Wait, @TheEdVerse is poking around twitter… I see him. Lets see if I can get him to answer… 🙂

Hey, Ed, what's your favorite thing about Candlekeep?

— NewbieDM (@newbiedm) March 8, 2021

1)
Heh. The secrets I haven’t revealed yet. ;}
(I’m not just being flippant. There are centuries of lore in the place. I could only share a glimpse in THE HERALD, and a little more in the Candlekeep Companion. So there’s plenty to look forward to in the forthcoming… 2)
…official Candlekeep tome. I love the lineup of adventure writers, and Chris Lindsay is good people; Candlekeep is in good hands under his watch.
But here's a secret I've never shared with him or anyone*: Candlekeep has hidden rooms. As in, hidden in solid..#Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) March 8, 2021

3)
…rock, with hourglasses that start trickling at any intrusion, to warn the arrival of how much breathing time they have left. Some of the most precious and powerful tomes are kept in these “Deep Chambers.” Anyone can leave one through a magical gate, by… 4)
…glowing pair of footprints on the floor. But to find the gate to get in, you have to peer at doorframes. As in, the right trio of doorframes, scattered among the many, many doors in Candlekeep.
And by doorframes, I mean the revealed-when-a-door-is-open edge…#Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) March 8, 2021

5)
…of the stone wall the door passes through, on the hinge side, right down where this edge meets the floor. A tiny word will be chiseled there, and a symbol. The symbol is a matching guide; it tells you which trio the word belongs to (and has no other meaning). 6)
So, stand in ANY doorway in the older stone buildings of Candlekeep and utter the words of a trio in the right order (if you don't know that order, you'll just have to experiment), and you'll be whisked to the corresponding Deep Chamber. Don't worry if you lack…#Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) March 8, 2021

7)
…a lamp; the glowing Footprints Of Return (well, that’s what Khelben calls them) will provide enough light to read by.
A Deep Chamber hosted a scene in my Realms short story THE LADY WAS NO UNICORN, written in 1967. (Yes, seven years before D&D first saw the… 8)
…light of day.
* = Except Dave Sutherland, Gary Gygax (who was delighted, and asked if he could steal the idea; I said yes, of course), and anyone at my Dad's workplace who read that early story.#Realmlore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) March 8, 2021

I hope you are well. Just a quick question: was the Welcoming Hand in Eveningstar destroyed in the “home” Realms campaign or did you destroyed it just for the TSR module? Heh. I didn't; the designers of that module did, at a time "ahead" of the date of the home Realms campaign.
In the published Realms, it was destroyed in the Goblin War and rebuilt over the next winter, reopening when trade roads saw use again, the following spring.#Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) June 27, 2021

Hi @TheEdVerse, hope you are well! Got a question about your career…

In January 1981, you joined Dragon Magazine as a contributing editor, and I'm wondering what that meant? Were you officially on staff, or was it just a fancy title for a high-end freelancer?

Thanks! MTB

— M.T. Black (@MTBlack2567) May 17, 2021

Short version: I apparently impressed Kim Mohan by submitting an article (the gates piece, that appeared in issue 37) that had footnotes. I was flooding The Dragon with submissions by then. Kim asked if I was coming to GenCon that year, and if so could we meet. I went, we… 2)
…met, and he offered me the unpaid position (masthead title); Roger E. Moore, who afterwards became a TSR staffer, also accepted a Contributing Editor position the same weekend.
Kim came from a journalism background, and needed folks who could write "to order" (on editor-…

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) May 17, 2021

4)
The Dragon was partially filled with material written by staffers (sometimes “stuff that wouldn’t fit” in published products, as this was before pixels), and otherwise by freelance submissions; the editors were sensitive to possibly offending contributors who submitted but… 5)
…didn't see their stuff used, and a masthead title was also seen as a way to assuage hurt feelings and keep gamers contributing, by providing a reason why "we keep using this guy's stuff."
But it was mainly a way to get a reliable flow of stuff that could be banked and…

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) May 17, 2021

how did you end up getting chosen to write the ixitxachitls ecology article? Kim Mohan sent me lists of monsters he wanted covered (the series came from a defunct magazine, and had a handful of ecologies already written, plus Roger and others were writing other monsters, so to avoid conflicts: the lists).

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) May 17, 2021

If I recall correctly, I did eight of them in a rush to give Kim a roster-in-hand, then smaller batches (four at a time, or a trio). It was a delight, though we didn't always have wordcount/the chance to really dig deep into "they hunt/can be deployed like this."

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) May 17, 2021

Oh, and here’s the capsule bio that Jake Jacquet wrote for you when he announced your appointment: Thanks for this. Fun days, all right. D&D was exploding in all directions. That GenCon, BTW, was at UofW-Parkside; Kim and I just banged open one of the many glass doors in the room where he was sitting at a folding table (the Dragon booth) and we went for a stroll in the park.

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) May 18, 2021

Would trial by combat be considered a legal option for settling a dispute in a city like Neverwinter or would that be considered barbaric? It would be considered barbaric.
I know, as in Realmsplay, Uthgardt barbarians visiting the city have tried to do just that. :} And lawkeepers were called. In one case, too late.
If the parties involved agree to a duel, they customarily QUIETLY go out into the forest.#Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) January 30, 2021

Does the Celtic pantheon, which some in the Realms worship due to transpheric immigration (see: Herne, Oghma, Silvanus), have any relations to the feywild and its fey inhabitants? I partially ask this because when doing research into the Celtic pantheon I found that Herne/Cernunnos, Master of the Wild Hunt, was a deity in early editions. But in 4th edition he was reimagined as an archfey with a much richer backstory. Could they be one and the same?

— Sundered|🐜|ENVTuber – Debut TBA (@Sundered_Ant) June 11, 2021

2)
…archfey.
It’s important to always bear in mind, when dealing with gods (and possible gods and demigods and divine servitors) that mortals may have false or incomplete information (clergy are often propagandists, sometimes…#Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) June 12, 2021

Yes, the Celtic pantheon is linked to the Feywild, and many deities have avatars, vestiges, and other guises in different “worlds” (alternate Prime Material Planes). So, yes, Herne is both a deity (in some places) and an…
…archfey.
It’s important to always bear in mind, when dealing with gods (and possible gods and demigods and divine servitors) that mortals may have false or incomplete information (clergy are often propagandists, sometimes…#Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) June 12, 2021

3)
…unwitting), and that some things divine may be beyond mortal comprehension, or just misunderstood by mortals, thus far. Consider that we have a “working understanding” of deities and their aims and views, not full certainty.#Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) June 12, 2021

How did you first get involved with writing Forgotten Realms for TSR? Well met, indeed!
The Realms began as the setting for my own sword-and-sorcery tales (mainly starring Mirt the Moneylender) about a decade before D&D; I was a kid exploring my father's den full of books, and really enjoying the Fafhrd & Mouser tales in issues of…#SciFiChat

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) March 5, 2021

2)
…FANTASTIC, so I decided to do my own tales. I first got hold of D&D in 1975, and thought it a fun experiment, but didn’t really settle in to regular play until 1978, when the MM and then the PHB came out, and I was delighted to find the monsters of mythology, … 3)
…plus cool new ones, all statted out in detail, and a Jack Vance/Dying Earth-style magic system on top of that! Design GOLD! So I began to express the Realms in D&D form, and by late spring of 1978 had a regular gaming group. By issue 19 of The Dragon (as the…#SciFiChat

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) March 5, 2021

4)
…mag was then known) I was a regular reader, and started writing for Dragon when given the chance to contribute new official monsters to the game. My first was the Curst, in issue 30, and I was so heartened by seeing it in print that I wrote another, the… 5)
…Crawling Claw, which appeared in issue 32, SIXTEEN DAYS after I'd mailed it off to Lake Geneva (yes, the mails were fast back then). And I was off and running, writing so much that I was invited to attend GenCon that year and offered the [unpaid] position of…#SciFiChat

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) March 5, 2021

6)
…Contributing Editor there, by Kim Mohan, which meant he could ASSIGN TOPICS to someone to write about. I put little mentions of the Realms in a lot of my pieces, so when TSR was looking for a new campaign setting, staff designer Jeff Grubb, who read DRAGON each.. 7)
…month, called me at my public library job up in Ontario, Canada, and asked, "Do you have a complete, detailed world at home, or do you make it up as you go along?"
And I answered: "Yes." (To both!) And that's how I got my start, and worked on EVERYTHING.#SciFiChat

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) March 5, 2021

@TheEdVerse We know Caladorn (Human) was wooing Lucia Thione(-Hhune) and that didnt work out, and she was human while Victoro, his half-elven. soooo… who is Victoro Cassalanter's mother?

— DJ Tigon (@djtigon) May 8, 2021

The woman who bore Victoro Casslanter went by the name “Lady Mask,” when in Waterdhavian clubs in the 1370s DR, where she fascinated Caladorn. She was a moon elf sorceress who never had any intention of marrying anyone or becoming… 2)
…part of the Deep’s nobility or even open, polite society. She kept to human form (thin, lithe, graceful, mid-calf-length glossy black hair, very large bright blue eyes customarily surrounded by black makeup) when consorting…#Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) May 9, 2021

3)
…with Caladorn, and used the name “Shalant Marndraeve.” (“Shalantra Marndrevven” in full.) She made her living under another human name and guise (as a plump, motherly blonde woman who looked about a decade older than… 4)
…Shalant, and was known as “Ardraitha Toldren”), discreetly and covertly casting covert life-useful magics for those able to afford her fees (nobles and wealthy Waterdhavians and visitors to the city). Her real name was…#Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) May 9, 2021

6))
…Duskra Wyntervar, and her identity and all of her various guises were known to her “family;” she lived quietly in North Ward with three lifelong friends who were secretly Deep-resident song and steel dragons, and acted for…
…them as an envoy and factor (trading representative).
She willingly surrendered her infant son to Caladorn to be raised as his heir, and even (as “Ravendra Emrespur,” borrowing the surname of a long-defunct family who’d once…#Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) May 9, 2021

7)
…been minor Tethyrian gentry; this was something of an in-joke because various traveling actors and investors had in the past borrowed the Emrespur name for their own various false identities, so there are now Emrespurs… 8)
…everywhere in Faerûn) married him in a private ceremony, months before Victoro’s birth, to make the boy legitimate.
Although she often visited Caladorn by night, and mothered her baby on such occasions (which is where he…#Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) May 9, 2021

9)
…learned the beginnings of Draconic and Elvish), she had almost nothing to do with the naming and raising of Victoro beyond that, something she was glad of in later years, when he turned to evil.
After Caladorn became Open Lord…
…of Waterdeep, Lady Mask quietly vanished from the city. It’s thought that she and her family relocated to Everlund, and all took new names and guises, to found new lives in the North working to strengthen alliances and ties…#Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) May 9, 2021

11)
…within the Silver Marches (between dwarves and everyone else). Her life beyond that, and her fate, are currently unknown.#Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) May 9, 2021

Did Elminster's mage sight come from being reborn as a chosen, or did he have that before? Is there any _other_ way to get such a magic sight?

— Seer Snively (@SeerSnively) February 1, 2021

1)
Elminster’s mage sight came from his intimate contact with Mystra (see the closing pages of ELMINSTER: THE MAKING OF A MAGE); she changed him as she claimed him, to forge him into the Chosen she wanted him to be.
Anyone who…2)
…gets sufficiently attuned to the Weave can attain mage sight in this way; all of the Chosen, for instance, or anyone else I’ve dubbed a “Weavemaster” (to signal their attunement) gains it, but there are non-spellcasters in…#Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) February 1, 2021

3)
…the Realms who gain it merely by handling or being in the close company of an artifact or magical radiations or a sufficiently-powerful magic item for long enough (e.g. children who’ve grown up wearing a powerful magic ring… 4)
…on a necklace as a “family talisman” slowly gain mage sight).#Realmslore

— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) February 1, 2021