Netheril's Fall - First Impressions

If Astarion's Book of Hungers is the player-facing add-on for Heroes of Faerun, than Netheril's Fall is the slightly more beefy add-on for Adventures in Faerun. The new digital "DLC" for the Forgotten Realms book is a gazetteer for the lost kingdom of Netheril, with an overview of the fallen kingdom, a look at two of its cities (one flying city, Eileanar, and the landbound city Conch), some magically-themed environmental hazards, and a short collection of mini-adventures in the style of the Dungeon Master's Guide. Netheril's Fall is functionally a mini-gazetteer, albeit not quite as beefy as the five gazetteers found in Adventures in Faerun that detail various regions.

At first glance, it's easy to see why Netheril's Fall wasn't included in Adventures in Faerun. Netheril is a fallen empire and having an adventure in Netheril will likely require the use of time gates (which are conveniently explained in the supplement, with two adventures dedicated to traveling and crossing through a Time Gate. I'll note that the adventures in this book feel much more specific than what we saw in Adventures in Faerun or the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide. While the adventures in other books could be "plugged" into any level-appropriate campaign, these adventures feel much more narrow in scope and cover specific locations or events found in the DLC. There's a few adventures in Adventures in Faerun that cover locales seen in the gazetteer, but there aren't very many that cover a specific event. I don't mind the "one page adventure" format, but I'm not sure it works with every adventure type. If an adventure sends players into a mad wizard's attempted ascent into godhood, I want a little more meat than a few encounters and a resolution of "well, the players will have time to explore the city before the ritual fails."

Another criticism I have of Netheril's Fall is that Netheril doesn't feel nearly as fantastical as an ancient high-magic society should. Given that Adventures in Faerun did a very find job of elevating the Forgotten Realms beyond its generic high fantasy trappings, I feel like a bit more care could have really sold Netheril as more fantastical in nature than what we got. If we could have gotten a few more pages about Netheril's culture, I feel like Netheril would have been more appealing as a place that DMs would want to incorporate into their campaigns. As presented, there are a few cool ideas, but even the phaerimm (one of my favorite D&D monsters) feel a bit flat compared to what we would have gotten.

I was critical of Astarion's Book of Hunger's price point, and while I feel that $15 is still too high for Netheril's Fall, there's a lot more "content" compared to that book. Generally speaking, some adventure content, a gazetteer, and some monster statblocks is probably a bit more valuable than one new species and a collection of feats, although I'm probably a bit biased towards DM content since I'm usually the one behind the DM screen. I personally would had preferred a $10 price point for this DLC, but others may feel that the price point of these are more fair.

All in all, I feel a bit underwhelmed by Netheril's Fall. Netheril seems like a very cool part of Forgotten Realms lore, but it's not given full justice here. I know there's some other Netheril content out there from past editions, and I encourage people to check those out on DMs Guild if they want a real deep dive into this lost empire.

 

[Misanthrope Prime]

It's also worth mentionning that I feel the highly magical FR has better means of preserving information than our middle ages, briding the gap with Netheril better than it would be between the fall of Rome and us.

Elves were mentionned -- it's difficult to speak of a long-lost civilization if your great-grand-father witnessed its full glory. But scholars have other means of accessing information. If your library has a 9th level cleric, bard or wizard, you can keep casting Legend Lore about details on the Netheril you learn... through a previous casting of Legend Lore (starting with "Netheril" up to any noteworthy city, then individual or hero). Even if the Fall of Netheril was much more catastrophic than the fall of the Roman Empire, it might probably not be more alien to FR scholars than the history of the Roman Empire was to Renaissance scholars.

This is something I've grown to really dislike about FR. It has high magic that is almost as accessible as magic in Eberron but no one seems to want to use magic for mundane uses.

I got into an argument with some FR fans about Candlekeep still using manual scribes when both magic powered printing presses and spells that can xerox books instantly for you exist and don't even cost that much money to use.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

Yeah even list empires of faerun points out Netheril is fairly well documented. Surviving liches also contribute to Candlekeep.

Its more like Rome but probably better documented. Its not Punt, Akkad, Sea People or Atlantis.

I mean plus fantasy magic makes sure stuff gets preserved without decay. Plus spells like Legend Lore allows lost lore to be recovered. And like 5 of Netherils cities survived Netheril's Fall. One of them saved by Shar pulling it into the Plane of Shadows, one of saved by Selune (wth is Opus on that Netheril map? Its my favourite Netherese City) pulling it into Ysgard (or Brightwater or Gates of the Moon depending upon edition), and three got gentle dropped to the ground by Mystria before they crashed, the rest just crashed into the ground.

 

[Thommy H-H]

It's really tricky to talk about conceptions of antiquity when you have characters that live for 750 years. We just don't have any kind of real-world basis for comparison. Do elves think of history differently to humans in D&D? Presumably if they don't live exclusively with their own kind, it must be kind of jarring to see the pace at which society evolved around them! Funnily enough, even Tolkien falls foul of this, despite his meticulous work elsewhere: he has his Elvish languages evolving realistically over realistic timescales...but the people using those languages are functionally immortal and presumably notice that they aren't speaking the same way they did in their own lifetimes. We all just agree to ignore it I guess.

In my own settings, I generally take 2,000 years as the baseline for whatever civilisation is calling the shots. This conveniently means that I can say the year in the game is the same as the actual year. And, as our own civilisation and dating system demonstrates, two millennia is long enough ago (for humans) that it's not considered unreasonable to believe an incarnated god might have been wandering around the place at that time.

I think any longer than that - as much as fantasy (and sufficiently worm-based or grimdark sci-fi) settings throw around tens of thousands of years of history - raises too many questions, sociologically and psychologically speaking. In theory there are in the order of 10,000 years of human history available to archaeology, but in practical terms we can't really grasp that span of time and what it means.

A couple of thousand years is fine. You can do a lot in that time! Probably a lot more than you think, just like how a couple of hundred miles of landscape is more than enough space to fit in basically any campaign when you start drilling down into every little forest and valley.

 

[Misanthrope Prime]

IMO, the only way to have lost knowledge in a world with magical recordkeeping and long-lived or immortal people is to have entities who actively work to obscure that knowledge. In Pillars of Eternity, the clergy of Wael, god of secrets, routinely robs libraries and assassinates scholars just to prevent too much data mucking up the world.


Some other concepts that might be interesting are creatures that exclusively eat records or even eat data and lore; it's one thing for a bookworm to eat paper, but what if there was a creature that only got its sustenance from eating letters on a page?

 

[Parmandur]

Funnily enough, even Tolkien falls foul of this, despite his meticulous work elsewhere: he has his Elvish languages evolving realistically over realistic timescales...but the people using those languages are functionally immortal and presumably notice that they aren't speaking the same way they did in their own lifetimes. We all just agree to ignore it I guess.

To focus on on this big, thwt is actually Tolkien as a linghist making a statement about the nature of changing language: thr Elves are aware their speech changes, and it is a form of artistic expression and oftentimes even politics.

 

[Misanthrope Prime]

To focus on on this big, thwt is actually Tolkien as a linghist making a statement about the nature of changing language: thr Elves are aware their speech changes, and it is a form of artistic expression and oftentimes even politics.

 

[Parmandur]

Kind of depends. Monsters like the Drow statblock in FR: Adventures in Faerun could aslo be years of gameplay if the campaign is Drow or Underdark focused. And an adventure like Dungeon of the Mad Mage is also years of gameplay. It all depends.

Yes, ut still a Monster stat block is used for 2 or maybe 3 rounds of combat, as opposed to hundreds for a PC option.

 

[Maxperson]

Its more than 3 elven generations. Its 3 very long lived elves.

250 years is 10+ generations for humans. 3 long lived ones.

That depends on the DM running it. I've been running the Realms since 1e when elves lived 2000+ years. It wouldn't have made any sense for me to have a ton of elves who were alive before the fall of Netherill and still alive in my game to suddenly have died more than a thousand years before. Especially since the age change of elves is pretty arbitrary. There's no real reason for it other than change for the sake of change. Since my game needs the continuity, elves still live to 2000+ years and some still remember Netheril at its prime.

 

[Maxperson]

Yeah even list empires of faerun points out Netheril is fairly well documented. Surviving liches also contribute to Candlekeep.

Its more like Rome but probably better documented. Its not Punt, Akkad, Sea People or Atlantis.

There are also still living Netherese wizards. The Shades that returned in their floating city. And others. More are liches as you mention.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

It's really tricky to talk about conceptions of antiquity when you have characters that live for 750 years. We just don't have any kind of real-world basis for comparison. Do elves think of history differently to humans in D&D? Presumably if they don't live exclusively with their own kind, it must be kind of jarring to see the pace at which society evolved around them!

Youngsters these day, always playing with their phone. When I was young, all we had was a wheel and that was enough!

Funnily enough, even Tolkien falls foul of this, despite his meticulous work elsewhere: he has his Elvish languages evolving realistically over realistic timescales...but the people using those languages are functionally immortal and presumably notice that they aren't speaking the same way they did in their own lifetimes. We all just agree to ignore it I guess.

This, I might be able to believe it. I am convinced that I am not using the same language over my lifetime. Sure, it didn't change drastically, but some words went out of use and other appeared or new expressions. Sorry, I can't give a meaningful example because English isn't my primary language, but if over a few decades words fell out of use and other replaced them, over a few millenia it's possible that someone might;.. drop irregular verbs totally, for example?

I think any longer than that - as much as fantasy (and sufficiently worm-based or grimdark sci-fi) settings throw around tens of thousands of years of history - raises too many questions, sociologically and psychologically speaking. In theory there are in the order of 10,000 years of human history available to archaeology, but in practical terms we can't really grasp that span of time and what it means.

I always cringe at ruins that are 10,000 years old, also.