Greyhawk and Faerun on the same planet?

Taloras · Jul 26, 2005

I do recall reading somewhere about Elminster paying a visit to Mordenkainen....so apparently they have some connection....

Shemeska · Jul 26, 2005

Taloras said:
I do recall reading somewhere about Elminster paying a visit to Mordenkainen....so apparently they have some connection....

Till 3rd edition's retroactive cosmology changes for FR, Toril and Oerth were both in the Great Wheel cosmology. They were just different planets in the same infinite prime material plane. So for about two decades, for all of 1st and 2nd edition, they were in the same universe, up till the last few years when the FR stuff popped up.

rogueattorney · Jul 26, 2005

For my 1e campaign, I've been contemplating putting Lankhmar, Greyhawk, and the Realms (including the 1e Kara-Tur boxed set) all in the same "reality". There'd be two Eastern halves (Greyhawk and Kara-Tur) and two Western halves (FR and Lankhmar), and a big shimmering veil between the halves. Sometimes, when you cross the veil (located more or less on the relevant border of the map) you are taken to one of the halves, and other times, you are taken to another.

Hence, you might travel west from the Flaeness and find yourself in Faerun, then travel back east to find youself in Kara-Tur. Then there'd be gates and other modes of transport from one to the other.

R.A.

kenobi65 · Jul 27, 2005

Taloras said:
I do recall reading somewhere about Elminster paying a visit to Mordenkainen....so apparently they have some connection....

There was a long-running series of articles in the early-to-mid 1990s in Dragon, called "The Wizards Three", featuring conversations between Mordenkainen, Elminster, and Dalamar (the "dark elf" wizard from Dragonlance). They would meet at Ed Greenwood's house (Ed wrote the series), where Elminster would make Ed hide in a suit of armor so he could eavesdrop on the conversations (Mordenkainen and Dalamar weren't supposed to know that Ed was there). The wizards would then plunder Ed's kitchen while trading stories and spells.

Somehow, I doubt that the stories were meant to be canon for any of the three.

Faraer · Jul 27, 2005

They certainly are Realms canon. All the early and mid-period Realms Dragon articles are presented through the framing device of a person from Faerûn, usually Elminster, coming to Earth through gates and speaking to Ed Greenwood (or Jeff Grubb or Steven Schend), and all Realmslore implicitly comes to us through such unreliable narration. There are scores of such world-links in the lore, in fact they're the basic premise of the "Forgotten Realms": many connections between worlds, but those to our Earth have waned.

Alzrius · Jul 27, 2005

Faraer said:
They certainly are Realms canon. All the early and mid-period Realms Dragon articles are presented through the framing device of a person from Faerûn, usually Elminster, coming to Earth through gates and speaking to Ed Greenwood (or Jeff Grubb or Steven Schend), and all Realmslore implicitly comes to us through such unreliable narration. There are scores of such world-links in the lore, in fact they're the basic premise of the "Forgotten Realms": many connections between worlds, but those to our Earth have waned.

Not all of them have waned. The SJ product Realmspace details Elminster's hideaway (since it's not on Abeir-Toril), mentioning the gates to Earth that it has.

Interestingly, Earth has been represented in D&D several different times over. The best-known one is Gothic Earth (although it's not mentioned often that this is the same planet that the Historical Reference books take place on. That was confirmed in both Chronomancy and the Multiverse and the article "Seeds of Evil" in Dragon #249).

Others include Darkspace (IIRC that was the name of the crystal sphere from Crystal Spheres), and the Earth Elminster visits.