@TheEdVerse I'm guessing votive and sacrificial offerings at divine altars are something that was glossed over in official Realmslore. Anything you can share? Do material offerings vanish to show the diety has accepted it?

— AdamDravian (@AdamDravian) December 18, 2020

1)
They were, and are. As was the use of drops of the caster’s blood as material components.
Offerings are put on an altar in a temple. On the road, they can be placed in a consecrated bowl, or on any surface or in any depression that’s had a symbol of the deity… 2)
…traced on/in it with the offerer's fingertip (preferably traced in blood, tears, spittle, or fire-ashes). Sometimes they vanish as the god takes them (in a temple, often due to a spell covertly cast by priests, to impress the devout, but on rare occasions, …#Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) December 18, 2020

3)
…genuinely), sometimes they are consumed by fire (spellsent by priests or the deity or a servitor of the deity, or formally and openly applied to end the ritual/prayer), and sometimes reverently taken up for temple use or distribution to the poor or needy, or… 4)
…even, if it's edible, used as a "god-blessed" medicine for the ailing, stricken, or wounded.#Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) December 18, 2020

Can all mortal creatures create deities out of sheer belief or just the Kuo-toa? And if only the Kuo-toa can, is this true only for Realmspace or is it true for the whole of the dnd multiverse? All deities in the Realms are created out of sheer belief. I can't speak for the entire multiverse, but it seems likely, from all sages and high priests have observed.#Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) November 3, 2020

wait, what? aren’t some of them people who ascended to godhood? That's right, but retaining godhood depends on the belief of mortals.
If no worshippers believe in you, you fade away.#Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) December 23, 2020

The bard recently found a book called “Volo’s Guide to the Botany of the Realms”. Has Volo every been involved in such a project or is this someone else cashing in on his reputation? So far as I know, this is someone else cashing in. Yet one can never be certain with Volo. I'll ask him when next I see him, but even then, one can't be certain how much truth a particular direct personal answer holds.
(As El says, "That's the trouble with humans.")#Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) November 14, 2020

Oh, sorry and another one:

4)) How big is the population of Luskan as of 1494? Back in 1485, it was what, 4000, but has the town grown again?

— J-N Bersenkowitsch (@JNiklasBerse) December 6, 2020

2)
4. Luskan’s population is depressed due to its most recent century of lawlessness and troubles (you have to be hardy to want to live there!), and its climate, like all of the more northerly cities, falls as each winter comes…#Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) December 7, 2020

2)
4. Luskan’s population is depressed due to its most recent century of lawlessness and troubles (you have to be hardy to want to live there!), and its climate, like all of the more northerly cities, falls as each winter comes…#Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) December 7, 2020

3)
…and those who can “winter over” in warmer places head for them, then rises again after the chill muddy part of spring is over, and the warmer stirrings of summer come, but in 1494 DR it never falls below 4,600 in the dead of… 4)
…winter (and is usually well over 6,200 in the height of summer).#Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) December 7, 2020

How did Mirt and others help Randal Morn free Daggerdale? I’m running a campaign set in the mid 1350s, starting with the Doom of Daggerdale; the goal is helping Randal Morn overthrow Constable Tren. The party is based in the Shadowdale of the original grey book FR. There's an unpublished Realms story of mine (written in the early 1980s) in the TSR files, TO SLAY A BLACK RAVEN, that tells that tale. Covered by an NDA, I'm afraid.#Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) December 3, 2020

Wow, so much more in the unpublished realms than even 5 editions of D&D has revealed. Thanks for answering my question, as I’ve been DMing FR since the initial grey book came out. My pleasure!
I hope someday, somehow, to share some of the literally boxes and boxes of unpublished Realmslore. Entire continents, if Wizards ever needs them (hint, hint). All I'll need is 2 months to dig through a shipping container to find the right pieces of paper.#Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) December 9, 2020

Hi @TheEdVerse what does the Yawning Portal look like from the outside?

— Lou Anders BLACK LIVES MATTER (@LouAnders) November 30, 2020

1)
Right, here we go…
The Yawning Portal fronts on Rainrun Street in Castle Ward, and rises from its cobbles four floors (ground floor, and three above). It’s been rebuilt several times after various fires and adventurer-caused… 2)
…damage, gaining a new uppermost floor in the process, and is now (1490s DR) all of mismatched, gorgon-mortared (so no teleportation through the walls) gray (unpainted) fieldstone, with three-foot-thick walls, and a…#Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) December 1, 2020

4)
…ten feet south out into Rainrun Street, and has doors at both ends, opening into a vestibule with bootjacks, a cloak and coat-hanging rack along the inside S wall, and a reception desk with a hostess and three “housejacks”…#Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) December 1, 2020

5)
…(bouncers) behind it along its N side, with an opening to pass on into, or out of, the main inn at the E end of this desk.
The shape of the building can most clearly and accurately be seen on the 2e CITY OF SPLENDORS boxed set…6)
…map (it’s Castle Ward feature 48, near the top edge of the southernmost page of the big foldout map): looked down on from above, it’s roughly a rectangle with the long axis E-W, an E wall that’s diagonal SE to NW, and a… #Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) December 1, 2020

7)
…slightly slanted (to the NW) W wall. The S wall is thirty-five feet long from its western corner to the 40-foot-long central bumpout, then runs on E for another 40 feet past the bumpout to its other end.
The N wall has a… 8)
…thirty-foot (measuring west to east) W end, then jogs slightly E of due S, S about 15 feet to the back door/deliveries door/kitchen door of the inn, which is double-width and barred (it can be unbarred, opened up, and the…#Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) December 1, 2020

9)
…bolts that anchor it down into the cibbles and up into its upper frame shot back, to fling it open wide enough for a low wagon or a full-width cart to be pushed in or pulled out, for kitchen and pantries and furniture… 10)
…access, though this is very rarely done).
This door access part of the N wall is sixteen feet wide, E-W, then runs due N twelve feet or so, to turn E and form the longest run of the inn’s N wall.
There are no windows at all on…#Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) December 1, 2020

11)
…the ground/street floor, but heavy-wood-shutter-protected (and almost always closed) windows on the S wall of the floor above, on either side of the central bumpout.
On the floor above that are smaller, also… 12)
…wooden-shuttered, windows all along the S wall, at the S end of the W wall (looking down into the alleyway), and in the center of that long easternmost run of the N wall (looking down into the interior of the city block, …#Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) December 1, 2020

13)
…behind the inn).
On both floors above that, and the attic, are small windows looking due E, in the southern end of the E wall, looking out over the roof of the inn stables (which is the long, slender building adjoining the… 14)
…Yawning Portal, butting onto its E wall and running E along Rainrun Street to touch Lankathla’s Bakery, the shop on the corner, which is only two floors tall, the uppermost being where Lantkathla Dree and her all-female…#Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) December 1, 2020

15)
…[two wives and four daughters] live, above their baking floor).
The inn has two stone chimneys rising up past its roofpeak ridge, out of both angles where its walls head N on either side of the back door (the kitchen… 16)
…chimneys), a central chimney stack that warms the main taproom and [via sub-hearths] rooms above, and additional chimneys rising out of the center of the western N wall, the W wall at its SW corner, and the S end of the…#Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) December 1, 2020

17)
…diagonal E wall (in the “point” angle of the wall, and also offering warmth to the adjacent stables).
Aside from the shaft down into Undermountain, the inn has cellars (mainly used for food, ale, and wine storage), but these… 18)
…don’t extend farther than the outer walls of the inn, except for a certain narrow secret passage running north that’s still NDA.
And lastly, the Yawning Portal has a jutting signboard (as seen on the cover of WATERDEEP, the…#Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) December 1, 2020

19)
…concluding book of the Avatar trilogy) on a pole projecting from the floor above the ground floor, out into Rainrun Street. This old sign has been salvaged through several inn rebuilds. There’s also a weathervane crowning… 20)
…the center of the E-W roofpeak, and lightning rods jutting up at both ends of said roofpeak. Locals recall a memorable night during which Mirt perched on it, singing bawdy songs, but he was likely drunk at the time.#Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) December 1, 2020

Mirt. Always has been and always will be my favorite realms’ personality.
-Ramke Hrafneldur The main character in my earliest Realms short stories. Before I even knew it was the Realms, and a good eight years before there was anything called D&D. My golden childhood, he said, bathed in the glow of nostalgia.#Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) December 1, 2020