EdGreenwood

LOST LORE OF THE REALMS #21

Added 2025-09-29 01:45:14 +0000 UTC

Once again the vicissitudes of life interrupt my preferred schedule for bring you new snippets of Realmslore, and the wondrous GAMEHOLE CON will do it again NEXT week, so...early once more, fellow Realms fans!

Aye, the dusty books and fading scrolls speak to me, they do, whispering their secrets as enticements as I stumble through the gloom of my memories and stashed Realmslore, so I can bring you yet more about the Realms—and here it is!

Life Energy In The Realms

Mortals, including clergy (thanks to contradictory things gods have said or hinted) disagree on this, but Toril contains natural energies that are continually changing form (heat, kinetic, wind, current and tide, fire, and so on), and that can be harnessed or captured in various ways (the Weave is one, and other systems of magic, too). All living things contain life energy (akin to “positive energy” in some editions of the game), and a soul is one built-in vessel in many living beings for containing and focusing life energy. Living spells, magic items, and many magical effects store or contain this same energy, but when it’s part of a living thing, sages call it “life energy.” Thinking entities tend to understand life energy, to the extent that they understand it at all, in terms of how they can handle it, experiences they’ve had with it, and ways they know how to harness it.

Elminster confirmed what some Avowed of Candlekeep have said and written: that the Positive Energy that sears undead is akin to Life Energy, and so are the Silver Fire (which can be thought of as Mystra- and Azuth-controlled and focused spellfire), Spellfire (raw, destructive positive energy), and two “refinements” (in different directions) of this same raw energy, into magic that does radiant damage, and magic that deals force damage.

The Biology Of A Kobold

If you’re playing the current (5th edition) of D&D, kobolds are small, weak, humanoid-body-shape reptiles: they lay eggs, are clever trap-builders who work together to defeat foes, and have a reputation among adventurers for cunning. They mature quickly, and have long lifespans (over a century). They are good tunnelers and lair underground; their described behavior makes it clear they are less susceptible to cold and damp than many reptiles (although they still prefer tropical and temperate climes, to keep warm). Volo’s Guide to Monsters, pages 63 through 71, tells you all about kobolds (with some “special” kobolds on pages165 through 167). So: dragon-like snouted heads with many-teethed jaws, scaled, have dextrous hands and limbs like a human, use tools and weapons, and invent and build intricate devices.

From what I know of kobolds in the Realms, they are social beings, used to working together, settling disputes with other kobolds, and looking to the dragons they worship for guidance (and occasional personal boons).

Kobolds are omnivorous but prefer to eat flesh, because they have swift metabolisms and want to keep their body temperatures up (when possible, they likely huddle together for warmth when sleeping, and/or use blankets, proximity to fire or lava flows underground, and so on, for heat). Many egg-laying creatures can “hold” their eggs inside their bodies so as to give birth in optimum conditions, not “just whenever,” and kobolds are among these. So if they can find a warm underground cavern, and fill it with easily-slain and devoured food beasts that can’t escape, that provides ideal conditions for laying their eggs.

So think of lizards or snakes, but smarter and able to speak and craft things and make cooperative plans, with faster metabolisms and an understanding of nature (i.e. how to get warm enough, to avoid torpor), omnivorous but preferring flesh meals, egg-laying from a young age but able to control when they lay eggs (tough rubbery-skinned eggs, not brittle-shelled like most avian eggs). Hatchlings don’t need nest-tending but the young will usually receive teaching and guidance, once active, from older kobolds. Kobolds control internal body moisture through defecation (wet or dry dung), have a keen sense of smell aided by tongue-flicking, and make plans as life unfolds, not merely) “planning for the next meal.”

(As kobolds have changed over various editions of D&D, sometimes depicted as dog-like or rat-like, there’s some confusion over their true natures. I put it down to adventurers and just plain folks calling various critters “kobolds.”)

Waterdeep And Running Water

There are public pumps (that anyone can visit to fill water containers, for free), even in Castle Ward. They’re the only source of water far from Mount Waterdeep; parts of the city close to the mountain get gravity-fed piped water. Throughout the city, servants or children use handpumps in their homes (including rented upstairs rooms) to draw water up from these drinking water pipes.

Which have safeguards—cisterns with testing outflows and shutoffs—installed, in Castle Waterdeep, all city wall towers, and most civic buildings. This was done on the orders of Piergeiron, after an incident in 1357 DR, when a villain (Hanstal Droun, a Dock Ward gang boss, working with the Zhentarim) tried to poison most of the city by tainting the water supply (he was foiled by the Company of Crazed Venturers).

Most buildings in the city also have “greywater” (for washing and garderobe/jakes flushing) rooftop cisterns, screened against birds and vermin—but obviously not their droppings—that capture rainwater and “storm wrack” (onshore fogs and blown salt spray) and hold it until taps lower down in the buildings are opened, to fill basins (sinks) or handbowls and ewers.

As water from all city sources can carry disease and provoke vomiting or the runs, most folk drink small beer or ale or cider or wine or liquor or otherwise treated water, including water that’s been boiled, skimmed, and then flavoured with drops of lemon juice or rinds of limes or lemons or other fruits, allowed to cool, then “jugged” (put in ewers, usually cast bronze except for the poor who used salt-glazed earthenware, that are then stoppered with corks).

Waterdeep Visitors and Residents Registering With The Watchful Order

Clerics and druids don’t register with the Watchful Order, and visiting wizards don’t have to if they refrain from casting magic within the city (the Order “turns a blind eye” to casting spells on self and friends behind closed doors, that aren’t hostile, and also ignores any incidents of spellcasting in Skullport or Undermountain, but will INSIST, forcibly if need be, on registration of anyone who tries to sell scrolls or offer spellcasting services for money, in the city (including Undercliff), or who hurls spells in the public streets.

If someone known to be a wizard of power (i.e. not an apprentice, and anyone of 4th level or higher) settles in Waterdeep, sooner or later the Order will visit them with a “welcoming committee” to see why they haven’t registered, if they don’t visit the Order to do so, first.

Such a committee is never less than three powerful Order mages, who are “wand-and-ring-ready-for-trouble” geared up, and accompanied by armed “muscle” bodyguards magically protected against mind-meddling.

The Order generally “turns a blind eye” to bards—and those of other professions and classes who wield the Art in a minor way (carrying and using magic items gets you watched, but is not considered grounds for forcing you to register)—visiting the city for a month or less, UNLESS they make a habit of spellhurling in public. However, if such individuals settle in the city for longer than a month (not rent rooms and then vanish from the city to go adventuring for longer, but live daily in the city for longer than a one-month stretch), the Order will send a welcoming committee to lean on them to register with the Order, or leave the city. And “leave” doesn’t mean exit through one city gate and come back through another, even a month later; it means gone for this season at least. Piergeiron and Khelben unhesitatingly backed the Order in all such exiles; it remains to be seen if Vajra and Laeral will do so (i.e. it’s up to your DM). Bards visiting the city for a tenday or so “on tour” (performing) have always gotten a pass (an exemption, not a literal document) from the Order, but in elder days, they always out of courtesy dropped by the Order HQ and told the duty magists of their arrival or departure. The wise ones still do. ;}

The Order wants all warlocks, visiting or resident, to register with the Order as swiftly as they can reach the Order’s HQ after first setting foot in Waterdeep. And certain warlocks get watched whenever they’re out of doors in the city, the spies being well-paid street youths reporting to duty magists. Older Order members trust warlocks not at all, taking the view that the pacts warlocks enter into mean many of them sidestep personal responsibility for their actions...so they can’t be trusted. Most senior Watch officers hold the same view.

Orphanages In Waterdeep

Almost all of the orphanages in Waterdeep are either temples or guild-run, and located in properties owned by either the various churches or the guilds, respectively. The guilds have traditionally used their orphans as unpaid (but housed, fed, and trained) ’prentices, and although resistance to this in public attitude is rising, all of the guilds who have orphanages began them by taking in and rearing the children of guild members who perished (or vanished at sea and were presumed dead).

Temples also develop clergy and lay temple workers from the ranks of their orphans, but this is far less frowned upon publicly because the public accepts that temples do this (and feed and tend the maimed, the crazed, and the sorely-sick and dying; services temple orphans assist in).

There aren’t many independent/private orphanages in Waterdeep as of current Realms time (1501 DR in the 5e “D&D 2024” era), thanks to some slaving and selling-children-as-food scandals of the past.

One such private orphanage outside Waterdeep is Dunstran’s House, south of the Rat Hills, the dung-heaps and midden for the city; the children spend time each day sorting through the muck, and seeking clams and “wash fish” (washed-in-with-tides-and-onshore-storms edible sea creatures), for food and whatever else they can glean.

“Deep Dunstran” is a misshapen and ugly crossbreed of orc and minotaur, hunchbacked and surly and very strong. He is not, however, foolish or dim-witted, though he acts “dense” so as to be able to surprise anyone hostile if trouble arises. He carries a rusted iron forgebar as a club, and wears a brooch of shielding (that he’s attuned to) that was a gift from a Waterdhavian noblewoman (Lady Braroara Artemel) he rescued from brigands, years ago (in the spring of 1488 DR; the lady was in her fifth decade at the time). Dunstran took his name from the now-dead old man he befriended, who made a precarious living gleaning from the Rat Hills in the 1460s DR; the current Dunstran was then young and vigorous, and now seems iron-strong and ageless. He makes some coin reporting what he sees to various spies (for the Zhentarim, the Wearers of the Purple, the Lords’ Alliance, and certain costers).

...And the "wouldn't fit" tags this time around are:

#radiant damage

#Rat Hills

#reptiles

#scandals

#Skullport

#snakes

#silver fire

#slaving

#small beer

#soul

#spellfire