Howdy @TheEdVerse, what are the 'grottos' spoken of when people call Loudwater 'The City of Grottos'?
— Drew Calderone (@IslamAndDragons) January 3, 2022
Hi!
Due to the longtime dominance of elves in Loudwater, the now-city (though in population it’s shrunk back to town size) looks like a garden, with winding paths and streets, many trees and garden beds, and manicured lawns and… 2)
…bowers (as beautiful and garden-like as the best parts of Everlund and Silverymoon).
From the earliest times of local settlement, elves beautified the few local natural caves (mainly narrow crevices in Standing Stone Hill)…#Realmslore— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) January 3, 2022
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…with planted mosses, hanging plants, piped trickling water, and faerie fire lighting effects; these were the earliest grottoes/grottos.
As Loudwater expanded and more gardens were built as residential neighbourhoods, … 4)
…artificial grottoes were constructed. This building reached a height when the ugly land clearances done under Rensha rule were remedied. Many of these ‘built’ grottoes contain benches for sheltering from rain and winter…#Realmslore— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) January 3, 2022
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…winds, and lead to “back entrances” into the storage cellars of abodes. No one’s ever formally counted these constructed grottoes, but there are over seventy, in addition to the fourteen to seventeen (depending on whether or… 6)
…not you count crawl-crevices as grottoes; children do, but seniors tend not to) natural local caves. None of them are large; artificial or natural, they tend to be two small caverns joined by a narrow passage, at best.#Realmslore— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) January 3, 2022
Thank you very much, comrade! But now I'm wondering: does Loudwater cut through a hillside or something for the natural grottoes to exist?
— Drew Calderone (@IslamAndDragons) January 3, 2022
No. Loudwater stands at the confluence of the Delimbiyr and Greyflow rivers, and in the highest spring floods (during years of heavy snows, and so, the largest melts), water runs everywhere. Including into the soft limestone of Standing Stone Hill and other local.. 2)
…hills. Any water that remains in the rock when temperatures drop to freezing (NEXT winter) will freeze (expand, cracking rock or widening existing crevices), then eventually thaw, melt and run off. Only to repeat the process every freeze-up. So, as in our…#Realmslore— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) January 3, 2022
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..real world, crevice-caves form (and expand) over time.
[In my youth and teenaged years, I explored a lot of caves, and liked to put them in the Realms. Someone other than me put them in Loudwater, but the moment they did, I knew what the natural origins must be.]#Realmslore— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) January 3, 2022
there’s more–So Loudwater is still reduced in size? Storm King’s Thunder seemed to imply that it’d recouped it’s losses from the Spellplague It is. SKT includes the population of the new satellite settlements (suburbs, but there's actually farmland between them and the city) to the southwest, south, and southeast.
As they're resisted the taxation and census attempts of Loudwater, they're independent.#Realmslore— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) January 4, 2022