Contradictions in Forgotten Realms - An esoteric discussion

The Game Room
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I am talking with @Miller about FR but it is on the OotS thread and this is getting long enough, that I think it it deserves its own thread.

Link to OotS: Order of the Stick book 7 discussion thread - #2458 by Miller

If you took away all of the gods and magic, natural laws, physics, and science would still work and the world would keep going.

Then there is Realmspace and with Starfinder, Golarion space, although I think that doesn’t have crystal spheres but I haven’t played Starfinder and have barely read it. For some reason, that kind of magic and tech doesn’t work for me. My point being these show a sun, planets orbiting said sun, and that there is gravity.

I’m not saying that there isn’t magic in FR or that fantasy creatures don’t exist. I’m saying that, probably without realizing it, Ed Greenwood created a mundane world and overlaid magic on top of that. I think the closest the realms has come to being a fantasy world was the awful spellplague and abeir returning, which gave the option to have floating earth nodes and other things that couldn’t exist without magic or with technology. 5E seems to have ignored it, putting it back to the way it was before the spellplague.

Now, I had a chat with ChatGPT since it can search the resources faster than I can. It found several references in candlekeep.com and other sources where Mr Greenwood has stated that the Weave creates the reality of the Realms. Now, at that point, it might be a full stop but I like to have discussions. I wouldn’t do this to Mr Greenwood as that would be rude. (I have briefly chatted with him at Gen Con on two different occasions. He is a wonderful person. I also attended a few of his panels when he answers questions about FR. I would not want to be rude to him.) He stated it, that’s it. I suppose I could argue that TSR/WotC’s version of the realms isn’t, because then it’s not a personal attack on Mr Greenwood.

For my purposes here, though, I submit there are plenty of canon examples that show that if the weave was gone, things are fine. The Time of Troubles is my big proof. During that time magic was not reliable. Yet, crops still grew, they still had night and day, water flowed as it should with our normal physical laws. Even after the ToT, there exist wild and dead magic zones. There are no other changes within them, other than the effects on magic. Everything else works just fine.

Other current examples include some cultures, like the Uthgardt barbarians, that survive with no magic at all. They allowed psionics to exist, mostly 2E Complete Psionics and later 3E psionics, and also some monks with psionic power. That says there is a different power source out there besides the Weave. This is important to show that magic hasn’t suffused all cultures and all places.

Now for the really esoteric proof. Grand History of the Realms expands on the progenitor, or creator races*, of the realms. The short of it is expanding the realms history to -37,000 DR. I can’t find anything earlier and am fine with it having been created at that time, or earlier, and left to be found or used by mortals. Then, there is a period of at least 6000-7000 years when Mystryl isn’t around and the creator races have their own gods. It’s not clear when Mystryl comes into existence. Chat GPT speculates Mystryl came about around -30,000 DR, with structured magic. After a long period with the creator races, elves show up at -24,000 DR and have their High Magic and rituals. They don’t worship Mystryl, again as evidenced by many supplements that show the elves and dwarves’ pantheons and a god of magic is in them. Speaking of dwarves, they show up around -18,000 DR. Humans are finally mentioned at -10,000 DR when human tribes begin to proliferate.

The Imaskari tribes show up around -8,000 DR and are atheistic / godless in practice. Indeed, they created the god wall to stop the influence of gods. They are in the south and I think they took as slaves, what will become Unther and Mulhorand around -2,800 DR. Once the Imaskari are kicked out, Unther and Mulhorand worship Egyptian and Sumerian gods. It’s as if we have regional gods at this time period, not world spanning ones. That is strange to me given that the gods could come down and be among their worshippers. It isn’t until after ToT that avatars are supposed to be limited.

That is my proof that the Realms isn’t a fantasy world. All of the fantastic elements could be removed and the Realms would be fine and keep going. I know that by this definition most fantasy worlds aren’t fantasy worlds but that is my point. I don’t know of any authors that haven’t done what Ed Greenwood did and create a mundane world and overlay magic on top of it.

This doesn’t mean I don’t like FR or use it. I have been using it for nearly forty years. I merely think it’s too bad we don’t see something more based in fantasy. If I want a fantasy world like that, maybe I move to Planescape and Sigil.

I still submit at any point that, yes, it could be shown that Ed Greenwoord said magic is needed, or that Mystryl always existed but under different names, or whatever explanation because magic. It’s a bit circular, though. I think that what we have seen in canon FR contradicts this in subtle ways.

Thanks for the discussion!

*I don’t like the use of the word race but I think it fits here. The early settlers or beings that lived on FR were a different species than what we see today.

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As another strange thing about FR, camels exist in the Anauroch. FR13, written by Ed Greenwood himself, talks about Anauroch and what is there, and it makes no sense. He put bedine tribes with sheiks riding camels and using weapons of places that have camels.

Except the Anauroch is not a natural desert. It’s only existed as a desert since sometime between -626 and 100 DR. That’s based on maps in Grand History of the Realms. The -626 DR map shows Netheril existing and no desert. The next map of the area is 100 DR with a desert.

How do bedine tribes and camels come about in 1600 years, from the end of Netheril, to the starting of FR Grey boxed set 1357? This should be the remnant of low Netheril. They should have horses instead of camels, maybe with magic items to help them survive. Maybe even some magical race of horses that act like camels?

I think Ed Greenwood wanted a desert society like the Bedouin tribes with Northern Africa influences. He even talks about Netheril in the book yet still makes this a desert culture. I wonder if his timeline is longer to allow this to happen or if it’s just what he wanted?

More pondering.

Thanks for the discussion. (Okay, there hasn’t been any yet, just me, but I’m hopeful.)

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It took native American tribes a lot less than 1600 years to adopt horses, so I don’t see why camel riding tribes couldn’t form in that length of time.

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Also, in our world, camels are native to Arabia, and were brought to North Africa only in the 900s-500s BCE (we don’t know for sure when).

So even in our world, many of the places where camels are common didn’t exactly have them since time immemorial.

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Actually I’m pretty sure that if magic stopped working entirely there would be worldwide disaster as the Underdark collapsed in on itself. The Weave isn’t all of magic, basically just an interface that makes magic more accessible to mortals. “Raw magic” is canon.

There’s some; Terry Pratchett’s Discworld is a famous example. Tanith Lee’s Flat Earth series is as the name implies also set on a flat world. I also recall a novel set in a world that worked according to Aristotelian physics, for example (the title escapes me). The Shattered World is set in/on a planet that was literally broken into fragments in ancient times, the Shards of which move about each other in complex patterns; and if the magic ever failed it would collapse into a new planet of magma.

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One definitely-fantastical story I read recently was about the Tower of Babel, which in this world actually existed and was completed. The viewpoint character is part of a team of miners recruited to dig through the upper firmament, which the Tower has finally reached. It turns out that you can tunnel through the upper firmament, but when you do, you end up coming out at the surface of the world. It wraps around.

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Thanks for the replies!

I understand that we are talking about a made up world and inconsistencies are going to happen. I think I’m going for the intersection of an interesting discussion of what the creators didn’t think about and the NoPrize Prize of explaining it.

I also realized that I didn’t explain what I meant by a fantasy world. For me, the definition of a fantasy world is that it has to have fantasy elements that require magic to sustain it. I prefer if they are natural, not created by some magical society, just part of the world. (ETA: Created by magic but self sustaining on magic is also acceptable. See Death Gate Cycle.) Earth nodes floating in the air that can sustain life and perhaps have a tribe or something on it. Thin areas connecting to other planes, in DND perhaps feywiild and shadow plane. Rivers that require their deity to flow as a river.

Good ones. Sadly, I never read any of those books. It is nice to know they are out there. I’m remembering a Weis and Hickman series that had four worlds that were like this? Ah, the Death Gate Cycle.

I only know of the Exalted game world as a flat world, whose edges go into the chaos eventually. I could probably use that as a game world with the references I have for it.

I apologize for not being clear. I’m not saying they couldn’t adapt to camels. I’m asking where did they get the freakin’ camels? How did non magical people know to go and get camels, who are best suited for a desert environment? I don’t think there are camels in the Shaar, Unther, or Mulhorand area, which is where these people are coming from. Raurin is the only ‘natural’ FR desert that I can find. Anauroch, Calim Desert, and the Plains of Purple Dust are all created deserts. There are areas with low rainfall that mimic deserts. Zakhara is a) too far south and b) not sure it existed yet! I don’t remember when they created Al-Qadim and stuck it in the south.

Further, the bedine people are said to be people who were slaves and fled from Mulhorand. (I think this is done to explain their skin coloring.) Why would they bring camels, even if they had them? Why would they skip Thesk, Narfall, Impiltur, Raven’s Bluff, the Moonsea area, the Dalelands, and Sembia, get to Anauroch, and say, “We have found our home!” :grin: Even the Ride or Tortured Lands would probably be better.

I’m still not sure of collapse, even in the face of a disaster. The Time of Troubles lasted for three months. At best, magic didn’t work. At worst, it was wild and unpredictable. IIRC, when Salvatore went back and wrote of Driz’zt’s time in the Underdark, he had a novel that dealt with the loss of Lloth to the drow. It caused political upheaval and I think male wizards used it to get more power but nothing collapsed.

Now, there are two levels to my ‘evidence’ here. I do agree with your statements that the Underdark would probably collapse. I think it’s a timing issue and if the ToT had lasted longer, we might have seen it. Equally, magic worked enough that they might be able to create buttresses to fortify the caves.

The second level to this is that we are shown it didn’t in Salvetore’s novels. Once again, we are hit with dramatic license v real world. Perhaps the caves were still ‘cave-y’ enough that they didn’t collapse. Perhaps they are down far enough that even if they did, it would be localized and not noticed on the surface.

ChatGPT to the rescue again for research time. No cities collapsed but it did confirm that all drow cities use magic to sustain the cavern. It compares it to a earthquake that caused damage but nothing catastrophic but that is me asking follow up questions. It could find no canon references to anything happening in the Underdark due to loss of magic.

Lastly, Raw Magic. Interesting. Okay, let’s look at this. It’s stated that Raw Magic is in everything. That sounds like a fundamental force, like electromagnetism. (I suck at physics.) Few wizards can tap raw magic. Spellfire also comes from raw magic. I would posit that those who can were already able to do so, the creator races, dragons, Imaskari, High Elf wizards, and anyone else gets it as a gift from some deity of magic. They are rare in current Realms but are out there. I would further posit that if no one who could use magic came to the Realms or no deity created the Weave, an interface to magic, then the Realms are back to behaving as a normal world. Some scientists might eventually find raw magic as a basic force. Maybe they find a way to use it or interact with it. That’s just my thought on it.

That’s cool! Thanks for sharing!

Thanks for the discussion!