D&D General Fun Experiment: Post a cool bit of (mostly) unknown lore from your favorite setting (+)

[Tales and Chronicles]

In the Nentir Vale, there's the grim remnants of the Empire's last legion still holding to past traditions and reanimating its deads to make the most of the few soldiers they have left and the slow birth rate. They still think they can re-establish the mighty Nerathi Empire from its northern borders (spoilers: its a lost cause).

 

[Ancalagon]

are we limited to published settings? 3rd party settings? Is homebrewed ok?

 

[Steel_Wind]

Mur Fostisyr, was an area of northern icebound coastal lands, which was created for ICE's original module, The Iron Wind.


Later, ICE included the same map for Mur Fostisyr which appears on the back cover of The Iron Wind within its poster map for Middle Earth, licensed to ICE by Tolkien Enterprises.

Later still, ICE once again included Mur Fostisyr, this time in the map for Jaiman -- an entirely different planet under its "Shadow World" brand -- at the same time as ICE was continuing to publish licensed setting material for Middle Earth.

 

[ersatzphil]

Whoa. That's COOL. YOINK, that is definitely going into my Spelljammer campaign.

If it's helpful, the 2e Planescape product 'A Guide to the Astral Plane' has a writeup of it, with a very cool illustration of it:

 

[Voadam]

While later descriptions and lore establish that the demigod Iuz is the cambion son of Grazz't and Iggwilv, the first descriptions in 1e left it a mystery.

In the 1e Greyhawk folio he is described as:

"Iuz, old Iuz of fearbabe talk, may be human - or may once have been human, but this is not known for certain one way or another."

Later in the 1e Greyhawk boxed set this gets a bit expanded to discuss the possibility of a cambion aspect, but still no Iggwilv or Grazz't connection.

"Whether Iuz is a human who has become demon-like through the centuries, or whether he is a semi-demon, a cambion (as some suggest a by-blow of Orcus), no mortal knows."

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

are we limited to published settings? 3rd party settings? Is homebrewed ok?

3rd Party is okay. I have a different thread for homebrew setting lore from a while back that you can revive if you want to share it.

 

[Ancalagon]

from Yoon-Suin, where the biggest challenge was choosing what to pick...

Po Fe and Xolo.
Centuries ago, a eunuch mercenary-turned warlord called Po Fe had the archmage Gulvedra [see below] take the soul from his body and put into a ruby as big as a large man's fist. Through this, Po Fe thought he could cheat death - Gulvedra would later remove Po Fe's soul from the ruby and put it into a younger, fitter, more virile body than Po Fe's original ageing and genital-less form. But Gulvedra did not keep his side of the bargain, and he planned to use the ruby containing Po Fe's soul for other, more nefarious ends. Po Fe's followers managed to rescue the ruby but, lacking Gulvedra's skill, they were unable to transpose Po Fe's soul to another human body. Eventually, they constructed a giant puppet, 20' high, and placed the ruby within it, and thus Po Fe finally did achieve an immortality of a kind. 276 Po Fe can control his puppet to a point, though he cannot speak. He communicates with crude sign language and by writing in sand. This saps his energy and quickly exhausts him, at which point his helpers use cranes and pulleys to help his movements. His followers later constructed for him a companion - a giant wooden puppet dog called Xolo. Seven of these followers volunteered to have their souls imbued into this creature, and they have animated it ever since. Since they are seven in number they do not tire in the same way that Po Fe does, and they will protect him to the death if he is attacked.

 

[Fifinjir]

This straddles the line between lore and theory, but it’s just plain weird how things match up:

Strahd is noted as the first vampire. The Sunless Citadel is listed in Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons as a place that echoes across many of the worlds derived from the First, implying that it existed on the First World. The citadel was made by Gulthias, a vampire.

Putting the pieces together gives a big hint that Barovia was originally from the First World, and that the Land of Mist is very old.

 

[Bitbrain]

Dark Sun
Every building in the city-state of Nibenay is required by law to be absolutely covered in stone carvings.

One of the more disturbing rumors among elf-tribes is that the sorcerer-king of Nibenay is actually a basilisk who is slowly turning the population of his city into stone…

 

[Merifluous]

Great thread. In the realms, there was a Netherese floating city dedicated to Selune called Selûnarra, which Selune saved by pulling into her divine realm when Karsus cast his spell to become the god of magic. I've always wanted to run a campaign about bringing the city back. I started one a long time ago but it fizzled.