Thay is not more advanced than others. Mulhorand, Unther, Waterdeep, Baldur's Gate, Cormyr, Evermeet, Calimshan, and more are all not feudal. In fact, I can't think of any that would be truly feudal, with serfs and the like. Thay being a magocracy doesn't make it more advanced as a government structure.
Not tech level, the government and manorial/mercantilist economies opposed to an industrializing one with specialized chains of responsibility.
Even early industrial economy is a more advanced economy than manorial and mercantilist economies. If those places you note were as advanced as you are trying to claim they would have eberron style mining and farming advancements with skilled farmers trained to operate specialized magic tools for their trade or even cast spells to aid it. Heck it was you who was arguing with several people the other day about how fr as a whole is so devoid of basic education that PC's would be unable to hire a researcher or commission a precisely measured tuning fork without knowing about and visiting the wizard in candlekeepElminster who hopefully has one to share, now it's all skilled highly trained dirt farmers.... Fr encouraging that with do nothing governments and endless uneducated subsistance dirtfamers is why the rest of fr is centuries behind Thay.
Not tech level, the government and manorial/mercantilist economies opposed to an industrializing one with specialized chains of responsibility.
Even early industrial economy is a more advanced economy than manorial and mercantilist economies. If those places you note were as advanced as you are trying to claim they would have eberron style mining and farming advancements with skilled farmers trained to operate specialized magic tools for their trade or even cast spells to aid it. Heck it was you who was arguing with several people the other day about how fr as a whole is so devoid of basic education that PC's would be unable to hire a researcher or commission a precisely measured tuning fork without knowing about and visiting the wizard in candlekeepElminster who hopefully has one to share, now it's all skilled highly trained dirt farmers.... Fr encouraging that with do nothing governments and endless uneducated subsistance dirtfamers is why the rest of fr is centuries behind Thay.
No. You're conflating basic education with obscenely rare knowledge. There's a rather major difference between the two. You're also assuming that the Forgotten Realms is like Eberron where everyone, their mother, and their cousin can all do magic. They can't. There's only one nation close to that, and it's called Halruaa. Even Thay doesn't have magic on every corner the way Halruaa does, and Halruaa got it because they are basically the descendants of Netheril.
An Eberron style setting doesn't happen just because people wish it were so.
I mentioned Thay's public education &red wizard involvement yesterday & had some time to dig through books this morning.
FRCS has a couple pages on thay itself & dozens of references to thay involvement in sections throughout the book covering regions Thay manipulates supports is at war with & so on. Most of the Thay section covers the structure ofpower with szas ->zulkir's(lets say nobility for simplicity) -> tharchion's ("civil governors who manage the mundane affaoirs of the land")->army ->etc. The Tharchions get called out as being responsible for "for local roads and bridges, sanitation, military defense, irrigation or water+transport, and peacekeeping". It goes into a lot of contextually irrelevant detail about the zulkir's & such historical events & so on but also includes sections on the red wizards trade & the Thayan education system.
The power of the lied Wizards extends [or beyond Thay’s booders. lied Wizard enclaves exist in dozens of major cities through-
out the Inner Sea lands, exchanging magic items for the goods, riches, and—in some cases—slaves of a dozen lands The Thayans
are Widely disliked and distrusted, but their growing stranglehold on the trade in magic devices makes them virtually indispensable to many of their clients.
That's significant & many of the thay references in other regions are noting those enclaves along with things they are doing
To Faerunians, Thay is a dark and evil empire where cruel Red Wizards endlessly crack whips were screaming, groaning slaves who 'arespell—transformed into weird monsters as their "reward“ for back-breaking service.
The truth is only a little different.
The Red Wizards Form an elite class, the nobility of the land. Through the vast, regional bureaucracy administered by their hand-
picked tharchions. They govern Thay's laws, commerce, and society. Free Thayans fall into one of six classes: Red Wizards, bureaucrats priests, merchants, soldiers, and artisans or skilled anthem—barely a step above slaves themselves. Neither priests nor merchants are especially common in They.
All Thayan children are examined For magical aptitude at an early age. Those who show signs of potential are removed from their
parents and subjected to ever more rigorous schooling in the arcane arts, culminating in apprenticeships to the lied Wizards. snip
I snipped it there because it dives into a rabbit hole on how that education leads to the zulkirs/tharchons & what those offices do. While interesting it's not particularly relevant to the education & Unapproachable east covers it better with many more pages devoted to Thay(~20 vrs ~2-3).
Unapprochable east has that weird focus on bloodlines & such that fell flat pretty hard so I'll skip those almost indecipherable sections talking about things never printed anywhere else since they weren't even particularly clear in UE itself.
THE RED WIZARDS
At an early age, noble children are carefully examined for any signs of arcane talent. Any who are shown to have even a small aptitude are immediately inducted into wizardry school, followed by a long and arduous apprenticeship to a Red Wizard. Those who survive their apprenticeship and are ambitious, resourceful, and talented are invited to join the Red Wizards. Some refuse the red robes, but this is rare: Becoming a Red Wizard is such an obvious path to power that the zulkirs don’t need to recruit anyone.
The Red Wizards are the ruling class of this magocracy. BLOODLINE STUFF, most Red Wizards claim up to a dozen apprentices (in game terms, wizards who have not yet acquired their first level in the Red Wizard prestige class), whom they keep at one another’s throats to advance their own schemes. Apprentices exist to serve as the master’s agents, minions, and thralls. What magical training they gain in the process is determined solely by their own ambition and initiative.
Only Red Wizards are permitted to wear red robes, their badge of office. The penalty for posing as one is instant death at the hands of the first Red Wizard to uncover the deception. The Red Wizards are ruled by a council of eight zulkirs, one representing each of the eight schools of magic. These positions are for life—the only way a zulkir would ever deign to leave office would be feet first. Within each school exists an elaborate pecking order, in which standing is determined by magical ability and the patronage of more powerful wizards. The current leader of the council is Szass Tam, the zulkir of necromancy.
The Red Wizards are evil through and through. Their ultimate goal is nothing less than world domination, and they have spent much of Thay’s history in pursuit of that effort by military means. It’s only within the past few years that they have set aside the ways of war in favor of more insidious, economic methods.
Given the number of red wizards & their less skilled apprentices serving in lower branches of the state's government/military, Thay very much should be expected to be far more educated & generally more technologically developed than the rest of FR.
I bolded that bit about the robes because it's something wotc really could do to make more clear since any GM or player with a PC who wants to involve themselves with the red wizards may or may not know it leading to crossed wires, it's even mentioned in the law & order section later. The world domination bit ties into an earlier section on it that shows how Thay uses trade over war for that conquest.
Best known for the crimson-robed Red Wizards who rule the land with an iron fist, Thay is a
realm shrouded in mystery. Few outsiders have traveled extensively within its borders unless abducted and sold
into a short life of slavery there. The Thayans who do talk about their homeland speak of it with such pride as to make
most listeners doubt their amazing claims—were it not for the fact that these same rumors surface again and again from a
dozen different sources.
The Thayans have endeavored constantly to expand their borders since they won their independence from Mulhorand in 922 DR. In fact, it was only twelve years after that momentous date that the Thayans launched their first invasion of Rashemen. The Thayans have been beaten back numerous times from both Aglarond and Rashemen, but though their armies failed to subjugate these realms, they still brought the Alaor, the Priador, the Sur and Umber vales, and the cities of the Wizards’ Reach under Thay’s control.
The borders of Thay have changed little since the conquest of the Wizards’ Reach fifteen years ago. The Red Wizards keep their armies at home these days, while their merchants have spread throughout the lands of the Inner Sea, selling valuable magic items in well-protected concessions and Thayan enclaves. Rivers of gold, goods, and slaves pour into the zulkirs’ coffers from this expansion of Thayan trade. Szass Tam and his colleagues have come to understand that gold can conquer lands that resist swords and spells, and Thay’s monopoly on the manufacture and sale of magic items might be the weapon that brings the Red Wizards dominion over all Faerûn.
It's pretty explicit elsewhere that those magic items are the product of (often)enslaved elven enchanters/dwarven smiths & sometimes trained human commoners in an industrializing✰ economy, but it's also notable because that's the sort of long term geopolitical strategy a superpower can afford to do & none of the other "nations" really go about doing that kind of thing beyond vague "trade" "port city" & so on. That bit about rumors being doubted but continually getting told with pride by so many nicely gestures at things for them to legitimately be proud of elsewhere in the Thay section like their anti-pirate navy public works & so on.
I don't have the book put out on thay by greenwood recently & I'm not going digging through dragon archives or anything similar since this nicely shows Thay as quite different from most other FR regions because of the red wizards.
✰industrializing & industrialized are at different ends of the spectrum
Thay is not more advanced than others. Mulhorand, Unther, Waterdeep, Baldur's Gate, Cormyr, Evermeet, Calimshan, and more are all not feudal. In fact, I can't think of any that would be truly feudal, with serfs and the like. Thay being a magocracy doesn't make it more advanced as a government structure.
Thay is arguably one of the few industrialized nations in Faerun, they just use undead-based automated labor instead of mechanical tools. It's canonical that they have an incredibly robust economy, which is said to be centrally planned, and they have a literal "big ag" sector and use their position as a significant net exporter of food to support their geopolitical position. Meanwhile, they also produce magic items on an industrial scale, have a well-developed magical transportation network to move those goods to Thayan Enclaves across the continent and, on top of that, at various points in their past they've had a space program.
EDIT: Assuming other continents didn't absolutely collapse during the spellplague, I'd go so far as to say that Thay is probably the world's weakest superpower, with Zakhara and Shou Lung being the other ones. Thay straddles the line between "small superpower" and "big regional power", the latter of which I'd also ascribe to Calimshan and the Lords' Alliance.
Thay is arguably one of the few industrialized nations in Faerun, they just use undead-based automated labor instead of mechanical tools. It's canonical that they have an incredibly robust economy, which is said to be centrally planned, and they have a literal "big ag" sector and use their position as a significant net exporter of food to support their geopolitical position. Meanwhile, they also produce magic items on an industrial scale, have a well-developed magical transportation network to move those goods to Thayan Enclaves across the continent and, on top of that, at various points in their past they've had a space program.
The change from a society rules by eeeeeeevil wizards who want to dominate the world into a society of eeeeeeeevil merchants was a bad one in my opinion. I rejected that change in my game and the Council of Zulkirs still exists. Of course the spellplague, sundering and whatever happened to undo the sundering never happened, either.
EDIT: Assuming other continents didn't absolutely collapse during the spellplague, I'd go so far as to say that Thay is probably the world's weakest superpower, with Zakhara and Shou Lung being the other ones. Thay straddles the line between "small superpower" and "big regional power", the latter of which I'd also ascribe to Calimshan and the Lords' Alliance.
The entirety of Thay is held at bay by one spellcaster in Aglarond. They'd also fail in taking over Calimshan, Halruua, Waterdeep, and other places with a lot of powerful folks.
The change from a society rules by eeeeeeevil wizards who want to dominate the world into a society of eeeeeeeevil merchants was a bad one in my opinion. I rejected that change in my game and the Council of Zulkirs still exists. Of course the spellplague, sundering and whatever happened to undo the sundering never happened, either.
We actually have evil merchants IRL and, arguably, they rule the world (no, this isn't about any particular ethnoreligious group or shapeshifting aliens). Because evil merchants are real, there's so much more historical and philosophical context to draw from than "evil wizards", which exist solely as a literary trope, unless you're Anton LaVay.
The entirety of Thay is held at bay by one spellcaster in Aglarond. They'd also fail in taking over Calimshan, Halruua, Waterdeep, and other places with a lot of powerful folks.
The change from a society rules by eeeeeeevil wizards who want to dominate the world into a society of eeeeeeeevil merchants was a bad one in my opinion
I'm not being glib when I say this; heroic adventurers literally take the role of nuclear weapons in Faerunian geopolitics. There's the implication that if you murderhobo us, we're gonna murderhobo you, so let's play nice and keep the murderhobos in their designated murderhobo pens and let them kill ghouls and gnolls instead of world leaders.
I'm not being glib when I say this; heroic adventurers literally take the role of nuclear weapons in Faerunian geopolitics. There's the implication that if you murderhobo us, we're gonna murderhobo you, so let's play nice and keep the murderhobos in their designated murderhobo pens and let them kill ghouls and gnolls instead of world leaders.
Right, and having those nukes means that they are also super powers, and stronger ones as they have more super powered nuke adventurers than Thay does.
Right, and having those nukes means that they are also super powers, and stronger ones as they have more super powered nuke adventurers than Thay does.
