It is a slushy day in Mirtul. At Battlerise, a company of 200 Purple Dragons, arrayed in purple, fought the black clad cultists numbering 300 and headed by a black dragon from the ruins of Battlegate Castle. The dragon was slain and the cultists slain or scattered.
While gathering requisitions a group of select individuals were selected by the high knights to save a Huntcrown noble woman, kidnapped by fleeing cultists. This took them to the caverns below the castle where various monsters were fought, including a vampire and shapeshifters (the caverns were based on the Lost Cavenrs of Tsojconth, and yes with an o, not an a). Of course, our heroes should rightfully be mentioned. They were Stardust, a discreet servant of house Huntcrown, Clack Paddle, a local legend of the Thunder Peaks, Hjalmar of the far off Earthfast mountains and servant of Clangeddin, Manlove from Ghars, and Greg Bob the gnome.
Greg perished in the caverns and they sadly did not rescue the noble lady. Afterwards the group murdered, remember they’re not high knights, a bard before taking a historian named Shaan Smallpine into Vast Swamp. They were joined by the Paladin Raheem on the road. They came into contact with a Cormyr loyal faction of lizardfolk in the Sharptooth clan. They defeated goblins and darkenbeasts and a slaad and a Red Wizard of Thay, and sneaky Sembians. They unified the swamp. In the efforts, Clack Paddle fell to a devil at Orvaskyte Keep, Manlove fell at the Norgath village along with the lady Daoine Huntcrown. They were met there by forces of Hector’s. A fey creature named Dave Grigger and a gnome that was not all he seemed, hight Illikut, briefly joined them, and Stardust went to the mountains to ask Hector for aid at Norgath after Clack’s death. Raheem disappeared into the Astral Plane after Norgath were subjugated.
Last week, while I was out of town at a conference, the news dropped about a D&D tv show, specifically a Forgotten Realms one. I have been hearing rumors of such for years, but now we have some confirmation and some solid looking plans that will likely come to fruition.
An article from Deadline tells us Netflix is looking to produce a live-action tv show. This is headed by Shawn Levy, known for Stranger Things and Deadpool & Wolverine. Drew Crevello is a writer and showrunner that wrote the pilot.
While this is early news, and the previous shopping around did not lead to anything, I am hopeful this will lead to something good. Honor Among Thieves was a fantastic movie, and I want more of stuff like that.
Shawn Levy and Drew Crevello, note the art is not related to this project, that is the cover for
D&D Forgotten Realms comic series from IDW Publishing that Ed Greenwood wrote in 2012.
This is a post I have avoided for some time. Neverwinter, an MMORPG based around 4e Neverwinter in the Forgotten Realms, released in 2013. In early 2015 it went into beta on the Xbox One and released later that same year on the console. While I’ve played a tiny amount on the PC, the Xbox One beta is where I began my journey.
I was immediately gripped by a couple things. At the time I had enjoyed other video games set in the Forgotten Realms, particularly the Dark Alliance games, but I had never played Dungeons & Dragons nor read any novel set in the Realms. What really gripped me was the action in the gameplay. I’ve played many MMORPGs throughout the years, from RuneScape to World of Warcraft to EverQuest and things more far afield. I had never played one that had a limited number of attacks, that made combat fast but engaging rather than tab based. It was new and exciting! Not to mention the first time I had spent many hours on a MMO for a console, though I had tried Phantasy Star, DCUO, etc.
Besides being mechanically fun, I really became engrossed in the story. Going in the different districts of the Jewel of the North, going without to Icespire Peak, the Underdark, Helm’s Hold, and so forth. It was all a grand adventure. It was alive. By time I read my first novel in the Forgotten Realms it was a story connected to Neverwinter, and the ones afterwards were too! These wereBrimstone Angels, Cold Steel and Secrets, and I even tried Gauntlgrym (before realizing that is a bad place to start with Drizzt).
It wasn’t my introduction to the Realms, but it was like puberty, pardon the analogy. It led to so much more. Reading, playing, writing this. I loved that the recent movie was set largely in Neverwinter!
It’s because of this love that I sadly feel obliged to share my disappointment. More than a year ago I tweeted this video from Josh Strife Hayes, it is too accurate:
2015-2019 were my golden days in the game. I got married and started having children and the game took a backseat. My first room was named Hemvar and we explored things together. In 2017 I made Farideh, recognize the name? This was the first character I got to end game with. I’ll admit, I was never a big fan of how the story was handled once level 60 was hit. Or 70 for that matter. It is also free to play and has too many microtransactions, though I never spent money on the game.
My disappointment started to blossom in 2022, when I returned to the game a little. The game had made some big changes. While it was built around 4e, a huge overhaul brought it more inline with 5e. Bard was introduced as a class, the other classes were renamed (scourge warlock became simply warlock, for example), the intro quest was revamped, and the max level became only 20. Exciting enough right?
Sure. But while most games keep adding content as they get older, this large overhaul saw much content shuttered. I realize this happens some in MMOs, I get it. But the leveling before endgame (the endgame I didn’t like much anyhow) became shorter. We lost several zones: Blackdagger Keep, Pirate’s Skyhold, Tower District, Blacklake District, and even more! I didn’t understand it or enjoy it. Some has been added back in in pieces or enhanced but only intermittently and for endgame. I don’t appreciate chopping up your game so you can make “development” easier by just using old material.
Helm's Hold
In January, almost ten years after the beta release on Xbox, I noticed I was close to getting an achievement for slaying dragons. So naturally I go to Neverdeath Graveyard, still in the game. Imagine my surprise when the green dragon, Charthraxis, wasn’t there. Just his bones. So I went to Icespire Peak, another zone still in the game. Was Merothrax (not to be confused with Cryovain) there? Just his corpse.
I feel like I’m walking in the corpse of something once great. It is depressing. The only thing I can experience of these things are my memories. I feel I must say amarast to it
But not all is bad. While frustrating, the game still is pretty and my girls enjoy playing it. I think I’ll play it as long as the servers are up, but I can easily say I’d be there more often, like an old home, if it felt like what I remember. And that’s not just the nostalgia speaking.
Charthraxis
That being said, I will keep on playing. It’s still fun in levels 1-20. I’m sad they cut it short, but I’ll enjoy the journey. I’ve always been a journey person in MMOs, it’s why I never really liked WoW (which is very endgame heavy even if you can max out in a day). Lord of the Rings Online, EverQuest, RuneScape: all have lovely journeys, where I can take my time and enjoy the beauty and the story, not so much the mechanics. Neverwinter is there too, just not as much as it used to be.
In Spring of 2024, I began running a campaign for three players. This was four by the end of act 1, which culminated in July. In this time, we only missed a couple weeks and sometimes we played twice in a week. That’s been the most consistent with playing we’ve been since the group members started having their own children! I wanted to give the campaign a sandbox feel but here was the premise:
Cormyr has just entered the earliest days of the Goblin War. The players are appointed high knights of the Forest Kingdom and charged with stopping any threats to the kingdom east of Wheloon while the war wages in the north around Arabel.
I came up with hooks for several places in this part of the country, and they did their best to pick a route and figure it out along the way. Now for the recap proper.
Three loyal Cormytes were summoned to Wheloon and ordained High Knights in service to King Azoun Obarskyr IV himself, but with guidance from Oversword Wolfwinter. The Oversword would stay in Wheloon while the high knights travelled the Eastern Plains bringing peace and stability and fouling any malign plots against the crown or Forest Country while war rages in the north. These three were Hector Crestfallen, a giant raised scion once of the now disgraced House Cormaeril; Magnus Trumpettower, a renowned bard from Baldur’s Gate in service to the Huntcrowns; and Miirthin Hawklin, a young noble and war wizard.
In Wheloon, while distributing food to refugees. they encountered members of the Fire Knife gang, the Redeemer’s Guild. Put to the question, a gang member revealed the organization was up to something in Dawngleam. While they travelled there, they gathered troops to Battlerise to face the Cult of the Dragon and secure the border on the Dark Flow. In Dreamer’s Rock they fought an oytugh and recruited a local farmer to keep order. They encountered someone magically transformed and refused to give aid as the law bids. They also encountered a bard, heard claims of a rival of Master Trumpettower’s deception, and heard rumors of Sembian troop movements on the border. They punished a murderer in Monksblade, slew a hoos-snake and bought some magical items at a local store. In Gorthin, they met unlawful practices. A small fest hall was refusing to pay its employees, but worse, they were killing and serving cats! This blasphemy was met with the removal of the innkeeper. In Kirinwood they went into the Tower that Would not Fall and felled it, after looting it. This removed a hazard from the environs. In Wormtower they bought apple butter and slew leucrotta left by a mysterious fellow, who also left behind a letter. It was at this last stop that Lucky the triton Paladin of Sune joined the trio.
There once was a young man named Magnus
Who was has in a wood by the abraxus
And he liked it so good
That he stayed in the wood
Just as long as the abraxus stayed erectus.
- Yohn Ravenwood
At Dawngleam they found two gangs openly fighting, the Fire Knives and Night Masks. They tried to find the origins of the letter. Loyalties were hard to deduce as a Zhentarim agent was pulling strings and playing factions against each other. After the death of the mayor, a raid from sea, gnolls, a fireball in an old inn, a raid on a warehouse, kidnappings, executions, discharging justice, and much more, things climaxed. In an old elven fortress, the Soond Shar, things culminated in the founding of a Cormyr sword of state, Shiningbite, and the Zhentarim agent’s demise. Peace was restored to the port, the gangs driven out, and a new mayor elected after the death of the last, the high knight Magnus Trumpettower himself.
This is the summarized version. Hopefully you can tell that a great many things occurred. Overall, the players were happy. I was even told by the two I’ve run with the longest that it was the best they had ever played! The options and puzzle that they did not guess but were close to unraveling (and so it made sense when all was revealed) was satisfying. Note: don’t trust priests of Diancastra.
This was largely inspired by my reading of the Cormyr Trilogy. Though books like Murder in Cormyr and to a lesser degree many, many more, did inspire this. The party ran into the likes of Sharantyr, Kromlech, and even Florozt'a and co. We played act 1 in 5e. It had been a while since I had ran as Dungeon Master. With that under our belt, we returned to my preferred DnD version: Castles & Crusades. More on that in the act 2 recap!
I try to keep up with Ed, the insanely imaginative and wonderful creator of the Forgotten Realms. If not contradicted by Wizards of the Coast, or whoever may own the rights to the Realms, Ed's word is lore. So it's nice that in the drought of fiction from WotC, Ed has been releasing some short stories on Patreon. These also have YouTube equivalents that are narrated by Ed himself. While I don't really care for the appearance of the producer in these videos, I do appreciate him getting Ed out there to a broader and easily accesible audience. And that is what we have today.
I previously reviewed Ed's Patreon "Golden Simril Gifts" he wrote with another. This time around is a story partially inspired by Fritz Leiber's "The Sadness of the Executioner," the aptly named "The Madness of the Executioner." The stories aren't really similar besides the title, though I myself have a story that was greatly inspired in form from Leiber's story. Ed Greenwood was apparently friends with Leiber (he told me in the comments for this video), so this seems a fitting Realms tribute.
The story itself is rather short and so therefore simple. It revolves really only around four characters and a business ran by alhoons in their meddling with illithid tadpoles (and mayhaps eating them). It has a cameo from a longtime Realms favorite too, Manshoon.
I can highly recommend it as a bit of a vignette. Ed is such a lovely person and his narrations are phenomenal. I wish I had such charisma and charm. Give it a listen, it's an Exceptional, chilling and weird story.
