David G @David_Pryde@TheEdVerse
I have an untitled Thann adventurer thinking of buying property on southern corner of Scroll Street and Snail Street. He wants to become First Earl of Scroll. Any interesting history about Scroll Street?
Thank you for all you do, …— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) May 18, 2020
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Sure. Scroll Street got its current name (renamed from Bendulph’s Lane, after the man who began it as a paved cul-de-sac with five buildings for rent (by him, by the room or suite) clustered around it, built on what had been…#Realmslore 2)
…his stockyard paddock) when most of the ground-floor shops were rented by scribes, who lived above their shops and hired ‘underscribes’ to work for them at very low wages by throwing in room and board (in the rest of the…#Realmslore— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) May 18, 2020
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…rooms above the shops), so a short stretch of Scroll Street became the locale of choice, if you weren’t a noble or someone else rich enough to summon a scribe to you to do work, for you to find a selection of scribes to…#Realmslore 4)
…quickly copy something, draw up a contract or trade agreement in quadruplicate (a copy to each party, plus a temple copy for the temple holding the money, plus a tax-record-remittance copy for the Palace).
So for nigh two…#Realmslore— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) May 18, 2020
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…centuries Scroll Street was a hive of scribes, who earned most of their coin as copyists for daily mercantile trade. (Then and now, it attracts a trickle of interested folk who assume “scroll” means a spell scroll, and magic…#Realmslore 6)
…can be bought and sold in Scroll Street. Largely untrue, though it’s correctly rumored many scribes have a handful of spell scrolls they bought as investments, and will sell only for very high prices to the desperate.)#Realmslore— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) May 18, 2020
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Then Scroll Street started to attract some wealthier renters, including mapmakers and bookbinders. The most interesting event it hosted was a band of adventurers arriving to harass a scribe who was secretly a novice mage— …#Realmslore 8)
…adventurers hired by a creditor. Their violence frightened other scribes living on Scroll Street into sending their fastest family members to call on Watchful Order aid, and the street briefly became a battlefield, in what…#Realmslore— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) May 18, 2020
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…became known as ‘the Shatterbone Fray’ (thanks to various adventurers being hurled forcefully into exterior building walls by various spells, then urged on their way by a chain lightning spell unleashed by an irked wizard…#Realmslore 10)
…arriving in the street to buy a blank workbook to record his spellcrafting experiments.
There are also persistent rumors of doppelgangers dwelling among the scribes of Scroll Street (these rumors are true, and the…#Realmslore— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) May 18, 2020
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…doppelgangers are spies for the Xanathar, to keep eyes on the two expert forgers/counterfeiters among the Scroll Street residents, and to watch for anyone beginning to regularly sell spell scrolls (which hasn’t…#Realmslore 12)
…happened yet, at these addresses).#Realmslore— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) May 18, 2020