay isn't invading again because Sast ham got bored.

Um, , they have a different view of say, but I'm, I'm talking about everybody who's farther afield. That's what they know about Say. So it's sort of like the land of mysterious wizards and to a dungeon master. It's where you can, if you tinker with a spell or come up with your own new spell and you wanna put it in the game, but not make it accessible.

It's your player characters. Well, you have a red wizard show up Sure. And you hurl it at them. Yeah. . Yeah.

Ivan: And I, I mean, I, I really like, I like that thread that we just went down primarily because I think that offers a lot of opportunity [00:07:00] for players that are trying to break into representing Thay or Thay and Wizards, um, in that you, you know, what some of their motivations are.

Um, you know, that kind of, that economic drive, um, that, that mercantile ness is I think a really great plot point, um, to introduce people into thy. Um, and also you said that some of these wizards might have magical tattoos, which is something that a lot more people became familiar with. Once Tasha's cultured of everything came out, um, which kind of laid out the whole, the mechanical workings of magical tattoos.

Um, so there's a lot here, which I think even though, uh, you know, saying wizards are historically rooted in the realms, um, there's a lot that's yet to be explored and a lot that's still really relevant in the game and in the

Ed: story today. Right? Sure. And if you don't want to. Involve, say directly in the game?

Uh, there was, okay, to go back to the earliest editions of the game, there was this problem. And the problem with say, demons or devils [00:08:00] is you might want to have the party fight them, but you had to come up with some reason. They couldn't just summon more of their kind because right there in the monster manual said they could summon, you know, so, uh, you'd fight one devil and it, and it's gonna wipe out your, your second or third level party, and then it summons another one, and then another one, and then another one, and, and yeah, you're doomed.

Um, so you had to come up and another one, yeah, you had to come up some way to take that off the table. So if you want to use th but you don't want, say, a red wizard on stage, or you only want like an apprentice, a real weakling on stage. One of the things that happened in the last century in the realms, realms time.

um, was that, say, was establishing all the way through the mid 13 hundreds trading onclaves all over the world in large cities, large mercantile centers at Catlow, water, deep places like that. Um, unless the local people stopped [00:09:00] dead and there were places like say never winter where they did not stop it, um, Thay would create this little trading enclave and it was like a walled cyst in the middle of the city and inside it, Fay in law prevailed.

And Thay, and, and you see one of the things that happened after the great spell plague and everything went to, um, magically went chaotic, is that, say abandoned. Its outposts. So you could have an outpost today that still exists, but it's cut off from the mother country. So you could have red wizards and you can have thay and merchants, and they have no effective connection.

Back to Thay. So you can have them as villains or, um, NPC, power groups cabal on stage without the ability to tell Szass Tam back home what's happening and without the ability to call on him or say for resources.

Ivan: Yeah. And I think, [00:10:00] uh, I think it would be great to do an episode on Zam later. Mm-hmm. , um, and, and kind of get more into the mind of this, of this great leader.

Great. In, in air quote as I say. Yeah. .

Ed: Well, okay. I created Zam, um, long before there was something called d and d. Um, and I sort of had an idea of what he was like, and, and in the, uh, tyrants and Scarlet George filled in his exact backstory, um, and how he, he rose ruthlessly to power. But the, the problem is he's an attractive prime mover villain.

So over the years, TSR and Wizards of the Coast, various designers, both writers of novels and designers of, of game products, including some game products that you wouldn't at the off the face of it, if you didn't know anything about the Realms Sync had say in them like the the Never Winter campaign setting book.

Um, oh, it has Sast Ham [00:11:00] doing something nefarious in it, you know? Um, but over the years, these various novels would have outcomes that the writer had dis had written into them, or the, the adventures that the Game Adventures would presume that your player characters either defeat zt ham or they die and the campaign ends.

Well, those assumptions mean that we end up with Zt Ham, who's a little bit of the keystone cops about him. He keeps failing in all his big endeavors. Now, one of the things that's very clear is sast ham, like all, uh, tyrants, um, gets tired of constant revolutions and intrigues behind his back and people who have other ideas.

And that's a problem if you're running the Red Wizards because most red wizards are brilliant people. They're [00:12:00] smart, they're magically creative, and they tend to be power mad because they wouldn't have gotten anywhere near Azek if they weren't. They'd still be down on the ring aile or they'd be dead having been off by a RIV somehow.

Um, so they all think they can do things better than Zam, and Zam thinks he can do better than all of them. So over the years, he's dealt with these constant problems by replacing zeki after zeki with glitches, beholden to him. The The ultimate. The ultimate, yes, man. Okay. I've realized that's a, a gender term, but I mean, it was the term that, that they came up with in the fifties.

You, you know, the, the chief executive or the, or the president or the ruler or the head of the company or whoever it was surrounded themselves with. Yes. Men or Yes people, uh, people who would tell them what they thought the boss wanted to hear, rather than be an honest, constructive critic [00:13:00] or report bad news to him.

Because many of these bosses would shoot the messenger and after you'd all watched a messenger get shot several times, you didn't want to be the next messenger reporting on popular things and get shot. So you, you started lying to the boss so that he'd think everything was fine. And that is a problem that's abroad in say right now, but that's at the top and underneath that are the nobles.

and the nobles have this, well, you know, Thay is really ours, but we we're not, we're not very good at magic. And these guys are, and they're ruthless and they're crazy. They're all crazy. So we're just gonna sit here and eat, drink, and live off the, the fat of the land and let these idiots do their power mad idiots.

Sure things. Sure. Because, you know, uh, we realize how empty power is after all these years, so we're not foolish enough and uncultured enough to, to go stabbing each other over it, or, you know, ruining parts of the world with our [00:14:00] magic. Uh, we leave that to these idiots of the red wizards. So the Red Wizards really do run everything.

And they have something that, um, Alex Cameron, uh, added in this product, the Probity Corps, who are sort of the secret police of they. So that's something else you could have as NPCs, or you could even be a player character playing a, a. Minor agent, think James Bond. Okay. , uh, in the Probity Corps. Um, and underneath that are the real problem in say, the rising merchant class, the successful wealthy merchants who take one, look at all these nobles who have been parasites on them for centuries.

And the red wizards who are these power, mad, arrogant, um, dangerous, because you never know which one of which way that they're gonna jump. You know, they wake up at the wrong [00:15:00] side of the bed in the morning and they'll have you, they'll blast you and turn you into a frog. You know? It doesn't matter how wealthy.

Sure. You know, um, but, but the merchant class is the backbone of thy and thinks of themselves. That the backbone of thy and is increasingly, how do I put this? Politely? I pissed off. Is, is probably what we'd say with, with these red wizards. And now the other thing is that, I was telling you earlier about how slavery has shifted in say, because Assam has discovered that it's better to have undead armies cuz they obey.

Absolutely. Um, and you can have undead slaves because you, you don't have to worry about working them to death. You already have . Uh, so God, oh, you don't, you don't have to feed them. You don't have to keep them warm or ous them. Um, and you can do things with them like, oh, we need to be over there on the other side of the river.

Okay? Just form a bridge with your bodies and the rest of you [00:16:00] can cross it. And then they can drag the water, logged ones up with them, uh, which is something you can't do with living workers and soldiers, uh, if you want them to go on living. So Szass Tam figures, he's solved the labor problem. And of course, what he is done in the, in the meantime is he's made the live slave.

Sort of luxury objects like diamond rings or expensive wine cellars for sure. Sure. Uh, wealthy families who want to say, oh, we have a slave who knows 15 languages and can write beautiful letters for us calligraphy and everything, and dance on a cake. You know, and, and, and so slaves then become sort of like trophies and, and that's what's happening in say right now.

And all of this oils down to Fay is different. So if you want to play the other or have the other on stage from the point of view, as someone on the [00:17:00] Sword Coast or in the Heartlands say, is other, they are different than us, and they are to be feared because they're magically powerful and because you don't know their secrets.

So, Meaning that anybody can start any weld rumor, like, you know, um, the red Wizards, they have to eat 15 human babies alive before they're allowed to advance as a red wizard. And, and everybody goes, they don't, they don't go, that's ridiculous. They go hide your babies. You know, because they, it might, it might be true.

Yeah. Between the

Ivan: slavery, between the slavery and the eating of babies, , they sound Yes. Well,

Ed: real wholesome folks. Yeah. And, and, and so, so therefore, we wrote this to peel back the curtain, you know, to give you Yeah. Enough, enough about say that, that, uh, because up until now, all the coverage of, say, uh, in, in the, in the, the published [00:18:00] realms, cannon has focused on the power.

It's sort of, it's sort of like trying to tell a history of the United States by just talking about. Presidents, Supreme Courts, Congress, and the Senate, and ignoring the fact that it's this huge country where everybody lives, while we actually hadn't seen anything of the country, we didn't know how it worked.

We didn't know what people ate. We didn't know how they went from place to place. We didn't know what they spent their lives doing. All we knew about Red Wizards power, red Wizards kill these people. Red Wizards invade this country. Red Wizards invade that country and they fail. Why did they fail? Who knows?

As somebody who went

Ivan: through the American education system, I have to say, you're not too

Ed: far off the market. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But but isn't that a terrible way? I mean, and we did it. Yeah, we did it. Um, in, in Canada too. I'm, I'm Canadian. Um, we learned the history of England by Kings and [00:19:00] Right, right. If you, the first time, unless a king did something weird, like King Alfred burnt the cakes, Or Magna Carta or, um, rufuss got shot with an arrow in the forest unless there was something unusual.

You marked what Kings did by how many wars they had and who the wars were against and what happened. Now that's an interesting way, and, and you know, we've probably both had history teachers is made on the battlefield, which is why they talk about all these wars, right? Um, uh, but it does sort of short you on the country because you don't know how people live their daily lives.

What do they eat? What do they drink? And after they've eaten and drunk, where and how do they go to the bathroom? You know, basic stuff. What do they wear? Um, what's their job? Uh, if they have a job, if they don't have a. How do they get [00:20:00] people to give them things? Is it barter? What do they, um, do they have children and barter the children in a way?

I, what do they do for currency? I, if you don't cover any of that stuff, you're left with this black hole with this name on it. Say, which is indeed why we called it, say, land of the Red Wizards, because that's all everybody, that's all people know about it. But then of course, the first thing we wanted to do with the cover that's underneath this, there's a floating talking skull.

There's a, there's a guy who looks like Willard Brimley in, in a, in a turbine . There's a gal who's obviously just shaved her own head recently cuz it's got stubble all over it. There's some gorgeous, uh, female who looks very wealthy here. There are these, what's, that's probably a red wizard with a tattoo and another guy with a turban who looks like a merchant.

Who looks really pissed off to have the red wizard whispering in his ear. So we're trying, and, and we actually described in the book, and I did it [00:21:00] more extensively on, on Twitter, who all these people are, what's going on at this moment. But the whole point was to tell you it's a land where real people live out their daily lives and they're really interesting and they're not this monolith called the Red Wizards.

And that's the difficulty and the richness of a role playing game in a movie, you can actually have false fronts because you can control where the camera goes and you can run through, okay, well for instance, let, let's pick the Wizard of Oz. So they go to the Witch's Castle. What do you see? A lot of torches.

A lot of stonewalls and guys going, no, no. And then the tops of spears as people march around, you know, nothing else about. That which what she rules, how nothing, because you don't need to for the purposes of the story they're telling there. But that's the point in d and d, [00:22:00] your players can go anywhere, so you better give them say not just Right.

A, they bought a map and, and Oh, scary red wizards. Magically powerful . Yeah. I mean that's, I

Ivan: think one really great benefit of this kind of role playing renaissance is people are getting a lot more interested in the minutiae and they're getting a lot more interested in the small,

Ed: not even necessarily small, but the, the cultural

Ivan: artifacts that make a region or a country or, or what have you, exactly what it is.

And I think that that's one thing that makes that book so important and so timely is that you're giving them more than just what people would assume on the surface level, which is big

Ed: scary wizards. Yeah, and, and I always put in every Volos guide and so on. I did. And in this. I put cuisine, you know, so you can actually, um, if you're crazy enough, you can actually make food from the country and eat it or try to eat it.

And there is indeed a [00:23:00] gentleman on Twitter who is working his way through the cuisine. The published, already published cuisine of the realms, making all the recipes and trying them, and having a darn good time doing it. And, and that's the, and, and by the way, um, most of the recipes I give you, you can substitute chicken.

Okay. , um,

Ivan: you don't

Ed: have to use cobal meat specifically. Yes, please. You can substitute please, chicken. Yeah, yeah. Uh, and please do not go out there and try and hunt down a beholder, , because, uh, should you find one, it will be unfortunate for you. Uh, and, and, and who knows what's endangered. Just use chicken.

Or in some cases you'll read it and go, wouldn't. What's in danger ? Well, after everybody who buys the book, the thousands of people who buy the book go out and kill or be older, ah, , you know, um, uh, in some cases you might want to, uh, [00:24:00] substitute pork or beef for chicken, eh, eh, uh, or something else. I mean, you know, I, I tried, but, but I do indeed make these recipes for real.

So you, you might find you yourself hating the seasoning, but it will not kill you cuz I've made it for real before I wrote it down. Um, because hey, social responsibility, um, if you maybe up, maybe you put something out in the world if you don't know if it's good or not. Yeah. It's important if you're, yeah, you're gonna have your fantasy stuff.

You have to try it for. So when I write these spells, I go out into a park or cemetery and I try

Uh, so all right. Let's, let's, let's, uh, let's change gears

Ivan: a little bit and get back to, back to, uh, the motivations of, I, I guess, uh, kind of the leadership of the, uh, you

Ed: said something Leader, stray again. Oh, dear , I'm, I'm

Ivan: here for it, man. That's the point of the

Ed: series. [00:25:00] Um,

Ivan: so, but Zam, you said became increasingly more and more, um, interested in ea right, in utilizing Undead, kind of do his bidding.

Is this something that has spread to the overall culture of, uh, Thay as well? And is this something that most, uh, wizards have tried to utilize? Because I did, uh, I mean, just looking at, even at, at the Wiki about Thay and about the Red Wizards, it says that they are trying to create, they've dedicated most of their energies and most of their times into creating a culture

Ed: completely of undead.

Well, yeah. Um, yeah. Well that's because the Red Wizards are under orders. You know, the word comes down from Mont High. Sure, sure. And, uh, it, it's like, it's like a real world central government telling you pay your taxes. Here's the form. Hey, here's the deadline. Do it. If you don't, we'll come looking for you eventually.

Well, in the same way the Red Wizards are doing all this on dead stuff cuz they've [00:26:00] been told to, there are some of them who fervently disagree with it. No, we're going down the wrong path here. Or wasting or, you know, uh, where's the creativity? The, you don't get creativity from zombies. They do what you tell them to do or they do what has been baked into their orders or the, and.

We all have that real world cliche about zombies, brains, brains, you know, um Right, right. You know, so, but they're somewhat limited. Um, on the other hand, you can, you can get them to do things that a real worker couldn't withstand, like a forge in a, in a hot environment for hours without collapsing from heat stroke.

You can still burn like a torch or get melted if, you know, a lava flows into your body, you know? But, but I mean, uh, things that, uh, noxious gases that would kill a minor in a particular area won't kill an unde miner. So, I mean, they're useful in [00:27:00] that way. Um, you, they're also useful if you're in a hurry and you want to cut costs because you don't have to worry about safety concerns if you crush a few dozen zombies, cuz a stone block slides too far when you're trying to, you know, you don't care, presumably.

Yeah. Yeah. Unless, unless in the game we make the cost. Of creating that on dead very high, then you will always get people to say, I don't care. That's a cost I'll pay. You know, what's a few dozen skeletons? That's why I think

Ivan: this, not only this book, but this series is, is necessary because, I mean, I don't have much personal experience with the Red Wizards or the land of they.

Um, but you know, like you can, you can find these resources online and you can see in the wiki, like they're trying to create a nation who of Unde unde, a nation of ea. Well, you know,

Ed: what does that

Ivan: mean? And having that insight, you saying that it was, you know, motivated by Zam to basically replace the, uh, you know, the slavery market, so to speak, and you know, a nation of productivity [00:28:00] based on the shoulders of undead workers.

That brings a lot of clarity, I think, to the situation.

Ed: And in some ways it's analogous to recent North American. Labor practices as in the jobs that our grandparents did that were menial labor, for instance, uh, a welding job. There were some guys usually guys sweating, hammering things and then welding them, and then they attached them to something else, and then finally you bought it.

Well, but increasingly there are robots on assembly lines who spot well, precut things. Um, okay. The zombies are the assembly line. The zombies are replacing craft. Uh, they're the, the high end craft people are still there. The people who will create your jewelry, who do your [00:29:00] paintings and so on. But the guy who cuts, uh, many, many paintings in the realms are not done on, uh, animal hide or, um, Parchment or something, they're done on board.

Wooden board. But so the zombie could be the guy who's cutting the veneer for the board, who's pressing the veneer, steaming it, and exposing it to being baked in the sun for a month. So it will no longer warp cuz it's done all it's dried out without warping. So now you have a flat board that the artist can paint their picture on.

Yeah. That's

Ivan: you. Oh. Like you heard it here first folks. Job obsolescence is the same thing as utilizing undead to do your work.

Ed: And they All right man. ,

Ivan: somebody tell you on musk zombies are cheaper

Ed: than robots. Wow. Yeah. Yes. No. Now to, to push the real world analog even further. We have a particular, [00:30:00] um, uh, retail chain popular North America.

I, I won't name them, but you can guess who they are because their motto is, uh, pay less, live, better. . Mm-hmm. . So if, and say you, you can pay less for everything because on debt are doing more and more of the work and they don't have to be fed or rested or sheltered, unlike your living slaves who needed all of those things and could get sick, um, then you're paying less for everything.

So therefore you could live better. So therefore, the standard of living for the people at the bottom is still backbreaking labor. If they can't afford slaves or undead, and we're talking farming now, but if they're above that, if they're the shopkeeper and up, they're standard of living has gone up, not by a lot, but when you're used to grinding misery and [00:31:00] hard work and suddenly you have leisure time in the evening so you can eat a family meal together and then gossip.

Or bitch depending on what, how you're, you know about the events of the day and what they do. It's the same in my family. . Yeah, there you go. Yeah, but I mean, that's a step up instead of falling asleep in the fields, cuz you're just dog tired and exhausted and you wake up in the morning and you're slumped over the plow and because you desperately have to pee and you get off the plow, that awakens whatever's pulling the plow and it begins to plot in the furrows again.

And neither of you went into the barn or anything cuz you just fell asleep of exhaustion over your work. So if you've moved oh up from that, it is to you a big step up. So Thay is improving under the Zulkirs and that means improving under Szass Tam because Szass Tam has been there for centuries. So anyone normal [00:32:00] as in normal lifespan is what I mean when I'm using the word in this sentence.

He's always been there. and it looks like he always will be. So Zam is bringing you a better life. Um, if you happen to be one of the countries Zam invaded a lot. You might disagree with that view.

I guess the next place that

I'd

Ivan: like to go with this is maybe talk about some of the things that people might not know, um, about, uh, Thay or the Red Wizards. Something that you've left purposely cryptic or purposely, you know, um, you know, obfuscated to allow for dungeon masters or gay masters to, uh, latch onto that and kind of d uh, you know, decided for themselves.

Ed: One of the things I've left very vague is other than telling you that hierarchy in the red wizards is ruthless and that there are social climbers, and for people who don't know, say, but do know the [00:33:00] realms, the zentrum are sort of like red wizards on the cheap. They're doing all the same things. You replace Sast Ham with Man Shon and they're trying to get, become a mercantile powerhouse.

Um, but, and that's to enrich themselves because they were far less rich than you see. Um, in Central Key, they had all the mineral wealth coming out of the Moon Sea North that they could dominate. And they were literally trying to get the shortest trade route out to the Sword Coast. And that's where the Zening got its start.

Um, and or the reason the, the, the only thing to make it attractive to their allies, which were the Beholders and the Priest Bay, the only reason for them to ally with these crazy wizards who were trying to do a power grab in Central Kee, um, to take over governance of Central Keef was, oh, so we'll all get rich cuz you have the shortest trade route.

Say was doing the same thing. They had a lot more resources. They [00:34:00] were producing luxury goods. They had this huge slave workforce and now undead workforce, and they have this magical power be because of the, a author. So they, they already have all the things the Zenium wanted and, and the thing I've left vague for each dungeon master to do is the, the red Wizards, you come in contact with the individual red wizards, they are fighting this ruthless power struggle against rivals.

And to try and, um, fawn over the people of above them in the in, within the red wizards and wait for any sign of weakness so they can take that person above them down, but take them down in a way that they can explain to the superiors above that person. Oh, he screwed up. I stepped in to rescue thy [00:35:00] because he screwed up.

So can I have his rank and keep it ? Um, so the, so the actual individuals, their names, what they're up to, what they're personal hobbies and peccadillos are, this one loves wine. Um, we, we used to in the, in, in the old days, say, what weird hobbies do they have? This one collects sculptures. Yeah, naughty sculptures.

Uh, this one over here super, um, collects, um, he has a huge collection of scents from all over the world. You know, little bottles that you open the stopper and go, oh, that's wonderful, . And then you close it again and you drink wine and it changes the taste of the wine because the smell that's in your nose.

Oh, wow. And actually parties where they do that. Uh, interesting. And, and so whatever they're, and, and, uh, this is where if you want to have a, a realms analog, Of model railroading . This is where you'll, you'll have a red [00:36:00] wizard who has an entire room in his luxury mansion, his villa devoted to tiny miniature people who move around the miniature countries that he sets up.

And, and, and he makes the trains run on time. And therefore he has power because in the real world, he's amongst the lowest of the low, amongst the red wizards. But when he goes down into his basement, ha ha, he's Szass Tam and can rule the, so I mean, whatever the little hobbies are, I leave that all to you because then you can flesh them out as interesting individuals.

And then the good guys, the player characters, okay, maybe that I shouldn't make that equivalency, but, well, we generally assume our player characters are the good guys. Um, they can exploit these rivalries, these um, interests, so they can side up to a red wizard and say, , I have a new doll that you've never seen before.

Right. And it's got joints [00:37:00] and it's anatomically correct. And whereas the rest of us go, what weirdness did Ed just spout ? Well, if you are, yeah. If you are a doll collector and you're playing the npc er, he, he's going, oh, I have to have it. I at least have to see it. You know, is it as great as, oh, oh, I have to have it?

And of course we, we all have the experience of lusting after something in life, like the Christmas present we wanted, or the album our parents would let us get or we couldn't find anywhere or whatever it is. There's something we wanted, well you can put, build those in. And I've left all that vague cuz I, I left it to be tied to the individual.

But in order to bring you the individual, you have to have some guidance. He said subtly as to what the country's like and. This lady here, shell, Mara is a successful [00:38:00] merchant. She's also a snob and she gives us a tour of all the large merchant mercantile centers in Thay. Most of them cities, some of them ports, and she tells you where she stays, where she won't be caught dead in the good places to eat.

Yeah. , you know, the good places to buy certain things or sell certain things. Uh, you get her tour, which is sort of like somebody who knows Chicago or New York telling you the good places you shouldn't miss if you go to Chicago or New York. See, you get that for thy, which gives you the framework to then delve into what I left vague, which was individual red wizards on how to play them off against each other because you are having dealings with them and who knows which Red wizard you'll come into contact with.

that depends on your campaign and what your Dungeon Master has created, but it gives the Dungeon Master a framework [00:39:00] to show you thye. Whereas before Thye was just this name on a map. That was the one drawback for me whenever there were new additions of d and d, because I would always tell whoever was in power TSR or Wizards, but, but, but, but I haven't finished carpet bombing the world yet.

And of course they didn't want the world carpet bomb because if you are now in the modern day, Hara wants to license out the realms you want, you want the people doing the movie to have a free hand you want, or they want to have a free hand that the people who are doing the Bulger's gay computer game, they want to have a free hand.

So you don't want all these parts of the realm super detail, which is why. Fifth edition realms was almost entirely the Sword Coast until this . Yeah. Right, right, right, right. Yeah. Um, [00:40:00] they, there is a utility in saying to somebody, you could do anything you want because there's nothing cannon there. And of course they reinforced that recently by saying, you know, anything before Fifth Edition, he isn't Canada anymore.

Well, well, sorry, you, you can't make that decision. That's a contract. And I'm the other end of it. And you haven't talked to me, so it hasn't changed. I don't care what you say. It hasn't changed. Because if you wanna open that contract that the realms is attached to that contract. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Be very careful what you watch.

Ivan: So I think it's interesting too that you kind of, uh, took in the stance in this book almost kind of like, uh, it sounds like Volos, like in Caribbeans or like Volos guides to, to certain areas. It's just because maybe. People within that region of the realms might not have such familiarity with Thay that you, you gave that task over to a local for this publication to

Ed: guide you through.

That's really interesting. Cause Volo wouldn't last five minutes and say, cuz he's a, [00:41:00] a wizard and not a good one and, and he breaks rules and shoots his mouth off. Mm-hmm. . Yeah. He wouldn't last long. Uh, now, uh, Volo is still riding, um, Jeff Gander and Clinton Cronk and, uh, Fiona as our editor, um, are working with me to do Volos Guide to or per, which is a coastal city on the Shining Sea just south of the border.

Couldn't, so I gave you the Border Kingdoms then, or Per Is next. Beyond that is Sure Teller. Um, so there will be a Volos guide to or per, um, great. Uh, awesome. It's almost finished. Um, the, the, my writing bits of it are finished. He says, crossing fingers to toes and thumbs, whatever. Uh, but I mean, uh, and, but yeah, Volo wouldn't have lasted in here.

Volo and merch show us around m per they, they go to each neighborhood in the city and they, they argue about things and you learn about the neighborhood , but they wouldn't have last for five [00:42:00] minutes in. And, uh, neither did I want to send El Minster or someone say, because you know, if I send Elm Minster places and they're magically powerful places, things happen.

And then the guys, yeah, it's, it's out date. It's sort of like say, right, oh, we, we nuked this major city in that city. So you could ignore those six pages in the. Because El Mister showed up and things happened . So,

Ivan: so I think it's interesting too that there was sort of a divide in, um, fan culture as far as the red wizards go.

And I'm curious if you have any insight as far as kind of the fan imperialists that wanted to base their culture on conquest, uh, versus kind of the faan, um, like arcanine purists that were, wanted to go deeper and deeper into kind of the magical arts and became more and more xenophobic. Um, I'm just curious again if you have any insights on that and how that might affect [00:43:00] somebody, uh, playing in thy, um, especially if they're getting involved at all in the political intrigue thing.

Ed: Yeah. Well, okay. Yeah. Depending on who you are and where you are, and say you have com completely different views on this. The, the, the average laborer at the bottom and shopkeeper doesn't care, you know, because thy is all they've ever known. Um, , all they see is the negative as aspects, um, or positive if they're supplying the army.

But as the army has become undead, the supplying the army with, uh, crappy wine and bulk food, that's become an increasingly smaller and less lucrative market. So you're no longer ensued when say, goes to war, if you see what I mean. Um, um, at the bottom, they, they don't care. Okay? Um, to the nobles and the, um, upper merchant class, they [00:44:00] view war as, is it good for business?

Is it bad for business? I'm not gonna get richer or not. But they also view it differently in, depending on who's getting invaded, they're outraged. If somebody invades, they how , he's and barbarian upstarts. And that includes maho and Unser, you know, countries of, you know, are old and powerful. But that's the thing.

If it's Mahorn or unser, there there're a history of warfare and there's a history of one, um, land trying to swallow the other. So they feel very differently about that. They are almost traditional foes then they do about, say, if Szass Tam wants to invade Murum, they're gonna go, wait a minute, dragon kings, are you nuts?

Oh no, you're not nuts. You're just an immortal and dead. We're not unde, we're gonna get killed by the dragon. Don't do it. Right, right. You [00:45:00] know. Um, and then there's agro, which Thay used to invade regularly because Zam and formerly the Living Zulkirs cares of the Red Wizards did not well, they were paranoid about having a magically powerful.

Nation a tiny, um, country, but a nation of majors being ruled by, you know, , one of the seven sisters and, and who they should have crushed every time and yet somehow never could be. It was like, okay, we've gotta get rid of her. But to the regular rank and file Theen citizen, that wasn't their fight. It was like, oh, this is Zs ham's idiocy again.

Here we go, bashing Aron one more time. What did they ever do to us? Like that old Monty Python sketch, you know, what have the Romans ever do for us? You know, uh, but, but to turn it on his head, it was like, why are we fighting Alaron? What have they ever done to us? Because [00:46:00] they never invaded say it was always the other direction, and then say, always got beaten back and bloodied with huge losses.

And so it was like, here we go again. So again, in the old days if you had a contract to supply the army, and it was mainly a living army. Fine, go to war with everyone you want. I make money no matter how. But now when it's slaves, it's like, uh, it isn't there Something better. You know, there's potholes in my road.

Can't you put the slaves to fixing my potholes? Why do they have to go and conquer some other idiot so we can inherit their potholes? And, and

the best way to role play any place in a fantasy setting is to put yourself in the shoes of somebody who lives there. And if you can adopt their mindset, then you can extrapolate and create to your heart's content and will all make sense. Assuming the people are, have enough human [00:47:00] nature that they don't feel alien to us.

They, they can be dragons, they can have tentacles coming outta their mouths and they. 16 protus instead of the ones we're used to. Um, but if underneath, if they're sort of like Star Trek aliens, you know, makeup, but they're humans underneath played by human actors. Okay. If, if, if they have the same amount of human nature.

And that was something that I was baking into the realms with the first few old minster books where he, he's in msra and people kept saying, why are your elves so craven? And you know, back biting and so on. And I'm saying it's not human nature, it's also Elvin nature. It's what happens when you have a, a jaded society that has been too powerful for too long.

These things will happen. We call it human nature because we're a human. But, um, if you bake that into everything, then you can use it to understand things. So if you just put yourself in, [00:48:00] say in shoes. They'll have different, you know, if, if it's a noble versus a red wizard versus a shopkeeper versus some guy who has to kill the fields.

They'll all have very different opinions, but it'll all be based in human nature, and you can extrapolate from that. Yeah, that's

Ivan: amazing. And I think also a lot of those higher end political decisions too, like whether or not we're going to invade whether or not we're going to go to war, whether or not we're gonna focus on the arcanine arts.

I think that there's a really interesting kind of paradigm established, um, based on what you told me earlier, which is, you know, Zam essentially got rid of the Zulkirs here, which are the, you know, the Council of Thay, right. They're the, the, the movers and the shakers and the, and the decision makers. Mm-hmm. , um, and just replaced them with, you know, lacky Lacky Yes.

Men witches, which, um, yes, which is a whole, it's an inter, it's a only new like dynamic, a totally new, interesting layer to that political atmosphere that I think is pretty unique actually to say.

Ed: And in this book, Alan Patrick was pushing for this when [00:49:00] we were designing this. He made sure that you see the shadow cabinet of faith.

Don't put it in modern real world terms. The exiles who are outside, say in other places in the world, and they are the shadow cabinet Zo Pierce, like for each school of magic, there's somebody who thinks he should be zeki, who's not in say, and who's bitterly criticizing all the policies in his school of magic.

And he can do it from the point of view. Well, I'm an expert in that school of magic, so when I think that you are an idiot for this policy, you should listen to me. I'm a subject matter expert, you know, uh, I could do a much better job. But of course, none of them want to step into, say, and have sst ham destroy them or kill them and take over their minds so they're, they're sniping from a distance.

But should sast ham stumble or disappear or go into another dimension or get trapped in something. [00:50:00] They, they would love to step in and set, say on the, the road that it should be on. The problem is not too many of them agree what road that is. So it would be fun again, , it would be as politically fractious as many real-world countries are.

Ivan: Yeah, I was about to say that. That might almost add, that's definitely an element of realism. , making everybody disagree. Who knows? Maybe replacing Zulkirs ke or replacing Congress with a bunch of witches is the way to go.

Ed: You know, what's, if, if it worked for Zam, they haven't already, I mean, I'm a Canadian, I don't know, but to me, looking in, it sounds like they've done that already.

Yeah. Yeah. They, there's nothing there of making the part. My favorite tweet that I saw was one that said that a certain party had to be children because if they'd gone through teenagehood, they would understand. that if you jack up your base, you blow your speaker . Yeah, yeah. [00:51:00] You know, and you think about that for a minute, you go nice, very nice.

Uh, but of course, uh, in, in a serious thing for a moment, what that's pointing at is what if you don't set your system up with enough checks and balances? Uh, anybody who's ever, um, gone on the National Football League website and looked up the playoff picture and then clicked the little thing that says tie breaking procedures, and there's this list of 12 or 14 things, um, head to head, um, um, victories within division, uh, strength of schedule, strength of, you know, uh, um, win and so on.

And it goes and right the way at the bottom it says coin. When you've exhausted all else ,

Ivan: but I start with coin.

Ed: Keep things simple. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. But, but in this particular real world example, you have a, oh, uh, what do we do now? And then everybody's checking [00:52:00] the history books to see if there's a rule or a precedent that happens in fantasy kingdoms too.

It would happen in say, because for every living sayin who hasn't prolonged their life by magical means, and remember in early additions of the game, there were these things called potions of longevity. That's one of the reasons why darn and and mert are vigorous still, not just blue flame items, but if they haven't prolonged their zam is all they've ever known.

So if something happened, it's probably gonna be a, A power vacuum. A power struggle, and nobody down at the rank and file. Is gonna know what the rules are. So any rumor or lie that's fed to them, they might, they might swallow because they don't know any better. You know, if, if, if, if somebody announces Zs ham has vanished, so the fattest girl [00:53:00] baby with blue hair must be found in the kingdom and will become our news.

And you think that's ridiculous, but it's no more ridiculous than listening. Well, as, as Monty Python said, some watery tar in a lake with a sword, and who shall ever draw this sword shall hence foth be rightful king of all Latin . You know, uh, it, it it's whatever tradition you've locally come up with. And of course you can have great fun as a dungeon master world building of putting traditions in.

Yeah. And yeah, absolutely. You can have, you can have descent within, say, I often cite that scene at the beginning of the movie Excalibur, or near the beginning where, um, Patrick Stewart is playing one of the nobles and he says, I saw what I saw. The boy drew the sword. And what that [00:54:00] noble is, is a true believer.

He's been told that by the gods, that is what has to happen as far as he's concerned. So he's gonna fight anyone cuz he, when he says it, he knows the other nobles are going to attack him. And sure enough, the next scene in the movie, they're besieging is castle because he stood up for it. He says, no, I saw what I saw.

The boy drew the sword and he, you could say he was keeping the faith, he was remaining true to the religious teachings because to him that was the foundation upon which the world was built to break free is to take us into the unknown. And in say that would be anything without Zam, anything without the red wizard would be the unknown.

So you would have people trying to find anybody who willing to put on red robes and they'd prop him up even if he's half dead. And even if he doesn't know magic and say, no, we have to have [00:55:00] things run by the red wizards. Otherwise say, as we know, it will cease to exist. So we found this guy cowering in the woodshed.

He's our red wizard. You know, good enough, good enough for government work and bad pun intended. Yeah. Um, and, and then of course your dungeon master has the fun of the campaign where the red wizard is a puppet and you can see the hand up the puppet's backside. To make the puppet walk and talk and say the things you want the puppet to say in the name of the Red Wizards, but it's really your hand.

Well, who is the owner of this hand that is trying to control the red wizards? And it could be the, the, the nastiest old lady on the street. You know, it could be somebody who you would never think of as a power broker, but she says, look, I know enough not to drink from the, well after the cattle have been in it.

None of you people do. Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . So I should run [00:56:00] this community. And she might be right. . That's the thing.

Ivan: So, uh, to wrap this up, I, I guess my, my final question to you would be, what is the number one fact that you wish people knew about Thay and or the Red Wizards? Something that may or may not be in that book, uh, but something that most people don't know, but you think is quintessential to playing and understanding Thay and the Red

Ed: Wizards.

Hey. I would say it's twofold. See, I'm cheating already. Uh, , step one, really work in the system here, right? ? Yeah. Yeah. Step one is there's a lot more to say than Red Wizards. It's a complete country. It's huge, it's powerful, and there's a reason for that. Um, it's got some of the best craftsmen in the world.

Uh, it's got a lot of wealth and resources. Um, it's got, [00:57:00] you know, huge muscle. If it, it could, if it could ever focus that muscle in one concerted thing, it could achieve a lot. That's, that's the number one. And number two, the, the Red Wizards are a magical powerhouse because of the eora. That magical, that, that rock full of magic that floats inside Seamount.

And makes the country magically powerful. And if you wiped out Zam tomorrow, if you wiped out all his lites, and if you somehow managed to wipe out every single last writ wizard and you close the borders of Thay and you left them to their own devices for a couple centuries, maybe, maybe four generations, and then you open the borders again, you'd find they were magically powerful because the Eora is [00:58:00] imbuing everything with magic.

So anybody who does have the gift, the the aptitude to wield arcane magic, the art would've experimented. And some of them would've survived the experimentations and , and you would have the equivalent of red wizards. And maybe if they all remembered what had happened and they, they. Revered the Red Wizards.

They might be calling themselves Red wizards even though they aren't, uh, the, the Red Wizards you knew beforehand. Or they might repudiate the Red Wizards just like teenagers, repudiate everything that their parents do because it's not cool anymore. Um, it could be either way, but you'd find magically powerful wizards playing a huge part in the society.

Now, if the down trodden masses were angry enough, or remembered the Red Wizards with enough ill will, they wouldn't make darn [00:59:00] sure that wizards couldn't rule by, and they would've worked out some, you know, but, It would still be a magically powerful country. There you go. Those are two things that are deadly powerful.

Yeah. That, I

Ivan: mean, that's great too. And I think that that's really important for Dungeon Masters and players alike to latch onto. Cause I think when people listen to, you know, this or, or, or read the book about Thay, one of the first motivations is gonna be I wanna go in there and I want to, you know, beat the pants off these people and stop their, you know, the enslavement of, of the races, of the realm.

And I want to, uh, go in there and maybe, you know, um, interrupt some of the evil doings of Szass Tam because as you said, he is been established by wizards and, uh, by TSR as kind of a mover and shaker in the world of, of being bads, you know, uh, large scale villains. Um, and I think that it's important to remember that even if you were to go over there and overthrow an entire government and end the, the practices of slavery over in Thay, that exactly like you said in a couple generations, because it's just a magically imbued.

Um, it's, it's a volatile, and, and there could, there [01:00:00] could continue to be conflict no matter how thorough of a job that you think you've done in, you know, ending the conflict within that area, right?

Ed: Yeah, yeah, you're right. Uh, it, it would, it's sort of like that old saying, if there wasn't a bogeyman, it would be necessary to invent one.

Yeah. Which is, yeah, sure. Yeah. Yeah. Um, uh, and there will always be a say or equivalent, and this particular area of the realms will always be magically powerful. If you let say the dragon princes of miam conquer it, then you would find, uh, any, any serv tours, any underling critters they gathered around them, human slaves or otherwise they could be, you know, if, if you want to go, uh, full on, uh, dragon lands, look at all the, the dragon races, the, the.

um, who they would gather around them and say would [01:01:00] be magically powerful, you know, so , right? Yeah. I mean, it's scary to

Ivan: think about, you know what I mean? Power vacuums create, uh, create something that we have no experience that we don't know yet. So, you know, who comes in to assume power after we've disrupted the current structure of power might be just as bad or worse.

Um, hopefully much better. Mm-hmm. But just as bad or worse as, as the red wizards and ssam. So something to think about mm-hmm. For players.

Ed: Mm-hmm. . Yes. Yes. Um, yeah. And, and of course that's the old, old saying, um, may you live in interesting times. The, the, uh, in Siri, ancient Chinese curse or proverb, which probably isn't Yeah.

Chinese or ancient, but, but I mean, it's, that's the thing. . Um, it's one an, it's an interesting time to set your campaign in one of these turmoil periods when things are changing, when the established order of power is being turned on its head, which is why so many fantasy novels. Of the high fantasy triple decker, you know, [01:02:00] doorstop novels concern a time when, um, the world is either rushing towards destiny, foretold one ring to rule them all, or, or, um, somebody's already upset the applecart, what's gonna happen now?

It's just an interesting time to write about, uh, it's an interesting time to adventure in and in law and order countries. It gives adventurers elbow room to operate because the normal day-to-day heavy duty law and order you, you can't do that there. Here is all it. It's, it's, it's one of the reasons that, um, the United States of America was so in love with the concept of the Wild West and why there were so many Wild West movies because it's a, it's a lawless time.

It's might makes right. , you've got room to operate and tell all these stories of treasure and, and guys shooting each other in the back and [01:03:00] lost minds and all these double crossings because there isn't a hard, uh, code of behavior and everybody has 2.5 children and two cars in their double cargo gu.

Right, right, right. And, you know, and the same, um, flowers planted in the same manicured golf course grass, front lawn, no, anybody can do their own thing. And if the guy next door, um, thinks grass should be smoked rather than on the ground, he'll do that. And there's nothing to stop him. , you know, and, and that that's the, and and it's an interesting time to live in and it's an interesting time to write about it.

It's an interesting time to role play as adventures cuz it gives adventures room to do stuff. And there'll be people who are weak or are wounded or. They want revenge or they want a bodyguard and they will hire adventurers to do it for them. Yeah, yeah. Right, right.[01:04:00]

Ed: [00:00:00] It's got some of the best craftsmen in the world. Uh, it's got a lot of wealth and resources. Um, it's got, you know, huge muscle if it, it could, if it could ever focus that muscle in one concerted thing.

Ivan: Hi, my name's Ivan, and in this episode of RealmsLore Ed Greenwood and I are going to be discussing all things Thay. But what do we really know about Thay? Well, we know it's home to the infamous red wizards, but honestly, that's where most people's knowledge ends. In this episode, we're gonna be talking about things like, what does life look like in Thay?

We're gonna be talking about Szass Tam's motivations and about things that you're probably gonna wanna remember if you're running a game involving Thay or the Red Wizard. Ed Greenwood also just released a publication on Dungeon Masters Guild co-developed by Alex Kramer and Alan Patrick, and it's called Thy Land of the Red Wizards, and I'll put a link to that in the description.[00:01:00]

Don't forget, you can also find extended cuts of all of our realms, law videos, including much, much more on Ed's Patreon. I'll also include a link to that

Ed: below. Fans of d and d. Might know what the Eastern

Ivan: Heartlands are, the fans of d

Ed: and d might know what they is and fans of d and d might know something about, about the Red

Ivan: Wizards.

But what I wanna do today is I wanna kind of do a deep

Ed: dive into

Ivan: who are the red wizards of they, um, what makes them so influential and powerful in this geographic area of the realms. And, uh, some of the things that people might not know. And then talk about also the new publication that you have coming out called Thay Land of the Red Wizards.

Um, by the way, there will be links to that down in the description. Um, you can find it currently on Dungeon Masters Guild. As you see, they are doing print versions, uh, but you can also get PDFd very affordable, um, and a lot of really cool content. Um, that being said, why don't we just start off and would you mind giving us a very quick primer on, uh, who the Red Wizards are of stay in case people just don't know?

Ed: Sure. Okay. [00:02:00] So for most people who live in the realms, the Red Wizards are the sinister group. Of people from somewhere in the east who are generally bald, as in they shave their heads, they generally have tattoos all over them and they, the tattoos may be magical and they generally wear red robes of some sort.

Uh, and there's some sort of ranking system, but they're not quite sure about it. And they know that Thay, uh, also has other people in it. Number one, slaves. Thay is still a slaving empire now. It's not like it used to be when they ran around all the realms capturing people and they needed tens of thousands of slaves to do everything because the more recent innovation is undead, as in you change any say in who gets [00:03:00] killed.

And that of course a lot of slaves get worked to death, um, gets turned into one dead, so you no longer need tons and tons and tons of slaves. And now slaves are sort of like a status symbol for wealthy thy in families. You know, how many slaves do you have? Oh, look, I have a slave who, who can write, you know, sort of thing.

Uh, it's a status symbol. Um, and, and an inkling of this has sort of, uh, seeped out of thy to the rest of the realms. And what the, the other thing that people know about, say the general man in the street whose woman in the street who is nowhere near thy say along the sword coast somewhere, is that they're ruled by some undead, Nero or lit, something like that, called Zam, who is a mighty and very long lived and that he commands.

A whole bunch of, [00:04:00] um, red wizards and they sort of run the country and they're very arrogant and they're very powerful and they're very ruthless. But the average person on the Sword Coast would probably never see a red wizard, and Noah was a red wizard. What they would see is merchants, merchants from thy who are there to, um, sell stuff that they produces and they's really good on, on silken textiles, you know, superior textiles and already sewing clothing, perfumes, scents, wines, um, sweets, uh, jewelry, luxury goods.

And what say needs a lot of is raw materials in particular, um, large amounts of say, have been logged and not regrown in time. And there have been, although the red wizards can control the weather, and they do. So the, the, um, stereotype of Fay [00:05:00] is this desert where long lines of slaves die in the sun while overseers flog them to death in long lines as they cross the parched desert.

That is a stereotype that is out of date. It was once true in parts of Thay, but, but say, needs lots of lumber and it needs, uh, endless food and everything. Uh, so the, the merchants are everywhere trying to get deals because why produce it yourself when you can get it for cheaper and easier? Because if you don't care about losses on the way back to say, as long as they're not like 70%, so you've lost your, you know, um, but if you don't care and you're not buying things that are gonna per.

because if you want exotic fruit and vegetables, you're growing them at home. So you don't care how long it takes something to get back to say, then you can get real barons and they do everywhere. So [00:06:00] that's what the average person elsewhere. And by elsewhere, I mean not a neighbor of they Moran and Aron and in Anter and the Great Dale and Miam nearby countries who either fight with, say all the time, or have to look over their shoulders to make sure Thay isn't invading again because Sast ham got bored.

Um, , they have a different view of say, but I'm, I'm talking about everybody who's farther afield. That's what they know about Say. So it's sort of like the land of mysterious wizards and to a dungeon master. It's where you can, if you tinker with a spell or come up with your own new spell and you wanna put it in the game, but not make it accessible.

It's your player characters. Well, you have a red wizard show up Sure. And you hurl it at them. Yeah. . Yeah.

Ivan: And I, I mean, I, I really like, I like that thread that we just went down primarily because I think that offers a lot of opportunity [00:07:00] for players that are trying to break into representing Thay or Thay and Wizards, um, in that you, you know, what some of their motivations are.

Um, you know, that kind of, that economic drive, um, that, that mercantile ness is I think a really great plot point, um, to introduce people into thy. Um, and also you said that some of these wizards might have magical tattoos, which is something that a lot more people became familiar with. Once Tasha's cultured of everything came out, um, which kind of laid out the whole, the mechanical workings of magical tattoos.

Um, so there's a lot here, which I think even though, uh, you know, saying wizards are historically rooted in the realms, um, there's a lot that's yet to be explored and a lot that's still really relevant in the game and in the

Ed: story today. Right? Sure. And if you don't want to. Involve, say directly in the game?

Uh, there was, okay, to go back to the earliest editions of the game, there was this problem. And the problem with say, demons or devils [00:08:00] is you might want to have the party fight them, but you had to come up with some reason. They couldn't just summon more of their kind because right there in the monster manual said they could summon, you know, so, uh, you'd fight one devil and it, and it's gonna wipe out your, your second or third level party, and then it summons another one, and then another one, and then another one, and, and yeah, you're doomed.

Um, so you had to come up and another one, yeah, you had to come up some way to take that off the table. So if you want to use th but you don't want, say, a red wizard on stage, or you only want like an apprentice, a real weakling on stage. One of the things that happened in the last century in the realms, realms time.

um, was that, say, was establishing all the way through the mid 13 hundreds trading onclaves all over the world in large cities, large mercantile centers at Catlow, water, deep places like that. Um, unless the local people stopped [00:09:00] dead and there were places like say never winter where they did not stop it, um, Thay would create this little trading enclave and it was like a walled cyst in the middle of the city and inside it, Fay in law prevailed.

And Thay, and, and you see one of the things that happened after the great spell plague and everything went to, um, magically went chaotic, is that, say abandoned. Its outposts. So you could have an outpost today that still exists, but it's cut off from the mother country. So you could have red wizards and you can have thay and merchants, and they have no effective connection.

Back to Thay. So you can have them as villains or, um, NPC, power groups cabal on stage without the ability to tell Szass Tam back home what's happening and without the ability to call on him or say for resources.

Ivan: Yeah. And I think, [00:10:00] uh, I think it would be great to do an episode on Zam later. Mm-hmm. , um, and, and kind of get more into the mind of this, of this great leader.

Great. In, in air quote as I say. Yeah. .

Ed: Well, okay. I created Zam, um, long before there was something called d and d. Um, and I sort of had an idea of what he was like, and, and in the, uh, tyrants and Scarlet George filled in his exact backstory, um, and how he, he rose ruthlessly to power. But the, the problem is he's an attractive prime mover villain.

So over the years, TSR and Wizards of the Coast, various designers, both writers of novels and designers of, of game products, including some game products that you wouldn't at the off the face of it, if you didn't know anything about the Realms Sync had say in them like the the Never Winter campaign setting book.

Um, oh, it has Sast Ham [00:11:00] doing something nefarious in it, you know? Um, but over the years, these various novels would have outcomes that the writer had dis had written into them, or the, the adventures that the Game Adventures would presume that your player characters either defeat zt ham or they die and the campaign ends.

Well, those assumptions mean that we end up with Zt Ham, who's a little bit of the keystone cops about him. He keeps failing in all his big endeavors. Now, one of the things that's very clear is sast ham, like all, uh, tyrants, um, gets tired of constant revolutions and intrigues behind his back and people who have other ideas.

And that's a problem if you're running the Red Wizards because most red wizards are brilliant people. They're [00:12:00] smart, they're magically creative, and they tend to be power mad because they wouldn't have gotten anywhere near Azek if they weren't. They'd still be down on the ring aile or they'd be dead having been off by a RIV somehow.

Um, so they all think they can do things better than Zam, and Zam thinks he can do better than all of them. So over the years, he's dealt with these constant problems by replacing zeki after zeki with glitches, beholden to him. The The ultimate. The ultimate, yes, man. Okay. I've realized that's a, a gender term, but I mean, it was the term that, that they came up with in the fifties.

You, you know, the, the chief executive or the, or the president or the ruler or the head of the company or whoever it was surrounded themselves with. Yes. Men or Yes people, uh, people who would tell them what they thought the boss wanted to hear, rather than be an honest, constructive critic [00:13:00] or report bad news to him.

Because many of these bosses would shoot the messenger and after you'd all watched a messenger get shot several times, you didn't want to be the next messenger reporting on popular things and get shot. So you, you started lying to the boss so that he'd think everything was fine. And that is a problem that's abroad in say right now, but that's at the top and underneath that are the nobles.

and the nobles have this, well, you know, Thay is really ours, but we we're not, we're not very good at magic. And these guys are, and they're ruthless and they're crazy. They're all crazy. So we're just gonna sit here and eat, drink, and live off the, the fat of the land and let these idiots do their power mad idiots.

Sure things. Sure. Because, you know, uh, we realize how empty power is after all these years, so we're not foolish enough and uncultured enough to, to go stabbing each other over it, or, you know, ruining parts of the world with our [00:14:00] magic. Uh, we leave that to these idiots of the red wizards. So the Red Wizards really do run everything.

And they have something that, um, Alex Cameron, uh, added in this product, the Probity Corps, who are sort of the secret police of they. So that's something else you could have as NPCs, or you could even be a player character playing a, a. Minor agent, think James Bond. Okay. , uh, in the Probity Corps. Um, and underneath that are the real problem in say, the rising merchant class, the successful wealthy merchants who take one, look at all these nobles who have been parasites on them for centuries.

And the red wizards who are these power, mad, arrogant, um, dangerous, because you never know which one of which way that they're gonna jump. You know, they wake up at the wrong [00:15:00] side of the bed in the morning and they'll have you, they'll blast you and turn you into a frog. You know? It doesn't matter how wealthy.

Sure. You know, um, but, but the merchant class is the backbone of thy and thinks of themselves. That the backbone of thy and is increasingly, how do I put this? Politely? I pissed off. Is, is probably what we'd say with, with these red wizards. And now the other thing is that, I was telling you earlier about how slavery has shifted in say, because Assam has discovered that it's better to have undead armies cuz they obey.

Absolutely. Um, and you can have undead slaves because you, you don't have to worry about working them to death. You already have . Uh, so God, oh, you don't, you don't have to feed them. You don't have to keep them warm or ous them. Um, and you can do things with them like, oh, we need to be over there on the other side of the river.

Okay? Just form a bridge with your bodies and the rest of you [00:16:00] can cross it. And then they can drag the water, logged ones up with them, uh, which is something you can't do with living workers and soldiers, uh, if you want them to go on living. So Szass Tam figures, he's solved the labor problem. And of course, what he is done in the, in the meantime is he's made the live slave.

Sort of luxury objects like diamond rings or expensive wine cellars for sure. Sure. Uh, wealthy families who want to say, oh, we have a slave who knows 15 languages and can write beautiful letters for us calligraphy and everything, and dance on a cake. You know, and, and, and so slaves then become sort of like trophies and, and that's what's happening in say right now.

And all of this oils down to Fay is different. So if you want to play the other or have the other on stage from the point of view, as someone on the [00:17:00] Sword Coast or in the Heartlands say, is other, they are different than us, and they are to be feared because they're magically powerful and because you don't know their secrets.

So, Meaning that anybody can start any weld rumor, like, you know, um, the red Wizards, they have to eat 15 human babies alive before they're allowed to advance as a red wizard. And, and everybody goes, they don't, they don't go, that's ridiculous. They go hide your babies. You know, because they, it might, it might be true.

Yeah. Between the

Ivan: slavery, between the slavery and the eating of babies, , they sound Yes. Well,

Ed: real wholesome folks. Yeah. And, and, and so, so therefore, we wrote this to peel back the curtain, you know, to give you Yeah. Enough, enough about say that, that, uh, because up until now, all the coverage of, say, uh, in, in the, in the, the published [00:18:00] realms, cannon has focused on the power.

It's sort of, it's sort of like trying to tell a history of the United States by just talking about. Presidents, Supreme Courts, Congress, and the Senate, and ignoring the fact that it's this huge country where everybody lives, while we actually hadn't seen anything of the country, we didn't know how it worked.

We didn't know what people ate. We didn't know how they went from place to place. We didn't know what they spent their lives doing. All we knew about Red Wizards power, red Wizards kill these people. Red Wizards invade this country. Red Wizards invade that country and they fail. Why did they fail? Who knows?

As somebody who went

Ivan: through the American education system, I have to say, you're not too

Ed: far off the market. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But but isn't that a terrible way? I mean, and we did it. Yeah, we did it. Um, in, in Canada too. I'm, I'm Canadian. Um, we learned the history of England by Kings and [00:19:00] Right, right. If you, the first time, unless a king did something weird, like King Alfred burnt the cakes, Or Magna Carta or, um, rufuss got shot with an arrow in the forest unless there was something unusual.

You marked what Kings did by how many wars they had and who the wars were against and what happened. Now that's an interesting way, and, and you know, we've probably both had history teachers is made on the battlefield, which is why they talk about all these wars, right? Um, uh, but it does sort of short you on the country because you don't know how people live their daily lives.

What do they eat? What do they drink? And after they've eaten and drunk, where and how do they go to the bathroom? You know, basic stuff. What do they wear? Um, what's their job? Uh, if they have a job, if they don't have a. How do they get [00:20:00] people to give them things? Is it barter? What do they, um, do they have children and barter the children in a way?

I, what do they do for currency? I, if you don't cover any of that stuff, you're left with this black hole with this name on it. Say, which is indeed why we called it, say, land of the Red Wizards, because that's all everybody, that's all people know about it. But then of course, the first thing we wanted to do with the cover that's underneath this, there's a floating talking skull.

There's a, there's a guy who looks like Willard Brimley in, in a, in a turbine . There's a gal who's obviously just shaved her own head recently cuz it's got stubble all over it. There's some gorgeous, uh, female who looks very wealthy here. There are these, what's, that's probably a red wizard with a tattoo and another guy with a turban who looks like a merchant.

Who looks really pissed off to have the red wizard whispering in his ear. So we're trying, and, and we actually described in the book, and I did it [00:21:00] more extensively on, on Twitter, who all these people are, what's going on at this moment. But the whole point was to tell you it's a land where real people live out their daily lives and they're really interesting and they're not this monolith called the Red Wizards.

And that's the difficulty and the richness of a role playing game in a movie, you can actually have false fronts because you can control where the camera goes and you can run through, okay, well for instance, let, let's pick the Wizard of Oz. So they go to the Witch's Castle. What do you see? A lot of torches.

A lot of stonewalls and guys going, no, no. And then the tops of spears as people march around, you know, nothing else about. That which what she rules, how nothing, because you don't need to for the purposes of the story they're telling there. But that's the point in d and d, [00:22:00] your players can go anywhere, so you better give them say not just Right.

A, they bought a map and, and Oh, scary red wizards. Magically powerful . Yeah. I mean that's, I

Ivan: think one really great benefit of this kind of role playing renaissance is people are getting a lot more interested in the minutiae and they're getting a lot more interested in the small,

Ed: not even necessarily small, but the, the cultural

Ivan: artifacts that make a region or a country or, or what have you, exactly what it is.

And I think that that's one thing that makes that book so important and so timely is that you're giving them more than just what people would assume on the surface level, which is big

Ed: scary wizards. Yeah, and, and I always put in every Volos guide and so on. I did. And in this. I put cuisine, you know, so you can actually, um, if you're crazy enough, you can actually make food from the country and eat it or try to eat it.

And there is indeed a [00:23:00] gentleman on Twitter who is working his way through the cuisine. The published, already published cuisine of the realms, making all the recipes and trying them, and having a darn good time doing it. And, and that's the, and, and by the way, um, most of the recipes I give you, you can substitute chicken.

Okay. , um,

Ivan: you don't

Ed: have to use cobal meat specifically. Yes, please. You can substitute please, chicken. Yeah, yeah. Uh, and please do not go out there and try and hunt down a beholder, , because, uh, should you find one, it will be unfortunate for you. Uh, and, and, and who knows what's endangered. Just use chicken.

Or in some cases you'll read it and go, wouldn't. What's in danger ? Well, after everybody who buys the book, the thousands of people who buy the book go out and kill or be older, ah, , you know, um, uh, in some cases you might want to, uh, [00:24:00] substitute pork or beef for chicken, eh, eh, uh, or something else. I mean, you know, I, I tried, but, but I do indeed make these recipes for real.

So you, you might find you yourself hating the seasoning, but it will not kill you cuz I've made it for real before I wrote it down. Um, because hey, social responsibility, um, if you maybe up, maybe you put something out in the world if you don't know if it's good or not. Yeah. It's important if you're, yeah, you're gonna have your fantasy stuff.

You have to try it for. So when I write these spells, I go out into a park or cemetery and I try

Uh, so all right. Let's, let's, let's, uh, let's change gears

Ivan: a little bit and get back to, back to, uh, the motivations of, I, I guess, uh, kind of the leadership of the, uh, you

Ed: said something Leader, stray again. Oh, dear , I'm, I'm

Ivan: here for it, man. That's the point of the

Ed: series. [00:25:00] Um,

Ivan: so, but Zam, you said became increasingly more and more, um, interested in ea right, in utilizing Undead, kind of do his bidding.

Is this something that has spread to the overall culture of, uh, Thay as well? And is this something that most, uh, wizards have tried to utilize? Because I did, uh, I mean, just looking at, even at, at the Wiki about Thay and about the Red Wizards, it says that they are trying to create, they've dedicated most of their energies and most of their times into creating a culture

Ed: completely of undead.

Well, yeah. Um, yeah. Well that's because the Red Wizards are under orders. You know, the word comes down from Mont High. Sure, sure. And, uh, it, it's like, it's like a real world central government telling you pay your taxes. Here's the form. Hey, here's the deadline. Do it. If you don't, we'll come looking for you eventually.

Well, in the same way the Red Wizards are doing all this on dead stuff cuz they've [00:26:00] been told to, there are some of them who fervently disagree with it. No, we're going down the wrong path here. Or wasting or, you know, uh, where's the creativity? The, you don't get creativity from zombies. They do what you tell them to do or they do what has been baked into their orders or the, and.

We all have that real world cliche about zombies, brains, brains, you know, um Right, right. You know, so, but they're somewhat limited. Um, on the other hand, you can, you can get them to do things that a real worker couldn't withstand, like a forge in a, in a hot environment for hours without collapsing from heat stroke.

You can still burn like a torch or get melted if, you know, a lava flows into your body, you know? But, but I mean, uh, things that, uh, noxious gases that would kill a minor in a particular area won't kill an unde miner. So, I mean, they're useful in [00:27:00] that way. Um, you, they're also useful if you're in a hurry and you want to cut costs because you don't have to worry about safety concerns if you crush a few dozen zombies, cuz a stone block slides too far when you're trying to, you know, you don't care, presumably.

Yeah. Yeah. Unless, unless in the game we make the cost. Of creating that on dead very high, then you will always get people to say, I don't care. That's a cost I'll pay. You know, what's a few dozen skeletons? That's why I think

Ivan: this, not only this book, but this series is, is necessary because, I mean, I don't have much personal experience with the Red Wizards or the land of they.

Um, but you know, like you can, you can find these resources online and you can see in the wiki, like they're trying to create a nation who of Unde unde, a nation of ea. Well, you know,

Ed: what does that

Ivan: mean? And having that insight, you saying that it was, you know, motivated by Zam to basically replace the, uh, you know, the slavery market, so to speak, and you know, a nation of productivity [00:28:00] based on the shoulders of undead workers.

That brings a lot of clarity, I think, to the situation.

Ed: And in some ways it's analogous to recent North American. Labor practices as in the jobs that our grandparents did that were menial labor, for instance, uh, a welding job. There were some guys usually guys sweating, hammering things and then welding them, and then they attached them to something else, and then finally you bought it.

Well, but increasingly there are robots on assembly lines who spot well, precut things. Um, okay. The zombies are the assembly line. The zombies are replacing craft. Uh, they're the, the high end craft people are still there. The people who will create your jewelry, who do your [00:29:00] paintings and so on. But the guy who cuts, uh, many, many paintings in the realms are not done on, uh, animal hide or, um, Parchment or something, they're done on board.

Wooden board. But so the zombie could be the guy who's cutting the veneer for the board, who's pressing the veneer, steaming it, and exposing it to being baked in the sun for a month. So it will no longer warp cuz it's done all it's dried out without warping. So now you have a flat board that the artist can paint their picture on.

Yeah. That's

Ivan: you. Oh. Like you heard it here first folks. Job obsolescence is the same thing as utilizing undead to do your work.

Ed: And they All right man. ,

Ivan: somebody tell you on musk zombies are cheaper

Ed: than robots. Wow. Yeah. Yes. No. Now to, to push the real world analog even further. We have a particular, [00:30:00] um, uh, retail chain popular North America.

I, I won't name them, but you can guess who they are because their motto is, uh, pay less, live, better. . Mm-hmm. . So if, and say you, you can pay less for everything because on debt are doing more and more of the work and they don't have to be fed or rested or sheltered, unlike your living slaves who needed all of those things and could get sick, um, then you're paying less for everything.

So therefore you could live better. So therefore, the standard of living for the people at the bottom is still backbreaking labor. If they can't afford slaves or undead, and we're talking farming now, but if they're above that, if they're the shopkeeper and up, they're standard of living has gone up, not by a lot, but when you're used to grinding misery and [00:31:00] hard work and suddenly you have leisure time in the evening so you can eat a family meal together and then gossip.

Or bitch depending on what, how you're, you know about the events of the day and what they do. It's the same in my family. . Yeah, there you go. Yeah, but I mean, that's a step up instead of falling asleep in the fields, cuz you're just dog tired and exhausted and you wake up in the morning and you're slumped over the plow and because you desperately have to pee and you get off the plow, that awakens whatever's pulling the plow and it begins to plot in the furrows again.

And neither of you went into the barn or anything cuz you just fell asleep of exhaustion over your work. So if you've moved oh up from that, it is to you a big step up. So Thay is improving under the Zulkirs and that means improving under Szass Tam because Szass Tam has been there for centuries. So anyone normal [00:32:00] as in normal lifespan is what I mean when I'm using the word in this sentence.

He's always been there. and it looks like he always will be. So Zam is bringing you a better life. Um, if you happen to be one of the countries Zam invaded a lot. You might disagree with that view.

I guess the next place that

I'd

Ivan: like to go with this is maybe talk about some of the things that people might not know, um, about, uh, Thay or the Red Wizards. Something that you've left purposely cryptic or purposely, you know, um, you know, obfuscated to allow for dungeon masters or gay masters to, uh, latch onto that and kind of d uh, you know, decided for themselves.

Ed: One of the things I've left very vague is other than telling you that hierarchy in the red wizards is ruthless and that there are social climbers, and for people who don't know, say, but do know the [00:33:00] realms, the zentrum are sort of like red wizards on the cheap. They're doing all the same things. You replace Sast Ham with Man Shon and they're trying to get, become a mercantile powerhouse.

Um, but, and that's to enrich themselves because they were far less rich than you see. Um, in Central Key, they had all the mineral wealth coming out of the Moon Sea North that they could dominate. And they were literally trying to get the shortest trade route out to the Sword Coast. And that's where the Zening got its start.

Um, and or the reason the, the, the only thing to make it attractive to their allies, which were the Beholders and the Priest Bay, the only reason for them to ally with these crazy wizards who were trying to do a power grab in Central Kee, um, to take over governance of Central Keef was, oh, so we'll all get rich cuz you have the shortest trade route.

Say was doing the same thing. They had a lot more resources. They [00:34:00] were producing luxury goods. They had this huge slave workforce and now undead workforce, and they have this magical power be because of the, a author. So they, they already have all the things the Zenium wanted and, and the thing I've left vague for each dungeon master to do is the, the red Wizards, you come in contact with the individual red wizards, they are fighting this ruthless power struggle against rivals.

And to try and, um, fawn over the people of above them in the in, within the red wizards and wait for any sign of weakness so they can take that person above them down, but take them down in a way that they can explain to the superiors above that person. Oh, he screwed up. I stepped in to rescue thy [00:35:00] because he screwed up.

So can I have his rank and keep it ? Um, so the, so the actual individuals, their names, what they're up to, what they're personal hobbies and peccadillos are, this one loves wine. Um, we, we used to in the, in, in the old days, say, what weird hobbies do they have? This one collects sculptures. Yeah, naughty sculptures.

Uh, this one over here super, um, collects, um, he has a huge collection of scents from all over the world. You know, little bottles that you open the stopper and go, oh, that's wonderful, . And then you close it again and you drink wine and it changes the taste of the wine because the smell that's in your nose.

Oh, wow. And actually parties where they do that. Uh, interesting. And, and so whatever they're, and, and, uh, this is where if you want to have a, a realms analog, Of model railroading . This is where you'll, you'll have a red [00:36:00] wizard who has an entire room in his luxury mansion, his villa devoted to tiny miniature people who move around the miniature countries that he sets up.

And, and, and he makes the trains run on time. And therefore he has power because in the real world, he's amongst the lowest of the low, amongst the red wizards. But when he goes down into his basement, ha ha, he's Szass Tam and can rule the, so I mean, whatever the little hobbies are, I leave that all to you because then you can flesh them out as interesting individuals.

And then the good guys, the player characters, okay, maybe that I shouldn't make that equivalency, but, well, we generally assume our player characters are the good guys. Um, they can exploit these rivalries, these um, interests, so they can side up to a red wizard and say, , I have a new doll that you've never seen before.

Right. And it's got joints [00:37:00] and it's anatomically correct. And whereas the rest of us go, what weirdness did Ed just spout ? Well, if you are, yeah. If you are a doll collector and you're playing the npc er, he, he's going, oh, I have to have it. I at least have to see it. You know, is it as great as, oh, oh, I have to have it?

And of course we, we all have the experience of lusting after something in life, like the Christmas present we wanted, or the album our parents would let us get or we couldn't find anywhere or whatever it is. There's something we wanted, well you can put, build those in. And I've left all that vague cuz I, I left it to be tied to the individual.

But in order to bring you the individual, you have to have some guidance. He said subtly as to what the country's like and. This lady here, shell, Mara is a successful [00:38:00] merchant. She's also a snob and she gives us a tour of all the large merchant mercantile centers in Thay. Most of them cities, some of them ports, and she tells you where she stays, where she won't be caught dead in the good places to eat.

Yeah. , you know, the good places to buy certain things or sell certain things. Uh, you get her tour, which is sort of like somebody who knows Chicago or New York telling you the good places you shouldn't miss if you go to Chicago or New York. See, you get that for thy, which gives you the framework to then delve into what I left vague, which was individual red wizards on how to play them off against each other because you are having dealings with them and who knows which Red wizard you'll come into contact with.

that depends on your campaign and what your Dungeon Master has created, but it gives the Dungeon Master a framework [00:39:00] to show you thye. Whereas before Thye was just this name on a map. That was the one drawback for me whenever there were new additions of d and d, because I would always tell whoever was in power TSR or Wizards, but, but, but, but I haven't finished carpet bombing the world yet.

And of course they didn't want the world carpet bomb because if you are now in the modern day, Hara wants to license out the realms you want, you want the people doing the movie to have a free hand you want, or they want to have a free hand that the people who are doing the Bulger's gay computer game, they want to have a free hand.

So you don't want all these parts of the realm super detail, which is why. Fifth edition realms was almost entirely the Sword Coast until this . Yeah. Right, right, right, right. Yeah. Um, [00:40:00] they, there is a utility in saying to somebody, you could do anything you want because there's nothing cannon there. And of course they reinforced that recently by saying, you know, anything before Fifth Edition, he isn't Canada anymore.

Well, well, sorry, you, you can't make that decision. That's a contract. And I'm the other end of it. And you haven't talked to me, so it hasn't changed. I don't care what you say. It hasn't changed. Because if you wanna open that contract that the realms is attached to that contract. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Be very careful what you watch.

Ivan: So I think it's interesting too that you kind of, uh, took in the stance in this book almost kind of like, uh, it sounds like Volos, like in Caribbeans or like Volos guides to, to certain areas. It's just because maybe. People within that region of the realms might not have such familiarity with Thay that you, you gave that task over to a local for this publication to

Ed: guide you through.

That's really interesting. Cause Volo wouldn't last five minutes and say, cuz he's a, [00:41:00] a wizard and not a good one and, and he breaks rules and shoots his mouth off. Mm-hmm. . Yeah. He wouldn't last long. Uh, now, uh, Volo is still riding, um, Jeff Gander and Clinton Cronk and, uh, Fiona as our editor, um, are working with me to do Volos Guide to or per, which is a coastal city on the Shining Sea just south of the border.

Couldn't, so I gave you the Border Kingdoms then, or Per Is next. Beyond that is Sure Teller. Um, so there will be a Volos guide to or per, um, great. Uh, awesome. It's almost finished. Um, the, the, my writing bits of it are finished. He says, crossing fingers to toes and thumbs, whatever. Uh, but I mean, uh, and, but yeah, Volo wouldn't have lasted in here.

Volo and merch show us around m per they, they go to each neighborhood in the city and they, they argue about things and you learn about the neighborhood , but they wouldn't have last for five [00:42:00] minutes in. And, uh, neither did I want to send El Minster or someone say, because you know, if I send Elm Minster places and they're magically powerful places, things happen.

And then the guys, yeah, it's, it's out date. It's sort of like say, right, oh, we, we nuked this major city in that city. So you could ignore those six pages in the. Because El Mister showed up and things happened . So,

Ivan: so I think it's interesting too that there was sort of a divide in, um, fan culture as far as the red wizards go.

And I'm curious if you have any insight as far as kind of the fan imperialists that wanted to base their culture on conquest, uh, versus kind of the faan, um, like arcanine purists that were, wanted to go deeper and deeper into kind of the magical arts and became more and more xenophobic. Um, I'm just curious again if you have any insights on that and how that might affect [00:43:00] somebody, uh, playing in thy, um, especially if they're getting involved at all in the political intrigue thing.

Ed: Yeah. Well, okay. Yeah. Depending on who you are and where you are, and say you have com completely different views on this. The, the, the average laborer at the bottom and shopkeeper doesn't care, you know, because thy is all they've ever known. Um, , all they see is the negative as aspects, um, or positive if they're supplying the army.

But as the army has become undead, the supplying the army with, uh, crappy wine and bulk food, that's become an increasingly smaller and less lucrative market. So you're no longer ensued when say, goes to war, if you see what I mean. Um, um, at the bottom, they, they don't care. Okay? Um, to the nobles and the, um, upper merchant class, they [00:44:00] view war as, is it good for business?

Is it bad for business? I'm not gonna get richer or not. But they also view it differently in, depending on who's getting invaded, they're outraged. If somebody invades, they how , he's and barbarian upstarts. And that includes maho and Unser, you know, countries of, you know, are old and powerful. But that's the thing.

If it's Mahorn or unser, there there're a history of warfare and there's a history of one, um, land trying to swallow the other. So they feel very differently about that. They are almost traditional foes then they do about, say, if Szass Tam wants to invade Murum, they're gonna go, wait a minute, dragon kings, are you nuts?

Oh no, you're not nuts. You're just an immortal and dead. We're not unde, we're gonna get killed by the dragon. Don't do it. Right, right. You [00:45:00] know. Um, and then there's agro, which Thay used to invade regularly because Zam and formerly the Living Zulkirs cares of the Red Wizards did not well, they were paranoid about having a magically powerful.

Nation a tiny, um, country, but a nation of majors being ruled by, you know, , one of the seven sisters and, and who they should have crushed every time and yet somehow never could be. It was like, okay, we've gotta get rid of her. But to the regular rank and file Theen citizen, that wasn't their fight. It was like, oh, this is Zs ham's idiocy again.

Here we go, bashing Aron one more time. What did they ever do to us? Like that old Monty Python sketch, you know, what have the Romans ever do for us? You know, uh, but, but to turn it on his head, it was like, why are we fighting Alaron? What have they ever done to us? Because [00:46:00] they never invaded say it was always the other direction, and then say, always got beaten back and bloodied with huge losses.

And so it was like, here we go again. So again, in the old days if you had a contract to supply the army, and it was mainly a living army. Fine, go to war with everyone you want. I make money no matter how. But now when it's slaves, it's like, uh, it isn't there Something better. You know, there's potholes in my road.

Can't you put the slaves to fixing my potholes? Why do they have to go and conquer some other idiot so we can inherit their potholes? And, and

the best way to role play any place in a fantasy setting is to put yourself in the shoes of somebody who lives there. And if you can adopt their mindset, then you can extrapolate and create to your heart's content and will all make sense. Assuming the people are, have enough human [00:47:00] nature that they don't feel alien to us.

They, they can be dragons, they can have tentacles coming outta their mouths and they. 16 protus instead of the ones we're used to. Um, but if underneath, if they're sort of like Star Trek aliens, you know, makeup, but they're humans underneath played by human actors. Okay. If, if, if they have the same amount of human nature.

And that was something that I was baking into the realms with the first few old minster books where he, he's in msra and people kept saying, why are your elves so craven? And you know, back biting and so on. And I'm saying it's not human nature, it's also Elvin nature. It's what happens when you have a, a jaded society that has been too powerful for too long.

These things will happen. We call it human nature because we're a human. But, um, if you bake that into everything, then you can use it to understand things. So if you just put yourself in, [00:48:00] say in shoes. They'll have different, you know, if, if it's a noble versus a red wizard versus a shopkeeper versus some guy who has to kill the fields.

They'll all have very different opinions, but it'll all be based in human nature, and you can extrapolate from that. Yeah, that's

Ivan: amazing. And I think also a lot of those higher end political decisions too, like whether or not we're going to invade whether or not we're going to go to war, whether or not we're gonna focus on the arcanine arts.

I think that there's a really interesting kind of paradigm established, um, based on what you told me earlier, which is, you know, Zam essentially got rid of the Zulkirs here, which are the, you know, the Council of Thay, right. They're the, the, the movers and the shakers and the, and the decision makers. Mm-hmm. , um, and just replaced them with, you know, lacky Lacky Yes.

Men witches, which, um, yes, which is a whole, it's an inter, it's a only new like dynamic, a totally new, interesting layer to that political atmosphere that I think is pretty unique actually to say.

Ed: And in this book, Alan Patrick was pushing for this when [00:49:00] we were designing this. He made sure that you see the shadow cabinet of faith.

Don't put it in modern real world terms. The exiles who are outside, say in other places in the world, and they are the shadow cabinet Zo Pierce, like for each school of magic, there's somebody who thinks he should be zeki, who's not in say, and who's bitterly criticizing all the policies in his school of magic.

And he can do it from the point of view. Well, I'm an expert in that school of magic, so when I think that you are an idiot for this policy, you should listen to me. I'm a subject matter expert, you know, uh, I could do a much better job. But of course, none of them want to step into, say, and have sst ham destroy them or kill them and take over their minds so they're, they're sniping from a distance.

But should sast ham stumble or disappear or go into another dimension or get trapped in something. [00:50:00] They, they would love to step in and set, say on the, the road that it should be on. The problem is not too many of them agree what road that is. So it would be fun again, , it would be as politically fractious as many real-world countries are.

Ivan: Yeah, I was about to say that. That might almost add, that's definitely an element of realism. , making everybody disagree. Who knows? Maybe replacing Zulkirs ke or replacing Congress with a bunch of witches is the way to go.

Ed: You know, what's, if, if it worked for Zam, they haven't already, I mean, I'm a Canadian, I don't know, but to me, looking in, it sounds like they've done that already.

Yeah. Yeah. They, there's nothing there of making the part. My favorite tweet that I saw was one that said that a certain party had to be children because if they'd gone through teenagehood, they would understand. that if you jack up your base, you blow your speaker . Yeah, yeah. [00:51:00] You know, and you think about that for a minute, you go nice, very nice.

Uh, but of course, uh, in, in a serious thing for a moment, what that's pointing at is what if you don't set your system up with enough checks and balances? Uh, anybody who's ever, um, gone on the National Football League website and looked up the playoff picture and then clicked the little thing that says tie breaking procedures, and there's this list of 12 or 14 things, um, head to head, um, um, victories within division, uh, strength of schedule, strength of, you know, uh, um, win and so on.

And it goes and right the way at the bottom it says coin. When you've exhausted all else ,

Ivan: but I start with coin.

Ed: Keep things simple. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. But, but in this particular real world example, you have a, oh, uh, what do we do now? And then everybody's checking [00:52:00] the history books to see if there's a rule or a precedent that happens in fantasy kingdoms too.

It would happen in say, because for every living sayin who hasn't prolonged their life by magical means, and remember in early additions of the game, there were these things called potions of longevity. That's one of the reasons why darn and and mert are vigorous still, not just blue flame items, but if they haven't prolonged their zam is all they've ever known.

So if something happened, it's probably gonna be a, A power vacuum. A power struggle, and nobody down at the rank and file. Is gonna know what the rules are. So any rumor or lie that's fed to them, they might, they might swallow because they don't know any better. You know, if, if, if, if somebody announces Zs ham has vanished, so the fattest girl [00:53:00] baby with blue hair must be found in the kingdom and will become our news.

And you think that's ridiculous, but it's no more ridiculous than listening. Well, as, as Monty Python said, some watery tar in a lake with a sword, and who shall ever draw this sword shall hence foth be rightful king of all Latin . You know, uh, it, it it's whatever tradition you've locally come up with. And of course you can have great fun as a dungeon master world building of putting traditions in.

Yeah. And yeah, absolutely. You can have, you can have descent within, say, I often cite that scene at the beginning of the movie Excalibur, or near the beginning where, um, Patrick Stewart is playing one of the nobles and he says, I saw what I saw. The boy drew the sword. And what that [00:54:00] noble is, is a true believer.

He's been told that by the gods, that is what has to happen as far as he's concerned. So he's gonna fight anyone cuz he, when he says it, he knows the other nobles are going to attack him. And sure enough, the next scene in the movie, they're besieging is castle because he stood up for it. He says, no, I saw what I saw.

The boy drew the sword and he, you could say he was keeping the faith, he was remaining true to the religious teachings because to him that was the foundation upon which the world was built to break free is to take us into the unknown. And in say that would be anything without Zam, anything without the red wizard would be the unknown.

So you would have people trying to find anybody who willing to put on red robes and they'd prop him up even if he's half dead. And even if he doesn't know magic and say, no, we have to have [00:55:00] things run by the red wizards. Otherwise say, as we know, it will cease to exist. So we found this guy cowering in the woodshed.

He's our red wizard. You know, good enough, good enough for government work and bad pun intended. Yeah. Um, and, and then of course your dungeon master has the fun of the campaign where the red wizard is a puppet and you can see the hand up the puppet's backside. To make the puppet walk and talk and say the things you want the puppet to say in the name of the Red Wizards, but it's really your hand.

Well, who is the owner of this hand that is trying to control the red wizards? And it could be the, the, the nastiest old lady on the street. You know, it could be somebody who you would never think of as a power broker, but she says, look, I know enough not to drink from the, well after the cattle have been in it.

None of you people do. Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . So I should run [00:56:00] this community. And she might be right. . That's the thing.

Ivan: So, uh, to wrap this up, I, I guess my, my final question to you would be, what is the number one fact that you wish people knew about Thay and or the Red Wizards? Something that may or may not be in that book, uh, but something that most people don't know, but you think is quintessential to playing and understanding Thay and the Red

Ed: Wizards.

Hey. I would say it's twofold. See, I'm cheating already. Uh, , step one, really work in the system here, right? ? Yeah. Yeah. Step one is there's a lot more to say than Red Wizards. It's a complete country. It's huge, it's powerful, and there's a reason for that. Um, it's got some of the best craftsmen in the world.

Uh, it's got a lot of wealth and resources. Um, it's got, [00:57:00] you know, huge muscle. If it, it could, if it could ever focus that muscle in one concerted thing, it could achieve a lot. That's, that's the number one. And number two, the, the Red Wizards are a magical powerhouse because of the eora. That magical, that, that rock full of magic that floats inside Seamount.

And makes the country magically powerful. And if you wiped out Zam tomorrow, if you wiped out all his lites, and if you somehow managed to wipe out every single last writ wizard and you close the borders of Thay and you left them to their own devices for a couple centuries, maybe, maybe four generations, and then you open the borders again, you'd find they were magically powerful because the Eora is [00:58:00] imbuing everything with magic.

So anybody who does have the gift, the the aptitude to wield arcane magic, the art would've experimented. And some of them would've survived the experimentations and , and you would have the equivalent of red wizards. And maybe if they all remembered what had happened and they, they. Revered the Red Wizards.

They might be calling themselves Red wizards even though they aren't, uh, the, the Red Wizards you knew beforehand. Or they might repudiate the Red Wizards just like teenagers, repudiate everything that their parents do because it's not cool anymore. Um, it could be either way, but you'd find magically powerful wizards playing a huge part in the society.

Now, if the down trodden masses were angry enough, or remembered the Red Wizards with enough ill will, they wouldn't make darn [00:59:00] sure that wizards couldn't rule by, and they would've worked out some, you know, but, It would still be a magically powerful country. There you go. Those are two things that are deadly powerful.

Yeah. That, I

Ivan: mean, that's great too. And I think that that's really important for Dungeon Masters and players alike to latch onto. Cause I think when people listen to, you know, this or, or, or read the book about Thay, one of the first motivations is gonna be I wanna go in there and I want to, you know, beat the pants off these people and stop their, you know, the enslavement of, of the races, of the realm.

And I want to, uh, go in there and maybe, you know, um, interrupt some of the evil doings of Szass Tam because as you said, he is been established by wizards and, uh, by TSR as kind of a mover and shaker in the world of, of being bads, you know, uh, large scale villains. Um, and I think that it's important to remember that even if you were to go over there and overthrow an entire government and end the, the practices of slavery over in Thay, that exactly like you said in a couple generations, because it's just a magically imbued.

Um, it's, it's a volatile, and, and there could, there [01:00:00] could continue to be conflict no matter how thorough of a job that you think you've done in, you know, ending the conflict within that area, right?

Ed: Yeah, yeah, you're right. Uh, it, it would, it's sort of like that old saying, if there wasn't a bogeyman, it would be necessary to invent one.

Yeah. Which is, yeah, sure. Yeah. Yeah. Um, uh, and there will always be a say or equivalent, and this particular area of the realms will always be magically powerful. If you let say the dragon princes of miam conquer it, then you would find, uh, any, any serv tours, any underling critters they gathered around them, human slaves or otherwise they could be, you know, if, if you want to go, uh, full on, uh, dragon lands, look at all the, the dragon races, the, the.

um, who they would gather around them and say would [01:01:00] be magically powerful, you know, so , right? Yeah. I mean, it's scary to

Ivan: think about, you know what I mean? Power vacuums create, uh, create something that we have no experience that we don't know yet. So, you know, who comes in to assume power after we've disrupted the current structure of power might be just as bad or worse.

Um, hopefully much better. Mm-hmm. But just as bad or worse as, as the red wizards and ssam. So something to think about mm-hmm. For players.

Ed: Mm-hmm. . Yes. Yes. Um, yeah. And, and of course that's the old, old saying, um, may you live in interesting times. The, the, uh, in Siri, ancient Chinese curse or proverb, which probably isn't Yeah.

Chinese or ancient, but, but I mean, it's, that's the thing. . Um, it's one an, it's an interesting time to set your campaign in one of these turmoil periods when things are changing, when the established order of power is being turned on its head, which is why so many fantasy novels. Of the high fantasy triple decker, you know, [01:02:00] doorstop novels concern a time when, um, the world is either rushing towards destiny, foretold one ring to rule them all, or, or, um, somebody's already upset the applecart, what's gonna happen now?

It's just an interesting time to write about, uh, it's an interesting time to adventure in and in law and order countries. It gives adventurers elbow room to operate because the normal day-to-day heavy duty law and order you, you can't do that there. Here is all it. It's, it's, it's one of the reasons that, um, the United States of America was so in love with the concept of the Wild West and why there were so many Wild West movies because it's a, it's a lawless time.

It's might makes right. , you've got room to operate and tell all these stories of treasure and, and guys shooting each other in the back and [01:03:00] lost minds and all these double crossings because there isn't a hard, uh, code of behavior and everybody has 2.5 children and two cars in their double cargo gu.

Right, right, right. And, you know, and the same, um, flowers planted in the same manicured golf course grass, front lawn, no, anybody can do their own thing. And if the guy next door, um, thinks grass should be smoked rather than on the ground, he'll do that. And there's nothing to stop him. , you know, and, and that that's the, and and it's an interesting time to live in and it's an interesting time to write about it.

It's an interesting time to role play as adventures cuz it gives adventures room to do stuff. And there'll be people who are weak or are wounded or. They want revenge or they want a bodyguard and they will hire adventurers to do it for them. Yeah, yeah. Right, right.[01:04:00]