@TheEdVerse is the Untheric culture, religion, and people the toril counter part to the babylonian of our own world? if not which culture/religion is?
— cole hartwig (@colehartwig) June 9, 2021
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Published Unther seems to draw on both Babylon and ancient Sumerian (Gilgamesh). My original was a little different.#Realmslore— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) June 11, 2021
Are there two different realms you somehow keep track of? Like, the Published/Wizards Realms and your “Headspace Realms”? I’m aware the Published would be based off your original but has the original grown as a separate entity without the Spellplague and Sundering in your head? I TRY to keep track of several different versions of the Realms (computer games & other licenses have important differences/inconsistencies from the published Realms, which over editions has had differing cosmologies). The original hasn't reached the Spellplague yet.#Realmslore
— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) June 12, 2021
How different?
— Magnus Odinsohn & The Appalachia Chronicles (N)SFW (@LVBluePigeon) June 12, 2021
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“My” original Unther was an ancient kingdom, ruled by a royal family who claimed to be “of the blood of the gods” and to regularly be “the consorts of gods” (i.e. gods privately visited them, had sex with them, and gave them…
…special powers AND missions/tasks for themselves and the realm). This claimed special status infuriated the senior nobles of the kingdom, who believed it was a fiction concocted to allow the royal family to erode the rights…#Realmslore— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) June 12, 2021
…and powers of the nobility, and take all unto themselves.
Their problem was: it wasn’t a fiction; gods DID visit the royal family (the House of Haelcaunter) and charge them with tasks (these gods being: Gargauth, Moander, …
…Shar, Jergal, and various of the Seven Lost Gods, most of them seeking to worm their way back into more personal power, except Jergal, who was trying to manipulate the doings of the royal family “sideways” into longterm…#Realmslore— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) June 12, 2021
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……regional stability rather than the chaos that Shar and Gargauth, in particular, were pushing Unther towards).
Down on the daily life level, Unther was a verdant realm of barley farms and beer, craftworkers (weavers especially)… and stonemasons, barges and canals and “haemdra,” who are all ten to twenty year olds that didn’t exhibit the Gift (ability to wield the Art); they serve as unpaid laborers (slaves in all but name, though they had rights to…#Realmslore— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) June 12, 2021
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food and shelter and good treatment) for that decade, wherever the realm wanted them to work (usually building or repairing roads, bridges, drainage pipes and ditches, and buildings), ere the state gave them some land of… …their own and full citizenry.
Unther had a professional army that also served as police and patrolled heavily, had laws that made innovations common property, and had an energetic fashion (personal garments, cosmetics, and…#Realmslore— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) June 12, 2021
hairdos) scene, and had abundant gold mining that made gold-and-jet fashion adornments relatively cheap and therefore popular, and gold finger-rings widely used as currency. Unther’s coins were small and copper, or large and…
…gold, and in either case triangular.
The nobles were a fractious, feuding lot who ached for independence, but couldn’t achieve it because their bodyguards were strictly limited in size so as not to become private armies, the…#Realmslore— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) June 12, 2021
…royal family had a cadre of courtiers specifically dedicated to spying on the nobles, and every noble family wanted to rule a new land consisting of their traditional lands that they were Malacht/Malrayess [=Duke/Duchess] …
…over, PLUS in all cases some territory they had their eyes on, that belonged to another neighbouring Malachtam. Unther’s traveling traders were known as urdolphim, and some were clever, innovative mountains-of-coin.#Realmslore— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) June 12, 2021