How do you approach canon at your #ttrpg table? #dnd #dungeonsanddragons https://t.co/c9K6dpLxoK

— RPG Match – connecting TTRPG players (@RpgMatch) August 1, 2021

1)
Heh.
Canon.
One historical note re. Chris’s column: streets in cities appear, disappear, and get renamed all the time, so changing a street name is realistic; it makes a city feel alive.
If 5-year-old me hadn’t been raised by an elderly aunt familiar only with older British… 2)
…usage, "Slut Street" would never have been named as such.
To us, nowadays, it's a pejorative with a sexual connotation. Back then, in that place, it was a less polite way of saying "slattern." That is, a dirty person with slovenly habits. Meaning: working poor.#Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) August 1, 2021

3)
…and no more than that (there were all sorts of names, nasty and otherwise, for prostitutes). What I MEANT was that many of the working drudges of Waterdeep (who cooked and cleaned homes and privies, and did laundry, and carried away garbage, all belonging to… 4)
…other folks who'd pay them, lived in small rented upper rooms along Slut Street, and over time the street had acquired a fitting name ("Anathae lives where all the other sluts do, along Slut Street. She's southfront, two floors above Uldro's Smoked Fish").#Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) August 1, 2021

5)
Interestingly, a woman only three years younger than I am, born in Canada, ONLY knew “slut” with a sexual connotation, so the widespread change in meaning hadn’t caught up to my elderly aunt, and therefore me. I should have changed it when turning over the… 6)
…Waterdeep lore to TSR back in 1986, but was too busy finding all the papers and photocopying them and getting them couriered or mailed and keeping up with specific lore requests, at the time.
Perfect example of a change that should have been made. Not out of…#Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) August 1, 2021

7)
…prudery, but because it conveys the wrong impression, and can offend, but for no good story reason.#Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) August 1, 2021

@TheEdVerse, I'm in need of your help (again, lol).
What kind of products the traders of Tarmalune sell that are unique to Laerakond? Stuff that you can get only there?

Thank you in advance for any help you can give me 🙂

— Jon Gomez / Zero ~ 🇨🇴 (@ZeromaruX) August 8, 2021

1)
After the Spellplague, dragonbane amber (see the FR wiki for a summary) was the big draw, but before and after the Spellplague, gems of large size and high purity (free of flaws and occlusions) shipped out of Stormhelm in…2)
…Eskorn (mainly sapphires and jacinths and moonstones, which can of course be had from Faerûn, but usually not so large and fine), and “dragonscent” perfumes and moisturizing oils (developed from dragon dung, though the…#Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) August 8, 2021

3)
…“dung” part is kept a trade secret) exported from Melabrauth.
Also, although the following trade goods were expensive even in Tarmalune and therefore doubly so when traded into Faerûn, many unique herbs, wines, cooking and… 4)
…many unique herbs, wines, cooking and lubricant oils, and lotions for healing and smoothing skin, from Gontal. (Not to mention potions and golemwork toys, though the supply of these was sporadic, and they could be had only in…#Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) August 8, 2021

5)
…very small amounts.) Tarmalune also has access to platinum from mines controlled by Sambral, and fine textiles from Imdolphyn that have caught on in Athkatla and Calimport.#Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) August 8, 2021

The questioner brought up Eberron and that reminded me of a question of my own; do the Realms have airships and what type are they? Or did those become mythical after the fall of Netheril? No, not mythical. There've always been airships in the Realms, from my long-ago DRAGON article through the spelljamming ships in the skies of the Realms described in Spelljammer to the airships in the 4e Realms core book (3 different sorts, right there).#Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) July 26, 2021

i didn’t think I’d ever have to look into this, but does the concept of war crimes exist in the realms? Yes, but not because of any universally-accepted legal code. In the Realms, the concept is entertained and applied within faiths (and treated differently from church to church; clerics of Ilmater see things differently from clerics of Tempus, for example).#Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) September 6, 2021

what would be a suitable name in Rashemi for a small fishing village at the mouth of River Ashan? I’m going to run The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh in Rashemen. Here are four possibilities, from my old, faint pencil Rashemen notes:
Ishtel, Telmar, Ultanir, Yarloran#Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) October 16, 2021

Hope your medical issues are treating you well @TheEdVerse. I have a hopefully simple question – what exactly are the "torchtowers" in Waterdeep? I get the impression they are like signal towers, but are they a specific set of towers?

— Sundered|🐜|ENVTuber (@Sundered_Ant) October 17, 2021

1)
I’m tired from my annual stress echo, but okay, just suffering through the 2 weeks of wearing a Holter heart monitor that gets in the way of everything.
Every tower along the city walls has three beacon-fires laid ready for lighting (if a beacon has to be kept… 2)
…alight a long time, the unlit two get cannibalized as fuel for the lit one, as more firewood is brought up from storerooms below in the tower), but "torchtowers" is the collective name for wall-towers that aren't also city gates or major "moot-towers" where…#Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) October 17, 2021

3)
…walls meet. So any "just another tower" along the wall is a torchtower. (Every walltower contains dungeon cells, a Watch "ready room," locked storage rooms for evidence/confiscated items retention, some bedchambers and garderobes, and a tiny armory.)#Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) October 17, 2021

What form would a cleric of Waukeen’s Spiritual Weapon spell take? Or their Spirit Guardians? Thanks in advance. 1)
The preferred spiritual weapon form for a cleric of Waukeen is a chain of alternating razor-sharp-edged coins (gilded, but hard alloy, not soft gold) and gilded links of chain, wielded like a flail.
The Spirit Guardian usually…#Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) August 30, 2021

2)
…takes the form of whirling columns of many disembodied human hands, counting stacks of phantom coins (spectral gold discs that appear and disappear constantly as they leave or approach the moving fingers of the hands).#Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) August 30, 2021

I know that you’re an Ontarioan (my fave part of Canada) … so I’m curious that when you walk outside your home, what part of Faerûn do you feel like you “are in” at that moment? I guess taking into consideration your terrain, elevation, climate, etc. Thank you! I have 4 and a half acres in the country, 4 wooded, nigh Lake Ontario…so to me, it feels like the Cormyr shore near the Sembian border…or the southernmost Dales, verging into Sembia, or near Secomber, or the northern side of the mountains that form the northern border of Amn.

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) November 16, 2018

Hm … interesting answers, Ed. So you kinda envision Lake Ontario as the far west arm of the Sea of Fallen Stars? And you’re somewhere between Westgate & Urmlaspyr?

Thx for your insights, Ed! I’m sure you get a lot of ?’s about the FR’s corollaries to our world’s geography…a tad colder than the Dragonmere, would be a fairly close equivalent. And I'd be somewhere between Moonever and Urlmaspyr. NOT a direct locational analogy, but the same type of temperate mixed woodland, with weather extremes moderated by close proximity to a large water body.

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) November 17, 2018

Heh. A pleasure! Drop by whenever you're near Moonever, and I'll have warm broth, cold ale, and little cakes ready. ;}

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) November 18, 2018