hong said:
Gnomish Industrial Revolution, a series of incredibly long play-by-post/alt.history threads where the gnomes blow up the Realms.
The gnomes did not blow up the Realms. The Elves of Evermeet tried (and were foiled by the Psionic League.)
But it's hard to blame the elves when Forrester and his army of humanoids were about to conquer (and eat) all the elves, the Technomancy was secretly on Forrester's side, the Faerie and druids and Magocracy were being held in bay by the Technomancy (and everyone was afraid of the Illithid Empire, which consumed more of their time and energy.)
Perhaps help should have come from Zakhara, but it was in still divided about what to do about the situation (and, divided period, really.) Kara-Tur could have done something, but they were still getting their act together and becoming the Union of Toril at that time.
So the elves were SOL, and when Evermeet fell they blew it up.
Yes, Forrester's legions of orcs and other humanoids had advanced firearms and cannon and ironclads and other things of this sort. And for that, you can half blame Lantan and the Gnomes, and half on the countries that took Lantan's technology, made it their own, and sold it to Forrester (and don't forget to give credit to Forrester's secret Kobold Cities, where massive manufacturing and research went on, and ultimately a great part of his war machine was developed.)
The IRs altered the FR setting greatly. Yes they did.
And heh, these new pictures *do* remind me of the IRs. Because the pictures evoke a sense of the Way Out, the Exotic, the Fantastic. And the IRs had all of those (plus Comedy and large doses of the Absurd, but that was deliberate.)