Legends Q&A: #1 (Patreon)

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FULL TRANSCRIPT

All right, So let's let's let's dump the melody and see what their question is. Since that was at the chat, I don't want to get lost in the chat. So. Yeah. So Melody asks, Can you tell more about Tom Roberson, who was once, quote, court barred or something equivalent to King Assume the fourth. I'm curious whether he retained that position and what happened to him since he seemed to have dropped off the map after Crusade?

Yes, well, he dropped off the map because he was sent on a mission from which he never returned. So presumably something bad happened to because he never returned. But on the other hand, there is this tiny chance that he found true love and settled down somewhere in the realms very quietly, living in a in a heart with his true love and decided not to go back to Cormier.

But that is a a tiny chance and far more likely be the message, the mission. He was sent off on. It was the death of him. And I can tell you that the message, the mesh mission had to do with finding out particular Louis particular things more about the guys ness because certain people at port were actually trying for a happily ever after for Rohan and tennis last year and of course was not to be yes but they wanted to try.

Well Ed hello I, I got I think the last time I talked to you was 12 and seven at Jen Conn for a brief hallway chat. It's been a while. Yeah. My question has to do with dancers. I think I snuck one by in the VIP castle, so I was curious. The Purple dragon graveyard of dancers when it when it comes to what your average core Mary and knows what's common knowledge about ghosts that may or may not actually haunt the place.

Are there any commonly held stories about ghosts that might be the equivalent of the grinning ghost of Tabata in all or other haunts that lurk? There may or may not do things if you're disrespectful to the dead or anything along those lines. Oh yeah. And this is fairly common in Cormier suburbia and throughout the Dales that there are local tales that you will be torn apart or you'll be driven mad or otherwise bad things will happen to you.

And usually it's nasty enough that if you're pregnant you'll lose the child or it will be a changeling, or it will be non human when it's born. If you profane anything in a in a graveyard, in a burial ground, you know, the ghosts that haunt that burial ground will do things to you. That's the sort of commonly held belief in the say, it's sort of like no, when it comes to what's profane, it would mean stealing from the dead, disturbing the dead, in other words, opening a crypt or digging up bones and then doing something with them.

If you trip over a bone that's sticking up out of the ground and curse and roll over and grab your aching foot and then say, Oh, I was bone and just walk away, that's not profane or disturbing that the dead to them, but picking up the bone and banging it on a rock so it shatters. That would be in that situation.

So they don't mind if young lovers go off to a graveyard and tryst on top of that. They really don't care. That's not profane. That's life. That's the circle of life. But if the young lovers then say, Hey, wait a minute, I think we're lying on a dragon, maybe there's a hoard down there. Let's dig them up and see that would be profane.

So, yeah, there are all sorts of local legends that will say that so-and-so is going to get you, but if you disturb their bones, they. It only extends to things where they don't think anyone is buried. If the individual used magic a lot in their life. So for instance, a witches hut, even when they know that the witch didn't die, they're and her bones are nowhere near there.

There's the feeling that because that being used magic a lot in their lives, that somehow they can still see and hear. And there's something of them, some vestige of them is lurking around there. So again, you'd better behave. And there's also the the, the belief that if there was a local hedge wizard or local wise woman, in other words, a resident of the village or town who lived there for years has since died.

Everybody knows they're dead. Everybody knows that there's been no reports of them walking around as undead. So they're they're dead and gone. But if you wanted advice or aid, you might go there and call on them. Like, for instance, if the old wise woman took care of, say, feminine problems in a bit in a village and the old wise woman has died, woman who have feminine problems might go there alone at night and sit down on the foundations of the hut that's now gone and try and talk to the wise woman or ask her advice.

Getting close to praying to her, What would you do? And then they will go home and hope they dream of it. And if they're really desperate, they may try and fall asleep, wrapped themselves in a cloak on the foundations of the hut and sleep there and hope that something will come into their dreams in the same way that people do this to for deities.

But but so, yes, there are haunting tales and they're all they all tend to be behave yourself around the. All right. I was going to jump in. I'll take my shot again. Magic renewing itself like magical items, renewing itself every day at dawn or on long rest. Is there some sort of a cycle to that and an item?

So I'm thinking also particularly of artifices, if they were to try to set up some sort of item like guild, the little arcane hate cubes that they can make three old for free, that it would renew itself every day at dawn. Is that something to do with the cycle of the sun? Is it a symbolic thing? How does the magic sort of draw out of the weave based on a time cycle?

Okay, that's based on the specifics of the enchantment. Some of them don't renew some of them do. Yes, they draw on the weave to do it. And yes, it is tied to the celestial what is tied to the moon, the sun. So it's lunar cycles, meaning there's waxing and waning. And when you're waxing, when the sun is, when the moon rather, is growing larger, when we're heading toward full moon, and then when we're at the full moon, that's when the flow is easy, when, when can easily renew.

But how things come back, how they regenerate depends entirely on the way the nature of the original enchantment and how it's been modified since. And in the case of artifice or yeah, many art officers carry what are in effect small items that are in effect batteries. There is a an art officer of Lantern who in the whole realms campaign who wears the equivalent of Three Forks down his left wrist like they're sized.

So where his is arm is larger, the talk is larger. So they they they look just like all those bangles that young girls used to wear, except unlike the Bangles. They're not a complete circle. They're a torch. They've got a break in them and they're they're metal. And you have to bend them apart with great strength to get them to come off your wrist.

They can move around on the wrist. They're loose. That can be shoved up and down, but they actually get them off. You know, somebody else usually has to have to deal with your own feet and a tool to pry because you can use that hand or somebody else has to help you to get it off. And a lot of those talks are, in effect, batteries.

So, for instance, if it's a wand or other item that has a long, thin protuberance, so you could slide it under the talks on your on your forearm, you could slide it under the talks, leave it there overnight and in the morning your item might be more charged and the talks might be look like they're about to crumble because they given their power up.

Wow. That's t0rq uaf no t0rc work as in the Celtic o. Thank you. Yeah. You can also see them. It's like similar to the Viking armbands, you know. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'm thinking in terms of I mentioned moving toward the Industrial Revolution in Water Day just to open up some new role play and world building possibilities.

So the idea would be like an in an enterprising sub might start trying to mass produce like little cubes that give off heat and watch to sell down in the dark water. And in the south world, for example. So I'm just trying to wrap my head around what that might look like. And then in turn, you know, how many people would be hiring assassins to take him out and try to undermine the magical technology there that would keep the current power balance in play.

Because when you're at the top, do you really want an industrial revolution? Yeah, right, Right. Thank you again. I'll. I'll mark up before I take it up. Yeah, I know. I appreciate that. So, yeah, humans are humans. They will always be humans. If you're on top in the status quo, you don't want any change in the status quo yet.

The question I have is more like a realms life question. So like in the western, western hard line, as you're heading out to the larger cities, right? What do you see before you do? You just see like just farms from horizon to horizon, you know, because supplying the food to the larger cities. And then the second question is, you know, if you have grains, you're going to have to Melbourne.

So what is the most prevalent type of mill? Is it windmill water? Well, a horse horse powered cave where in the western heartland, let's say say you're coming out of Sunset Vale into was the greenest the open fields. Okay. Okay. So what you're mainly seeing there is what we would call ranch land open ranch land, open grazing land, gently rolling hills that have natural grasses on them.

Okay. And then wherever there is a spring coming up and flowing away, particularly if it is, has any protection from prevailing winds by being down in any sort of belt, That's where somebody will have tilled a smallholding. And there's a lot of stuff like barley that grows naturally. Well, and there's lots of stuff in the shallows of all the ponds and lakes, wild rice and this all gets collected and there are large farms up.

They tend to be in places like in the countryside around l was sold around easier in the other direction, around El Toro, places like that where there are lots and lots of farms and the farms there tend to have ditches around the outside and these tend to become drainage ditches. But that's not what their intent is. Their intent is to stop herds of wild deer and the equivalents from eating everything, you know, because there's you're not going to sit out there with a gun because you don't have guns, you know, to say, not tonight, deer bough and blow the deer away before they eat all your stuff.

Instead, you put in a ditch, a breakneck ditch, which you can do just by digging. And you can do it by digging, using your oxen and a plow and what what that is, is what they used to call in England a and in a lot hot. You wanted to have your cows or your sheep or your goats grazing, but you didn't want them to come up and eat your flowers.

They were all around the great interest, but you didn't want to spoil the view with a huge wall either. So what you did was have a dig a ditch so that on the outside the slope went down gradually. And then on the inside there was about a 12 to 15 to 20 foot wall of earth. So the animals could graze down the slope, but they couldn't climb that wall.

But if you were in the great manor house in England looking out of the windows, you didn't see a wall, you just saw the sheep in the distance grazing. But they never got close to the house. They couldn't because you put a ditch there, but you couldn't see it. So that's the cheapest and easiest way. Unless you're in a place where the farmland is bad because it's all rocks and you have to pile the rocks up and the rocks become your your field wall, your farm wall around the edge of your field.

Or if you have to clear a huge woods and then you turn the stumps into a fence and then it it grows well stuff and you get a hedge. But unless you go to all that trouble, you just put stuff around it. So they're already dead large farms there. There are places like Golden Fields, the large temple farm to Shanghai in the north that are real granaries, that Golden Fields is like perhaps the epitome because the priests are really good at making sure there's sun exposure, making sure that there are scarecrows or the equivalent, and that the equivalent being there spells make you really good at irrigation, including foot treadle pumps for irrigation that they

can take any particular cleric who has a penance or you can spend an hour on the foot treadle pump so they can really baby the crops, get everything and they have permanently planted posts in the fields so they can put up a net against a bird or against damaging hail or against day after day of relentless beating sun.

Most farmers can't do that. However, the farmers can grow stuff and mill their own and they have to build their own. S temples tend to run mills, but if you don't have access to water to turn a water wheel and run a mill, that way you do mills like horse drawn mills, or it's usually oxen and turning a capstone of the earth.

And for those who want to know what that looks like, I send you to the very first and movie which Schwarzenegger and CONAN, growing up from this little brat, was holding his mother's hand to this big, strong guy. He's turning instead of the animals, which you actually see led away right at the beginning when he's being chained up to the thing.

He is actually milling right there. I think he's building, by the looks of it, he's crushing or rather than milling grain. But that's the same way that a small ball would be set up. You have your oxen or your mules. Usually it's oxen or mules, and children of the family have to drive them in an endless circle as they grind stuff.

This, by the way, is still done in rural England today for making apple cider. You pick up the dead fall apples, you dump them in this round stone millstone that is was made centuries ago, which has a channel in it, and you use your mule or your horse or whatever. And around and around it goes and this wheel goes around the groove way in which the apples are and you crush all the apples.

And then there's a, there's a press again turns the thing on the press that turns it to make it squish harder and harder is done by the moving animals around it. There's lots of that in the roads now. They're never mapped and so on because they tend to break constantly, either get where out, so the farmer builds another one in the same way with you're using it out house, you move your own house every few years for obvious reasons.

So we don't map that. You just assume that there's going to be some really good crops coming out of that little square over there because that's where the outhouse was last time. That if I. Oh, is that you? People asked constantly you know, is that something you abstract away in roleplaying games you talk about having to go to the bathroom and that's I think we have our answer now they're not mapped because they're constantly shifting around that's called bathrooms are in water to what?

Yeah. One of the better replies from Ed was was on toilets and water D it's it's free on the Twitter I that I flushed with pride the the funny thing is that actually growing up we were out in the middle of nowhere on a ranch. We did have outhouses sure that we had to dig periodically and Yeah, yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about.

Yeah. Oh, by the way, And this is real life law. If you need to cut down on the smell and break things down quickly, and if you have several bodies of people, someone else was murdered asking for a friend and you need them to go away in a hurry, you sprinkle them with quickly. If somebody has murdered a royal personage of Cormier and needs to get rid of the evidence before someone shows up and executes them for it.

Yeah. Quick lime. Oh, yes. Yes. Michael. Yes. Victor. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, you certainly have. I know I didn't have a I too have my own septic tanks where everything's solidified. The the trick in Canada is to wait until everything's frozen in winter and drag it out over the ice of a lake. Make very sure that the ice is frozen hard before you try this.

Yeah. We don't have freezing here in Sydney that travels. Oh, yeah. Dad, who likes to supervise. Oh, well, you see, Sydney has another way of getting rid of it. You know that submarine pen that none of us are supposed to know about? I have no idea. I'm talking about. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, well, you know, there are some old submarines there, so you just load all the stuff you want into the submarine and then you tow it out and sink it.

I do it. I say that it works. And this is what I mean, folks, is that that's I know when people are thinking about questions they want to ask, too. And the first inclination is kind of to think big, right? Like, let's let's let's ask about some like giant players, some big players, some giant world power and like what might have happened after before this book.

But the thing that I think I find really valuable and that I would implore you to pay attention to are the small details because I came to my understanding, the question was basically what might you see? And we just got like a 15 minute comprehensive answer about like the really in-depth, idiosyncratic infrastructure of the realms, which is in valuable and you will literally never hear anywhere else like you can do that.

Just a history lesson. Yeah. So apply to the realm. Yeah well you can't even like that isn't in a book. It's literally just not a book, you know? And I have one question for you and what is what is best in life? Oh, well, okay. I will tell you what's best in life. Being warm when you need to be warm or being sufficiently cool when you're to be need to be sufficiently cool.

Having enough to eat a drink that tastes good. I'm having goosebumps, get rid of it. And I never want to hear the lamentation of the woman. As I work in an all female workplace, I'm the only man they've ever hired in my day job since 1759, although I wasn't there at the time, it just feels like it. I don't want to hear the limitations of the woman.

I want to hear all the woman being happy year. Hi, everybody hired. So I have to meet you. Likewise. I have a question regarding sailors across this orcas on the sea of the fallen stars. I'm. I have been running a campaign in tropes right now. I have. I'm running doing for inflation. The thing is, and my party went from mother's gate to the peninsula and I found myself that I didn't knew any.

Come on, you know, superstition or curse or omen of bad luck from sailors through, you know, from the forgotten realms, you know, for example issue that you know, I don't agree with this one in the real life that usually we never carry a woman in a ship. Yeah yeah. Well do you know any in the forgotten realms that apply that that is commonly known between sailors.

Yes. Most of the ones in the forgotten realms have to do with Umberly, the goddess, and things like if a storm takes something off the deck of your ship that isn't alive, if it's, you know, your friend or your wife or your cabin boy, you can try and rescue them and take something else off the your ship. Let it go because Umberly wants it.

If a storm washes something up onto your ship or onto the beach or your camp, say you're careening your ship or you've just come ashore and anchored and you're repositioning, you're getting fresh water and stuff. If there's a storm and stuff is washed up, that's Amberley giving to you. Take it, use it. If you don't know what it is or what it's for, grab it anyway.

Bring it belong is deck card because somebody wants you to have it. So those are most of the superstitions. There are specific superstitions to ban the lancer and the Vaillant Peninsula and coast that have to do with hauntings and pirates. And one of the things that all sailors along the Sword Coast will tell you to do is don't fight pirates unless they come aboard your ship.

It's perfectly okay to fight them if they're trying to board or if they're trying to ruin your best sails. But don't pursue them and fight them. Just run or go on with your voyage. And in fact, veteran sea captains will tell you that the best thing you can do when you sight what you think is a pirate ship as in somebody's coming for you, is just ignore it.

Just go on sailing on your the course. You've already just pretend you don't care because sometimes that works. The pirates come alongside and they look at your crew and your crew is eating apples and checking the rigging and picking their noses. Just not concerned about the pirates at all. And the pirates look at them two or three times, say, okay, either these guys are crazy or they know something we don't know.

They're awfully calm. I mean, awfully calm. Well, there'll be other other ships come by. That'll be easier. Safer, too, you know, And they may think just like, steer up away for easier particulars. There's other ships they can see on the horizon. They may just pick another one because they want somebody who runs in fear. Oh, good. They. They know they can't fight us.

They're running like, No, Billy. Oh, we'll go after them. So that's the best way to do it. But there are superstitions about pirates there. And there's a famous one, and the famous one concerns the more folk eat, if a mermaid comes up over the edge of the ship, you may kiss her, but don't put your arms around her because she'll just take you down with her.

And that's a general fair warning amongst Fisher folk all up and down the coast. Most aquatic critters want to eat you, and they don't want to fight you, so they'll just drag you under and drown you. And then they'll eat your body at their leisure. So avoid things where you can get dragged down and you'll even see fishermen let their nets go and drift rather than risk being caught up, entangled in their own nets.

If something's tugging on the net, they'll let it go. No, they may circle around and try and pick up the net with whatever fish are still in it. But they won't fight it. They won't drag on it because they're deathly afraid they'll just get pulled under. And the superstition that we we read about over and over again from our real world that in the Middle Ages nobody bathed, so they all stank and nobody knew that.

Okay, that's not true in the realms. People know how to swim and anybody who's going on board a ship as a crewman will learn how to swim. Most and only bad swimmers. You know, you wouldn't want a dog. People from from deep to boulders gate. But yeah they they they will. So there's lots of superstitions. And the other hauntings and superstitions have to do with individual coves and anchorages.

There are particular harbors that you're supposed to give an offering to when you go into. And by offering I don't mean anything big and elaborate. I mean, if you're carrying green on a ship, you open a sack of the grade and you take a couple handful and you throw the grain over the side and say, for you, Umberly, something like that.

But you have to do it's like that little scene at the end of one of the men and Blackberries where the guy says is, I will leave a tip. Oh, you know, so it's like that. It's a little thing. You got to remember to do it. Yes. It's like a mini tide. Yes, Yes. Michael, It's like that. So since we were talking about the farms in the realms earlier, I'm just kind of curious as far as details.

You know, normally you just assume the typical sorts of animals, cows, chickens, pigs and so forth. But were there any, you know, unusual ones that are raised by farmers in any particular regions of the realms? And to what extent, you know, especially in dangerous areas, do farmers take special precautions to protect, you know, their animals from being eaten by monsters or other large predators that don't involve calling on the local adventurers to go off and hunt them down?

Okay, Sure. Yeah. There's there's lots of stuff. First of all, in the south coast, north and the western heartlands, like the the cross heartland trade routes and points slightly south at near the Giants run mountains and everywhere north of that are rocky or of a various subspecies of rice. They are sort of the the buffalo herds of the realms.

Okay. So people will hunt those and sometimes they will brand them and sometimes they will attempt to restrict them with those same breakneck ravines I was talking about earlier, just to make sure that the herd can wander in this area but can't go into that area. There are some precautions they take, including on some occasions having canopies over parts of their farm.

If they think that there's a drag and a hatchling in the area that's going to be hunting on the wing. And they want the Dragon Hatchling to go over their farm and go where it can see more easily easy prey in the form of small herds of things. Because dragon hatchlings take a lot of sheep and goats, and so therefore people will put up canopies.

We're just talking old cloth or old nets with growing vines on them, on poles just to hold stuff off the ground so that their animals a have a place to get out of the sun or out of the bitter cold. If it's on the shoulder. Seasons of winters and B so that aerial predators of all sorts from Perry Ton to Wyverns to, you know, will not see them or there's not enough there to be worth that.

I'll just keep fly of on a typical farm in the realms you have donkeys, mules, chickens, pigs. You will have lots of sheep, lots of goats, you'll have oxen as draft animals. Milk cows are rarer and horses are rarer still because horses take more work to keep healthy. So if you're breeding them for mounts or breeding them to sell to pull coaches and wagons to but horseflesh as a as a meat crop isn't worth it.

There are other things like hogs, you see. You can overfeed a hog or you can overfeed certain species of cow so that they will grow huge amounts of marbled meat and they will be so lazy they will pretty much lie down on their pens. And you don't have to worry about catching them or anything like that, and you don't have to worry about them breaking their legs.

And if they do break their legs, you just slaughter them on the spot. So all of that makes them more attractive than more. Most farms are going for root crops like, for instance, what we call sprouts, the small, immature brassica, because that's where that point which you are harvesting them and eating them because the pickling, insulting going on so that barrels of your food will see you winter.

And the what the other thing is there's lots and lots and lots of cheese being made, although it tends to be goat cheese and goat milk and milk from sheep. There is less cows except when you get down to areas from tessera and arm in Kalenjin where you have enough sun and enough rolling grasslands that your cattle can graze to their heart's content and in that case you have lots of herders or shepherds, and they tend to be your teenagers and your children, your younger children equipped with slings so on.

And they will have an adult minder equipped with a crossbow, a heavy crossbow that they can set up on a tripod. So that small stuff that would harass the cattle or prey on it, the kids can sling and take care of. And by the way, you have lots and lots of flocks of birds that are edible. You know, the passenger pigeon equivalents.

And you have lots of kids who go with stones or with slings and stones and are expected to by mum and dad and bring back something for the pot tonight. And that doesn't mean that you're necessarily going to eat it that night because a well-run household, you have a stew pot on the go all the time, which means the thing you bring home tonight, she is going to pluck or he is going to pluck, depending on who's at home, and then it's going to be added to the stew.

But when it's ready and it's going to be cooked down, because all of these things are stringy by today's standards, because most of the stuff we eat in first world countries now has been fattened up, as in it has an easy lifestyle, may or may be a horrible confined lifestyle. It's the different between Oh, looks like we got some old.

Sorry Ed, can you would you mind repeating that last thing? It looks like you cut out a little bit there for a moment. Oh, telling It's telling me my internet connection is unstable, so I to go to the stable. Okay. Yeah, I was just saying that our real world, we are used to fat animals. The stuff we eat has been fattened up.

It has a sedentary or perhaps confined lifestyle, and it has special feed. The difference between a cat or dog that we have as a pet and overfeed at home. So it gets fat and feral cat wild dog out there foraging for itself, which will be up closer to a bag of bones than the one we have at all.

So everybody who farms in the realms, unless they're near a large city and in commercial farming to feed that city like suburbia, they will have mixed crops because they feed themselves and there are quiet non-compete clauses in a farming dale so that not every the dale will grow in excess of the same grain if so-and-so grows lots of carrots so and will grow lots of leeks is so and so grows lots of barley, so and so we grow lots of rye.

So you each have something extra to sell to your neighbors and maybe to sell for export. And the local temple will probably sponsor the Miller if it goes on the mill itself and their pay will be a ties. So much of your grain goes to the temple and they will feed the poor as well as feed themselves. And of course the any clergy that reside at the temple or who maintain the shrine, they will be farming to feed themselves as well as in vegetable garden.

They'll be out there with a whole on. By the way although this may sound gross to modern wares, people are used to their own wastes, so human waste will get composted for two or three years turned over. Have plant crops planted in it to redress whether it's high in nitrogen, low in this and then it'll become fertilizer for the fields and that will not cause the runs for everybody because they're used to it.

If you're coming from too far away in the same way that the world in the Second World War, the Allied soldiers landing in Sicily, if they were foolish enough to eat the grapes from the vineyards, they all got walloping dysentery. The local people were used to their own wastes and they could eat the grapes just fine. The soldiers who were from somewhere else could not bear that in mind.

If you're trying to steal grapes from a farm field somewhere in the realms that you're not from, I would like to use this opportunity to remind everybody to wash their fruits and vegetables before consuming. Yes. Yeah, yeah. And. And the realms, unlike the real world, can have haunted goop. But yeah, if they're the real world, that'll be a great rarity.

But in the realms, yes, you can have all that poop, you know, for if just remember, if you're a dungeon master and you have to prepare a surprise dandy session for people who just drop in haunted poop, I'm using that with no question. You would have to tell me what Absolutely. Oh, yes. All right. So I've got a question I want to start with.

And this is one of those questions where if it gets brick wall by an NDA, like I've got another one prepared and I'm ready for that. Sure. Yeah. Well, I wanted to ask about the pyramids of Asscher and in Bilbao, a little bit more on that one and the A and B, it. Okay. I will say that we have we have given three different answers in print as in teaser answers and George crash shows and Eric Boyd have gone into more detail and if you ask them on the discord, you may get pointers to where they have given more detail and that at the moment is the best canon answer because the info can and

answer is indeed with that means you get to ask your other question. All right, then. I guess the other question I have, and I do hope this one not also brick wall in a similar area, the city of White Towers, or may I believe so it's pronounced home to us. So dear, that's kings. This may also. Yeah, another brick wall.

But can you enlighten all. Well, that one. Oh yeah. Oh boy. There is a. Okay. Have you ever seen an old graveyard where the. The stone tombstones are everywhere and you have to, like, thread your way between them. Yeah. These are. That's how the are with this one. I have to very I'm, I'm stick handling like I mean you know a really good hockey game to get around them.

So let me just say okay I can tell you that the Suruc you left alone as far as the rest of the the north is concerned, but they are not a quiet sedentary turning their back on the world. They are actually sending agents out into the world who look like just like humans working with the Suruc and are working on all sorts of projects.

One might even say that certain of this group are invested in various cities like Silvery Moon and Ever Loved, as in real investors, as Ian in municipal politics, as in nudging of various business ventures in the North, because the Suruc want the civilized North to stick around. They don't want a marauding orcs and nobles and trolls and various goblin kin to drive out the largely human settlers.

They want the human settlers to stick around because the human settlers provide a distraction for the orcs, etc. who would otherwise be bothering the Suruc. So the Suruc want the civilized North to continue to flourish and grow and become more civilized, more roads, more settlements, more other people doing things because they are afraid that each time an awkward arises, eventually it will crash upon the Suruc.

And they don't want that to happen. They just it's not that they're afraid of the orcs. They just they want to avoid the disaster. It's like the it's like the guy who knows he's built on a floodplain. So he starts meddling with the river up upstream so he will never have to bail out his flooded basement rather than moving.

That's what this are doing. Okay. Thank you for words and information on that. So I gave as little as possible.

Is there anything else you might add that isn't completely blocked by way at the moment. No, that is one I have to check. Oh, yeah. I mean, at least I have to check. I mean, actually, I just got shot down. What? I got shot down twice. Yeah. And I'm sorry. I hate to do that, but the NDA is the NDAs are strong.

The NDA is are many fool around. You will. Yeah. Is there anything that you know about the origins of the Archean Brotherhood? Musk Yes, I know lots of things. I made them up. No, not Oh. Engaged in name are. Okay, well, let me say this. There is a secret pertaining to the origins of the Arcane Brotherhood that most members of the Arcane Brotherhood don't know.

And that is that one of the founding members founded them to be a distraction. They may think they're being, you know, a small group of mucho evil spell casters who are going to take over the world. What and and the truth is one of the people who founded them founded them to be a distraction so that he could do the various nefarious, evil planning type things he wanted to do without the do gooders of the realms.

Calvin Black staff and crew, the equivalent sort of thing, or fighting him all the time. In other words, they were deliberately creating the arcane brotherhood to be the neighborhood Bad boys game, magically speaking just to distract attention. So there is a a secret from the the founding and origins of the Arcane Brotherhood that I have never yet revealed.

And now it's yours. Well, that's awesome. Thank you. Appreciate it. That was no problem. All right. This individual is still around. Well, I'm still doing their plans. And what are those plans? I can't share. I'll jump in. I'm going to rewind and see if I can find it here. So it's all about, you know, I'm all about Zazie him not being a comic book villain and actually completing his conquest with Agler.

So the question is sort of a dual question, if I can slip that in around the power structure and aggregate self. According to the Sword Coast Adventures Guide, since the symbols the Symbol council has been ruling ag ron but the anti symbol group the Sons of War must be moving to oust them. No so that's that the first question.

And then the other one also in Angela Ron there's the assault from the Sid Didier, the Fay Denny plane which was under the Sid Lila did much better which is contiguous with the year would lie that pillion race. Right. But use 1372 in 3D they had been discovered have been assaulting the CDR for several centuries and so it's been 130 years taking us to five this star elves and that Elvin half Elvin Liz must be on the brink of disaster.

No, but the bit that sort of power structures in AG, Lauren, maybe that's. Is that overarching? Yes. Well, I did see these questions and that was going to be one of the patron posts I wrote on. And I and will still write it in the future. But just to quickly answer these. So everybody, I hope you're recording this because I need to have a record of it to see what I said, so I haven't got it.

Excellent. Okay, good. No. So. Okay, excellent. So here's the thing. The Sons of War are going to take over. However, they had a quiet discussion amongst themselves. And the problem is that Eagle Ronde has this traditional foe right next door. Say and say is moving through the Wizards reach quietly and softly settlement by settlement. So the sons of horror thought, Hey, we don't want Edgar to collapse because they will move in.

Because once we don't, you know, once they they are confident that their undead armies of mindless brutes won't just get mowed down by our spells. They will move in. They won't wait. So we won't have a country to rule if we, you know, upset the apple cart. So instead of violence in England, they decided to co-opt members of the council.

So the Sons of War have been trying to take over the council member by member so that the council doesn't lose control, that the sons of Horde just control council member after council member. So the cymbals are becoming puppets and the sons of four. So they're going to do a quiet stealth takeover because they suddenly realized it's that or nothing.

If they want to have an agora and they do want to have an agreement because they want to rule it. Now whether they make a deal was asked him afterwards, that's a different thing. But they and ironically, they are becoming the symbol as in they're doing what she was doing. They're being the strong woman, the one united drug woman in tactics, even though you you see what I mean?

So, yes, the answer is, yeah, they are the sons of war are moving to oust the symbol council, but only by taking it over so that it can vote to dissolve itself or put various sons of horror members into key positions like, say, war leader or, you know, to borrow from Serbia, an over master. Now, the second question, yes, the star elves are on the brink of disaster because, yes, that has been continuing because yes, I never met a designer at TSR or Wizards of the Coast who didn't want to have their own new sub Roosevelts and but and I love elves as much as the next guy.

Elves are sexy. Elves are arrogant. Elves have pointy ears. They look good. They have, you know, flashy body types. They wear great fashion is they're more arrogant than your next door neighbor. You know, they have all these good things going for them in play. And we don't need another flavor of l. It's sort of like when you go into your local ice cream store and has 31 or 32 flavors and suddenly it has 86 flavors, but there's only one scoop of each of them.

So the first person in the door gets that flavor and the rest of you get to look at the empty socket where that flavor was, as the proprietor says, Well, I don't want tomorrow, kid. Maybe if you're lined up when we open, it'll be yours. Well, okay. The same way. There are so many L's and it's like, will you guys start creating new sub races of elves when you haven't even d detailed the ones we have?

I want to know what else used for perfumes. I want to know what they eat. I want to know what they drink. I want to know how they make their wines and their stronger spirits. I want to know how they farm up in the trees. I want to know all about the herbs. And so. And you won't give me any of that stuff because, hey, here's a new L with new stats.

So if this is a chance to get rid of Star ls as everything but a legendary name that you know, perhaps there are two star ls still alive somewhere in the realms. If we could get them together, maybe we could have more star elves. That'll be a possible DMS thread for a campaign, for something for the adventuring party to do.

Particularly if one of them thinks she's a star. L Now I have to find a star elf to mate with. This will be my destiny or whatever. But unless you're doing it on that level. But I figure the star ls can go way and this will fit wonderfully with walking's plans to have zest to take over egg. Look so and and I have nothing against that in that whether you want to do that in your campaign or not, it is good to have a a xenophobic force in an area weakened, diluted or gone so that your player characters can wander through that area and explore and have adventures more easily without having to flight every

five steps. Let that hilarious old cartoon that was in Dragon magazine with the monk feathered with arrows, and it was the caption cartoon and the winning caption was, Stop or I'll shoot, stop, shoot, stop, or I'll shoot. Well, that would be a human trying to wander. So the middle of the year would fall. For whom? Oh, Oh, now, hey, this guy's still on his feet.

Pump a few more dozen arrows into it. You know, I would. I would be happy if that would away that the reason why they were there, the elves were there, they were the backbone. So if Red Wizards wanted to do something to exuberant and they tried to come through the forest, the elves would turn around and say, Excuse me.

Wow. You know, And that's why they were there in the original realms. Not because I had anything against they, but because what I described was a detente and if you have a detente, why is it there? You have to explain why it's in detente. And if you don't have a detente, why hasn't all of this happened before? Your player character has come along.

There has to be a reason that your player characters are walking into the middle of this situation and could shift the balance of power and push everything over the edge. Oh, but anyway, yeah, there is an air of mystery and other worldliness. Yes. And that is another good reason. Yeah, but this one's not really about the realm. But I think, Ed, you mentioned the other day that you had got the opportunity to listen in or at least be at one of Tolkien's lectures.

Mom, I just kind of wanted to hear a little more about that and how your experience was with that.

Okay, I was very young. I had to wear a suit, or rather I had to wear my gray flannels and a sports jacket, and my father took me and was wearing a suit. It was an academic thing. It was Tolkien standing at a podium in an amphitheater, you know, a real thing like Oxford. S lots of lecture theaters like that.

I've been in American universities that have similar physical things where the the audience is in a three sided bowl steeply descending to the lecture at the bottom. And he has a table and a podium and a blackboard behind him. The paper chase, the lot of them were like that. So and Tolkien was standing behind the lecture and and he was he was actually giving a lecture on linguistics, Anglo-Saxon linguistics, of course, an area of his expertise.

And of course, inevitably the audience questions were all about Hobbits and the Lord of the Rings. And you could you could sense that he was sort of rolling his eyes and, oh, here we go again. But then, of course, it's North America. And every time I talk here, that's all they, you know. But and the other thing, Tolkien was very sharp witted, but he was a dry academic.

He didn't orate, he didn't use inflection. And he did stride it around dramatic. He wasn't giving a TED talk. He was of his generation. So he would stand there and he'd say, So he was leader out there and uh huh, uh huh, Oh, you didn't hear. Oh, I'll give it to it. I'll do it again there, you know.

And so there was a lot of that. And so everybody in the room was dead silent. And we're all leaning forward. I was leaning forward and cocking my head to hear. And because I had to I had to turn my head to my ear. I ended up staring into my dad's face, nose to nose, because he was doing the same thing with the other ear.

And I we were all leaning forward to not miss a single syllable because talking even though the acoustics were great in this amphitheater, he was not a public speaker. But it was fascinating. And it's one of those things where if this guy wants to talk for 6 hours, I will listen 6 hours? What can we prod him with to keep him talking?

You know, and the wonderful thing is he loved poetry, as in he loved to do complicated, sonorous, rhyming things. And the best way I can describe it for a North American audience is if you remember the rollicking hymns of Christian getting together to worship. Were they? They were quite wordy and Victorian, so there wasn't a simple rhyming scheme.

It was and there was emphasis throughout the a complicated, like something more complicated than Onward Christian Soldiers, you know, a march thing. Tolkien had lots of elven poetry that was like that. And he actually and this was the thing that impressed me the most. One guy managed to get him to come to a conclusion about the clarity of language and saying something that would echo down the generations.

So like a skulls or a bard saying something that would be remembered. And so Tolkien gave this sentence and it was the equivalent of but not the same as the sentence, I'm not going to water, okay? I'm just giving it as an illustration. There's the the contention that in places in the modern world you live to work, but other places people are lucky enough to work, to live.

Okay. It's the equivalent of that. And he said that and he said it emphatically and everybody wrote it down. And some guy in the front road there does that can you say that in a work speech? Oh, my God. Oh, my goodness. I told him his head shot up. You know, it was like and I thought he was going to be angry because he sort of glared at the guy and then he realized this guy is serious.

He's not being flippant. He's almost on the verge of tears. So talk a little forward, leaning to the microphone and said it in a speech and it was wonderful to hear, not because we were getting to hear a speech, but because there is such a difference in linguistic tone. It's like somebody saying the boy stood on the burning deck.

Then all but he had fled. And then you go, Yeah, no, it you know, it's sort of like in the same way that somebody is trying to sing a lullaby and soothe and cling on. And it just sounds like they're dropping pieces of metal all over the floor or banging. It's the same thing. And it was so impressive to hear.

And it was also hilarious to hear out of this old man in a rumpled suit and all that. Thank you so much. That was that was really cool. No problem. I'm blessed to have been old enough that I actually got to meet and see people and in some cases befriend them like Pratchett and Rodgers, Larson and so on.

Before they were no longer with us, you know. So we did we got another question for Melody, and they ask, whatever happened to Albert Crown Silver? The last I saw of him, he was in tears over the death of his king. Yes. Now I'm I'm I'm going to disappoint Melody again. And I feel terrible about it by saying there's an NBA and but the reason why there's an NBA is because there are plans.

And I'm going to talk to the one person who is still on staff who is involved in those plans. And I will be probably writing something either directly to Melody on the Discord or if it's big enough, long enough and complex enough, I'll just put it as a battery and post. And I, I don't know. I pay no attention to what level people are at.

Would that be something that melody would see in the normal way things? Yep. Absolutely. Oh, good. Yeah. So I'm just going to I'm just pulling that right out of chat and copying it into my writing file. We have, I think, 54 patron posts done, but I have to do Yup, I have to start work on 55 as some.

That's just some formatting and some extra posts that got quite a few. That was. Yeah. Ed's been very engaged, by the way, since we started this, and I came into this wanting to work with Ed and thinking to myself, Oh yeah, I like he, he's so busy. He's going to have to do like 300 other things daily. He's not going to have any time to pay attention to me or or RPG match or he might be like half committed.

But then as soon as we've launched this, my inbox has started flooding with like 2 to 4 page documents of realms already booked up and it's six in a folder now, and he's willing to meet every Thursday and talk or else learn to do these videos. And it's been really great. So I'm just trying to tell you all there is more to come.

There is a lot coming to the page and very soon many will continue dripping in. So, you know. Thank you, Melody. I really appreciate it. And like I said, I think it's a big part of why this is so great is we get to talk with people like dead on like this because, I mean, I want to speak for you, Ed, but this probably gives some guidance to you as well, right?

It's like, yeah, we know what people want to hear. Yeah. And then we can cover it. I'm just the mule. I'm the oxen on the mill. I just run in circles grinding the information. But Ed's the one doing all the, the artistry here. And it's. I'm perfectly fine with that, Roland, and I'm happy about it. But yeah, it's been really it's been a lot of fun.

So we really appreciate the heck out of everyone here. That's all I got. Ed, do you want to say anything? Any parting words of I just want to thank all of you for coming in and putting up with me. It is I do this for you guys because you guys keep the realms alive. Despite the best efforts of certain people through art and the realms is alive because you guys love it and use it and and you adopt it and you do stuff in it and you tell your own stories in it.

And that's just great. And that is my reward, because that's the one thing nobody can. It's not a case of a company meeting, a deciding to pay somebody to do something, and now it will be done. You know, this is something that you guys are doing because you love it and you've made it yours. And thank you for doing that.

And long may it continue because as you can see, white hair, white beard, there will come a time when I fall out of the story as authors have before me, and it would be really nice if it kept going. And I knew and I was just going to keep rolling because it's reached critical mass. You guys love it, you've adopted it, it's yours now and it will keep going.

And that is wonderful because it means that the company who currently publishes it can say, No, forget it. We're moving on to other things. It's it's it's talking seahorses and their kingdom. Now, here's our new thing and the reminder will keep going because it has its own fans in the same way that you can stop doing Star Trek Star Wars movies for decades at a time.

And the fans refuse to let the setting die because it's theirs. Same thing you guys have done that. Thanks. Well.