The Spellplague - what do we know/speculate about it?

[Uzzy]

Divine tragedy. I love it. Though, I would have prefered that Aesir ripoff had gotten killed instead.

Divine Stupidity. Sune, the goddess of love, forcing an arranged marriage on her friend Tymora? Tyr and Helm fighting over it? Ilmater moving to Brightwater? All quite bizarre acts, and acts that led Ed Greenwood to state 'those don't sound like my gods'

The fact that D&D deities have almost NEVER acted like deities in the real world has been mind numbingly dumb, and the fact that they are finally moving them to do so is a ray of light.

Deities in the Real World? Uh.. I don't quite get what your point is here.

All-knowing, all-powerful gods that never make mistakes are mindblowingly stupid. That's why most D&D pantheons are crappy, because they're always some unrealistic, idealized setup with interactions that seem to be written by children. In real world mythology, gods ed and killed eachother.

Good thing the Gods in the Realms do make mistakes. Really big mistakes too. Dawn Cataclysm, anyone?

Ugh. The Dead Three was lame. They sat out doing nothing until they stole the Tablets of Fate, and that was it. Cyric has proven himself far more worthy of his divinity than they did, since he has sought to sow strife among ALL the gods since his elevation. He is truly the god of strife.

They also never had a chance to do anything. As you should well know, TSR had a policy of never showing evil either win or do anything that evil. On the other hand, Cyric was driven mad by his own book! Less strife, more childish strops.

Because Mystra's constant meddling, ability to deny ANYONE AND ANYTHING arcane magic AT HER WHIM, and her stupid Chosen running around... they all need the ax. Mystryl died from a spell cast on the Material... Mystra died from an attack on the Material... Mystra/Midnight died from an attack in her OWN REALM. She ain't coming back.

And your objection to the other gods and their constant meddling is? Mystra may have the ability to deny anyone and anything arcane magic at her whim, but she barely ever uses it. The one time she did on a large scale, Ao stepped in. And as I've pointed out many times before, her Chosen are few in number, and up against a great many threats, and often tied down with running nations.

She's a Mary Sue. A plot point to explain why Elminster and his friends always win. She's a part of that whole "good always wins because evil is stupid," mentality that permeated D&D for decades.

You keep using that term Mary Sue. I don't think you know what that means. Elminster and his friends do not always win either. And the mentality you speak of came about because of TSR's morality stance, that prevented designers from showing evil winning, or being evil.

I hope her death was drawn out and painful.

Such hatred towards fictional characters is sad.

 

[Daniel D. Fox]

Either way, I am sure we'll see another seven years of Realmslore riddled with daytime cosmic soap opera antics, only to be upended by non-canon novels and then a complete rewrite of the multiverse with the SPLAT! book 'When Worlds Collide', where Wolverine eventually commits sepukku on Godsbane and Dr. Strange and Azuth share a simulacrum that is ultimately driven mad by the Old Cthonic gods of Mulhorand...or, something.

Seriously, Realmslore has the same depth, unneccessary complexity and superficial emotion as a Marvel comic book story. I seriously hope WotC does something useful, like retconning or rewriting the Realms into something less "realmsy" and better-suited for likely heroes, rather than a bunch of gods constantly exacting revenge against one another and watching the level 26-odd NPCs run the show.

/rollseyes

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Seriously, Realmslore has the same depth, unneccessary complexity and superficial emotion as a Marvel comic book story.

If that's supposed to be an insult, it needs work, considering how superb some of Marvels comics have been in the last few years.

 

[Daniel D. Fox]

DC Vertigo > Marvel

/back on topic

 

[Ruin Explorer]

DC Vertigo > Marvel

/back on topic

My dad > your dad.

/back on topic

 

[wingsandsword]

And more then that, as I've said elsewhere, Mystra is the quintessential Forgotten Realms deity. When people think of the gods of the Forgotten Realms, more often then not, Mystra will be the first one to pop into mind. She's one of the most wellknown characteristics of the setting, and yet they're gonna kill her off in favor of that schmuck Cyric?!? What... a... sick... joke.

What bothers me is the idea of Mystra permanently dying. Mystra getting killed? It's happened twice before, but in terms of raw divine strength she's the most powerful deity (aside from Ao) in the Realms, and her very existence underpins reality. Yes, killing Mystra, and her staying dead, would ravage the world like the Spellplague, but it makes no sense because why didn't she reincarnate? Even if Mystra herself was slain, she'd invested so much of her divine power into the Chosen that it was supposed to be like a backup plan, that tiny shards of her divinity, the power needed to regulate all magic and prevent a "breaking of the world", was entrusted to a number of people as a failsafe. You'd think that even if Shar and Cyric killed her, that her Chosen could gather to use their invested parts of her to create a reborn Mystra to protect the weave, and since even the gods themselves need the weave for magic, they would intervene in unison to protect the rebirth of Mystra.

Lord Ao, an omnipotent overdeity, at the end of the Time of Troubles acknowledged that Mystra's existence was so fundamental to Faerun that even though she was slain, her divinity was given to a worthy successor to ensure the balance of the world.

Part of the whole idea of the Time of Troubles is that there is an Omnipotent Overdeity that ensures the world is generally balanced, and while he doesn't really care what goes on at a mortal level (and explicitly refuses to grant spells to mortals), he ensures that the gods don't go killing each other off left and right, or that if gods that are key to the functioning of the world are killed, they are promptly replaced to maintain the balance. Where is Ao maintaining the balance when an event happens so massive that it changes the realms

I think that's what really bothers me about the Spellplague, not that there is some Robert Jordanesque "Breaking of the World" event (well, it bothers me too, but not as much as the next part), but they brought it on with an event that flies in the face of all established Realmslore.

Want to make a dark Forgotten Realms and still follow established Realmslore? Just change Mystra's alignment when reincarnated. She was CN as Mystryl in ancient history, reincarnated as LN Mystra, then again as NG Mystra. If she came back as a NE version, a dark goddess of Magic that had the name and portfolio, but was like a dark-mirror-universe version of the current Mystra, it would cause havoc in the realms, but at least fit with what was established before.

 

[Scholar & Brutalman]

I've been thinking it's another example of Wizards poor naming style. They should have called it the Nerfplague.

 

[wingsandsword]

And more then that, as I've said elsewhere, Mystra is the quintessential Forgotten Realms deity. When people think of the gods of the Forgotten Realms, more often then not, Mystra will be the first one to pop into mind. She's one of the most wellknown characteristics of the setting, and yet they're gonna kill her off in favor of that schmuck Cyric?!? What... a... sick... joke.

Since they are shoehorning Forgotten Realms into 4e with all these plot changes, since 4e is apparently a much darker, much grimmer version of D&D where fiends copulate with mortals so often that Tieflings are now a core race and so many dark pacts are forged that Warlocks are a core class, I guess a good-aligned deity of magic was no longer "D&Dish" enough instead of an evil goddess of shadows and a god of lies being in charge of magic instead.

 

[Barastrondo]

Divine tragedy. I love it. Though, I would have prefered that Aesir ripoff had gotten killed instead.

Well, in a fight to the death between two Aesir rip... homages, you will sort of get your wish one way or another.

(I prefer the original Heimdall to Helm, though. I tend to prefer not naming gods after common household items. It makes it easier for players not to accidentally blaspheme if they say "Crap in a helm!" or the like.)

 

[grimslade]

I am fine with Cyric killing Mystra and the whole failsafe plan of Chosen not working the way she thought. I assume Shar had some influence with Mystra not reforming.

The whole Helm/Tyr/Tymora thing is just bad. It would require a novel to justify all the changes in personality and reasons behind it. The 4 lines of text in GHotR makes it laughable. I have tried to justify it in my mind but there were other easier ways to rearrange deific alliances than this.

I am hoping that Thay will regroup and that there will be a Thayan tradition in magic with a tattoo as its focus.