EdGreenwood

LOST LORE OF THE REALMS #20

Added 2025-09-22 03:14:04 +0000 UTC

Life keeps getting in the way and delaying my Lost Lore posts, and that's going to happen again tomorrow (day job early shift at the bucolic country branch, bills to pay, insurance to renew), so I'm going to post this early so as not to keep you waiting...

My lore diggings have turned up more, so herewith I set before you a new grab bag of Realmslore...

MANSHOON’S TOWER HIGH

Before the destruction of Zhentil Keep, Manshoon’s home there was a rectangular (its street frontage was one of the shorter walls) walled stone compound around a cobbled coachyard. A stout castle of black granite formed the front gatehouse on the south side, wrapped around the east side forming the compound wall, then continued to wrap along the north (or back) side where there was a back coach-arch with portcullis entrance and a stables, then in the northwest, jutting south out from wall into the coachyard but attached to the wall-castle along that north wall, was Manshoon’s personal tower (his abode plus a library, trophies and component stores, and spellcasting workshops).

The “Tower High” that dominated all else in the compound, as well as the skyline of Zhentil Keep, and had his dragon in spell-stasis wrapped around it (that readers of Spellfire saw awakened when Manshoon wanted to ride it elsewhere), was a seven-floor-high tower eighty feet across at its base but tapering sharply as it ascended, that rose up right behind the gatehouse. Of the same black stone as the rest of the castle, it had no windows at all in its four lowest levels (so the lowest windows had their lower sills about ninety feet off the ground; they were narrow and arch-topped).

Visitors in a coach would stop in the gatehouse tunnel and become visitors on foot (their coach would then proceed, watched over by the Tower guardians, into the coachyard to turn, and for long stays have the coach-beasts stabled; short stays would just see such beasts fed and watered in the yard).

Visitors on foot would enter through the gatehouse into a lofty, dark, rather bare (except for six stone statues, in the four corners and flanking the midpoint of the steps up and on, all of them stone golems) forehall.

From this hall, a wide, bare stone stair ascended for hundreds of steps due north and (rather steeply) straight up to reach an audience chamber that occupied most of the third level of the tower. The northeast corner of that floor was cut off by a diagonal wall with closets and a spiral stone stair behind it, filling the farthest northeastern space. This stair ascended to the levels above, and descended to the kitchens and pantries, then servants’ quarters and household storage, on the two levels below. Beneath those, below ground level, there were a wine-cellar and well-chamber, then storage vaults, and finally at the bottom, dungeon cells.

Immediately above the audience chamber was a feasting-hall (what we might call an ornate dining room) with a long table and many tall windows; it and its garderobes (toilets) and the audience chamber were all most visitors ever saw of the interior of the Tower High.

The internal defenses of the buildings within Manshoon’s compound included flying swords and daggers, stone golems, automatons of Manshoon’s own devising, and helmed horrors in abundance. Not to mention trained and loyal black falcons who served Manshoon as messengers.

Elminster spread warnings to beware the tapestries of the Tower High, as they were magically-disguised cloakers that obeyed Manshoon’s mental controls (from anywhere on Toril) thanks to his enchantments.

HAPPENINGS IN THE YEAR OF THE CAULDRON

1378 DR is known as the Year of the Cauldron, and (although very few mortals in the Realms know it), this is because it is in this year that the Cauldron of Hiatea was found (in the shallows of Gbor Nor/the Sea of Semphar/Brightstar Lake, nigh the shore half a day’s walk north of Zindalankh).

This huge cauldron, forty feet across and twenty feet deep, glowed with a green-white radiance when heated—which awakened its magic. Made by the goddess Hiatea to celebrate and confirm her divinity after being recognized by her father Annam, the cauldron works when filled with water that is brought to the boil; this liquid then affects what’s put into it. Giants immerse the bodies of diseased, maimed, aged, infirm, dead and undead giants into the boiling water, and it affects them as follows: the dead and undead are made whole and brought back to life. All others are made whole. (None of them suffer harm from the boiling.) The cauldron is said to benefit all other immersed mammals in the same manner.

The cauldron has a curious side-effect: if any shapeshifter (such as a doppelganger) or any creature using magic to shift their shape (such as a druid using their wild shape ability, or any caster employing shapechange or another shape-altering transmutation) is immersed into the boiling water of the cauldron, they gain their choice of: becoming another form permanently or at will (changing back and forth without need of a spell or magic item). They must in the past or present have seen any form they seek to become. The wizard Tenebraz of Calimport used the cauldron to permanently assume the form of a bronze dragon, gaining all of the abilities of that form but not abandoning his Chaotic Good outlook on life.

The cauldron remained visible, filled with sea water at all times but with its rim standing proud of the water at sunrise and sunset (ebb tides) so it could be used (by those with magical means to heat it and the waters in or around it), and submerged the rest of the time, for the month of Flamerule, when it was found.

It then vanished, as mysteriously as it had arrived (for local clam-divers swear it hadn’t been hidden under the waters in that locale before, it just “wasn’t there”). Giants seemed to know it had gone, because they stopped flocking to it from all over Faerûn. Hundreds of them are known to have made use of it during the month—as did at least a score of humans and others.

The current whereabouts of the Cauldron are unknown, but the highest priests of Hiatea (the wandering Holy Witnesses) have chanted a new prayer since that day, celebrating “the Gift of the Goddess,” and its wording makes clear that the Gift is the Cauldron.

Other important events of 1378 DR include:

The death of the black dragon Hyaranaukhlestes (“High-arr-ann-KNOCK-ull-LESS-tees”) the Old in his underground lair inside Rulpeak, the easternmost high mountain of the Gnollwatch Mountains. This demise triggered a mighty magic the dragon had cast with the aid of his friend the Halruann mage Arnaraleah Murralorn, that consumed the wyrm’s body and used its energies to hatch and nurture six dragon eggs Arnaraleah had gathered—so six new dragons, all of different sorts, were born into the Realms and teleported to random farflung locales.

Arch-hags were seen in numbers (as opposed to a few lone individuals) in the Realms for the first time during this year, after the Rift of Shadows was briefly opened in Cathyr, capital of Dambrath (by wizards hired by Queen Hasifir to craft a permanent portal connecting a fortress in that city with a gem-studded cavern in the distant Deep Underdark, that Dambrath could mine for wealth to spend in its trade with other realms of Faerûn.

In Thay, Szass Tam suffered a setback in his spellcraftings when he attempted to draw on the power of the Athora in a new way. He unleashed a wild discharge that vaporized over sixty Red Wizards who were assisting him—but that at the same time recharged various enchanted wands and rings nearby, seemingly at random.

A nautiloid spelljamming ship, the Ithlynx’Pah, was stolen in Realmspace by human slaves being transported in it, after they overpowered and slew their illithid captors. The ship was inexpertly piloted to a crash landing in the harbor of Derlusk (in the Border Kingdoms, so a natural bay of the Lake of Steam) where it presumably still lies submerged; some of the humans aboard made it alive to shore, while others drowned in the crash.

THE MOONSTARS NOW

The Moonstars were led by Laeral after Khelben’s death, and she shifted their operations from active-intervention “blow things up” missions to secret and largely passive spying, with herself and three trusted assistants (her “right arms”) acting as go-betweens among the spies to share intel: the wizard Kris the Grey, the moon elf eldritch knight Raedaerla Hyntivvin, and the halfling draconic sorceress Narimbra Moonhand.

Their primary focus as spies was to watch all Red Wizards, agents and members of the Arcane Brotherhood, Dragon Cultists, and Zhentarim to gain foreknowledge of all plots to gain power over rulers, particularly in the Sword Coast and Heartlands regions, territorially up to where Laeral trusted the War Wizards of Cormyr would maintain their own scrutiny. Laeral’s Moonstars would personally warn the War Wizards and various local rulers when they detected plots, including most of Waterdeep’s Masked Lords but excluding Dagult Neverember, whom she trusted not at all.

So, four years after Khelben’s death, the Moonstars consist of the trio at its heart and over twenty passive spies, spread over a large area of Faerûn. They’ve never stopped operating; when Renaer Neverember “revived” the Moonstars in 1479 DR, he had no idea that the original organization still existed; to this day, Laeral hasn’t told Vajra Safahr the original Moonstars are still operating, though thanks to hints deliberately dropped by Elminster (once he began aiding Laeral as her unofficial spymaster and “head of secret police”) the current Blackstaff now has more than an inkling that they’re still on the job.

Thanks to the influence of Elminster and Storm Silverhand, Laeral and her three right arms use our real-world Earth (sparingly) as a hiding place, healing refuge, and storage cache location when needs arise. They try to keep not just their existence, but their operations, hidden as much as possible from the “new Moonstars” as well as the organizations they’re spying on, and usually leave the “levelling the tall poppies” actions to try to slow and thwart swiftly-rising ambitious bad actors to the Harpers—by covertly feeding the intel they gather to the Harpers.

The Moonstars use many magic items common to Harpers, a lot of the spells shared by the Seven (found in the SEVEN SISTERS tome), and two sorts of tokens: healbones (a healbone looks like a lone, stylized miniature “crossbone” from the traditional pirate skull & crossbones logo, made of white clay and fitted into its own open lozenge-shaped tray to prevent accidental breakage; when removed and broken, it works as a heal spell on the holder unless one end of the bone is touched to a being, in which case the heal is visited on them), and a handclasp token: an electrum-alloy charm or trinket or token (little cast metal shape with a ring set into it so it can be worn on a fine chain) that when grasped as the bearer wills it to function, will unerringly teleport the bearer to whoever else has a matching token, that the bearer concentrates on; Laeral and her right arms all bear matching tokens, so they can “get together from afar” as often as they need to, such tokens never wearing out—whereas breaking a healbone destroys it into clay dust as its magic is unleashed; Laeral and her trio customarily carry multiples).

The Moonstar secret demiplane refuge known as the Silver Safehold is a rather dreary place for long habitation; a lot of it is twilit broken-rock wilderlands. For hiding out for a tenday it’s fine, as it lacks predatory monsters and foes will find it difficult to access unless they gain a teukiir badge AND know how to use it. It lacks food, beyond barley-like tall grasses, gooseberries, and morel mushrooms, but is stocked with edibles and firewood by some of the Moonstars from time to time, and has some rustic furniture (beds, tree-swings, chairs, benches, and tables) laid in by Khelben.

And the "wouldn't fit" tags for this instalment are:

#Lake of Steam

#Manshoon

#Masked Lords

#moon elf

#Moonstars

#Narimbra Moonhand

#nautiloid

#Queen Hasifir

#Raedaerla Hyntivvin

#Realmspace

#Red Wizards