Cormyr and the Dalelands

Hey everyone,

So we've had a number of new(er) players come through, some of whom may have some, little, or even no knowledge of the Forgotten Realms, I figured I'd toss some things out there on how we see it all fitting together in a roleplay environment. We do want to try and maintain consistent lore, because it's really difficult to play when nobody can agree on how the world works (or similar). At the same time, we don't want to require anyone to complete a dissertation on FR in order to play here - we want to welcome everyone, and get them involved, and they can pick things up as they go. Lastly, we also want to avoid things breaking down into arguments, because that's really not fun for anyone involved.

So what does that all mean?

Well, for one, here are my thoughts on how I try to handle it.

1) People can be ICly wrong
There's nothing that says people in FR know everything about their world. Look at how many people don't even agree on facts in our modern world in the information age, and imagine how that would be in a medieval or renaissance era. Back in those days people believed things like that the earth was flat, or that the sun revolved around the earth. So, it's perfectly fine if characters are ICly wrong about stuff, even if you think the player should know better.

If it's somehow something critical to your character, then it's likely best to get one of the admins, though hopefully this won't be the case. We'd much rather have someone bring something to us than have it turn into a big argument that spills from IC into OOC.

2) Corrections are best kept as mild suggestions at most, and with an IC 'out'
If someone is clearly off base about something, it usually helps to respond in a way that gives them an excuse and lets them save face. For instance, someone with a book knowledge of the FRCS but not about our in-game events might assume that Myrmeen Lhal is still in charge of Arabel, rather than having gone to command the garrison in Castle Crag. Responding with something like "Oh, hadn't you heard?" can work better than just OOCly correcting them. Similarly, even an OOC correction might go something on those lines of "Your character might not know/be aware of X, but my understanding is that the server has always played that it's really Y". Tone is also key - "I may be wrong, but it was my understanding that X isn't the case, it's Y, you might want to check with the admins" comes off better than "You're wrong, it's Y".

And of course, direct any questions to us.

Anyone else have any thoughts/suggestions for how to help newer players, or resolve such things?

I'd like to see this information in the journal. Could be "Nobility and People of Note" or simply "People of Note" heading? This way... it is accessible when veteran players or staff aren't around to offer guidance. Include the name, title and a brief overview of their responsibilities and influences. Just something to provide working knowledge until the player hops on the forums for more detailed information or is able to ask someone. Sound good?

It would be nice to have a CD chronicle timeline with some loose information on what's happened publicly so far. If for no other reason than it would be an awesome credit to the efforts of players so far. If we really want to go banannas maybe we can employ some of our artistic tallents and illustrate some awesome document

I've actually wanted to see about putting together a CD Wiki or something... I vaguely recall someone suggesting doing so in the past, but either it never got around to happening or it didn't stick around long if it did.

I sure as heck know I wouldn't mind putting my DM plots and the things my characters have done on there, and I wouldn't mind working with a few volunteers for purposes of quality control and such.

liked, liked, a thousand times liked!

It does stuff

I can forge...I mean... art some documents and stuff, general IC lore stuff, for anyone that's interested. Send information my way and I can work on doing some things.

While I like the idea of a CD Wiki (Gatecrashers did the same way back in the day, and I loved that thing - it was fun to do PC write-ups from an IC perspective on them) I do think there should be a caution given that just because it's on the wiki, just like it being in any source material, doesn't mean your PC knows it. Just because there's a note in the journal...doesn't mean your PC knows it. If they can't make the respective lore or knowledge check...they don't know it. They can think they do and be wrong, as Fire pointed out, and it's totally okay for a PC to be wrong, but accepting that means that we as players have to set aside our pride in our perceived knowledge of source and recognize that our characters are imperfect people, and just like us, sometimes they can be wrong - even when we are right on an OOC level.

A note to add to CM here, even if your character is right, I think we should be open to them being 'convinced' that they're wrong, even if you know better OOCly. People do that RL all the time, they convince other people of their bullshit despite the victim party being wiser in a particular case. Be open to the spreading of falsehoods! Let Cyric reign!

~BR

This would be the purpose of things like bluff and persuade, and while the server stance is that these skills are not required for player-to-player interactions, I often employ them myself to determine -how- to rp a situation rather than just as a number (big or small) that tells -another- player how they should react. So...if I roll low, I'll rp what my character says with hints and signs that it's not true or not convincing and so forth.

But I've been told by an admin before specifically that these 'social' skills are not required in player-to-player interactions unless a DM overseeing an event specifies they are. For non-overseen rp it is up to individual players whether or not they want to employ these skills and to what extent they can be effective.

Yes - we want to try and avoid anyone feeling like they're getting beaten over the head and forced to RP something they disagree with. Using social skills to resolve things is fine, as long as both players can agree on the terms of the check (like, I tell a lie, you try to see through it, or such). We'd rather avoid hurt feelings on stuff that edges into "what my character's RP is", because it's certainly possible for a player who knows OOCly that things are a certain way, to deliberately play an ignorant character, for instance.

Edge you and I talked about setting up a CD timeline before my hiatus. I can  fill in a lot of story line between October 2006- May 2009 and August 2010- Feb 2014. I might still have my notes for this. I will need to look around.


forums.cormyrdalelands.com/index.php?topic=277

If someone is looking for info on Cormyr or where to find  it. This link if you avoid the 4e stuff put at the begining has a ton of information on where to find info.

One thing I think should be included in any lore/timeline is to note the things that have not happened or have happened differently on CD from the canon books. Lolth's Silence for example never occurred on CD. A repercussion of that is that on CD's timeline Ched Nasad was not destroyed .  Events like this and others "from the books" in that whole series and many others did not occur. I don't think we need to go through ever book and say this did or did not happen, but major events from the books that some people may think have occurred should be specifically mentioned as having occurred or not.

Totally agree. I always have to look at dates and events. Did it happen before 1372? Alright I am good.

Yeah the lack of Lolth's Silence and the Rage of Dragons are probably the two big ones.

The cut off date is 1372 right? With a few exceptions, such as Lolth's Silence which happens during the second half of 1372 and the early part of 1373. That's what I was told when I was looking into this place, and it would be in line with the server lore being based off of the 3.0/3.5 FRCS.

That's correct.

The Rage of Dragons was supposed to happen in 1376 I believe, which is the server's current year IIRC.

From Vince in the Player REsources section:

We are presently in winter/spring of 1378 DR. Some of the more recent events are not canon on CD. (specifically between 1372-1374DR)

~BR

Yes.. I've seen that post... I was just saying it would be good for us to have somewhere specifically with the timeline a note for some of the major events that did not occur such as the two Edge mentioned. 

I like this idea. At the very latest, we know the FR lore which is not canon is everything past the 27th of Eleasias, 1372 DR (the 28th was the Silence of Lolth).

I'll see if I can grab some major events and put together some rudimentary timeline to point out where things diverge. Sounds like a lot of fun! Any ideas for big events that should be plotted for sure? Time of Troubles of course.

The biggest overall plotlines on CD itself that I can think of were the War with the City of Shade and the Rise of the Drow Matron Zauervs. The former I was not around for; the latter ended in January of 2011 (I spent the past ten minutes digging through my logs to find it!) and had been going on for most if not all of 2010 and possibly prior.

FW I think would be the one to fill in the gaps about the Shade plot, though there may be others who know it just as well, and the Matron plot was almost 100% Arya's.

That is correct.  The Matron Zauervs' Ambitions plot started in 2009 and ended very much right after new years of 2011.  While not the longest server wide plot CD had, it had its long term impact on the server. It was able to take off after the conclusion of a previous plot.

Sincerely,
Arya

Do you have any idea of the ingame year of those events so I can put them on the CD branch of the timeline? I was told the years don't go 1-1 with our own (which is going to introduce a particular trouble for my journal for Angelina ). If it was 1-1 and was in 2009, that would put it 6 years ago, so 1378-6=1372. Probably immediately after the timeline branches mid-year in 1372. Was that when the server was created?

Spring 2009 to Spring 2001 would be from 1372 to 1374, wouldn't it?

Need confirmation on that.

~Arya

If I remember correctly...

Book I was some stuff with Bandits that never started/finished, and we skipped ahead. Say 1372. 
Book II was the Shadovar War.  Say Roughly 1373-1374.
Book III was the Drow Plot.  Say Roughly 1375ish.
Book IV was the Whispers.  Say Roughly 1376-77ish.
Book V is where we are now, so 1377+.

Also, we haven't been running at 1:1 time the whole way. The original plan was that RL time would be fluid, and things would vary based on the amount of time spent on a particular story phase, meaning that a "summer" season could last a year or two if it was an important one with lots happening, or we could have things pass quickly when stuff got quiet. But everyone seemed to feel more comfortable with an even pace where RL roughly matches in game season, so we've sort of shifted to that.

Would you be willing to write up a brief description of these chapters? I am currently going through every source I have and making a mega timeline for FR, going from creation to 1372. Then I am going to split it into two sections, one for official lore up to probably 1385 (Spellplague, easy to distinguish what is post-spellplague), and then one for a brief series of CD's timeline.

There was a wiki initiative that me and a few others pet-projected years ago. But wikispaces shut it down, so now it's dead.




...Jim...

Here is my quick brief synopsis of the ones I remember:

Book 2: A war with the Shadovar. It started slow with skirmishes. Things I remeber specifically as a DM or PC. Certain Harper PCs snuck into the Shadovar camps and stole a bunch of maps and plans and handed them over to the War Wizards. The biggest battle of it all was at Halfhap where the town was destroyed. The most I remember about it was that Victoria Jora and Merisha Lancaster were given Purple Dragon Knight Status after the War and final battle at Halfhap.

Book 3: I missed a bunch of the beginning as it was elven focused for a while and didn't have an elf. I know that at some point at the begining Algon Griff sacrificed himself to prevent a mountain from destroying Suzail. It ended with a major cooperation between the Elves, Eliastreans, Purple Dragon PCs and, certain adventurers in defense of Velethuil and Berrybriar and a counter attack on the Matron. Anivaro and Zander coordinated (probably the hardest and most fun RP of my life) between the groups with many meetings at the Temple of Thundarlun and the Purple Dragon Barracks. Galdern led the Elven mages in a magical defense if I remember right. Anivaro led an assualt on the Matron with elves and adventurers. Zander led the Purple Dragons in an outer defense of Velethuil. Wulgar led the defense of Berrybriar. It ended with the defeat of the Matron and a large celebration afterwards. I am not sure what happened with other pcs but, Zander was given Sha'quessir (spelling) status and Knighted as a Purple Dragon Knight. The biggest take from it all was it was the first united fight against an enemy combining the elves of Velethuil and the adventurers of Cormyr.

Book 4: The whispers screwed everyone up! Was only involved in a handful of things when it directly affected me (not a fan of Far Realm stuff so I avoided it like the plague)

Thanks! I'll add that to the list. I am up to the Fifth Crown War on my timeline. Once I am done and up to the split, I'll post it up in a new thread here.

Posting this here to avoid cluttering up the timeline thread itself.

Val, all references to Primordials are, I'm 99% sure, 4e canon and beyond only. Prior to that they were referred to as ancient gods or similar terms, but never using the Primordial name or the associated adjustments to their history with regards to an ancient Gods vs. Primordials war.

Yes, you have to be kind of careful, because they started retconning stuff into FR history and the timeline to make 4th Edition's stuff make sense, like it was all foretold (which is BS). They only started doing that about midway through 3.5, so like... any publication after 2006 or so, even if it's not supposedly 4th edition, may need to be taken with a grain of salt.

That was something I was really torn up on as I went through what I've done so far, because a lot of this information that does occur in FR history, we don't learn about until after CDs era in comparable RL time. So the question I was wondering when approaching this was: Is something not canon because it is after 1372? Or is it not canon because we learn about it happening in the past in a later edition, even if that information is relevant to a time period that is in CD's history? After all, though we don't know they are primordials... (Edge you are definitely right, the source is the 4.0 FRCS) They are primordials, right? We just didn't know it at the time. So it is sort of the question between getting a snapshot of what we knew of the lore back in the early 2000s our time? Or should I be trying to get an accurate picture of the setting up to 1372 DR with all information we know about Faerun up to that point?

The book that the -vast- majority of this information is from is the Grand History of the Realms, which is a 3.5 book published in 2007, when the ingame setting was at 1375... So the book is giving information about Faerun from a time post-1372. Since virtually all of this would be missing, I wanted to go for the route of having all known information about the Realms up to 1372. But I can definitely see how it could be better to use more of a snapshot of what was known back in the early 2000s when 3.0 first hit, or when 3.5 first hit. I think when I finish it, I'll make a copy of the completed timeline with all information, and then skim it down to only information we knew back then when the ingame setting was at 1372.

Any opinions on that? Accuracy of the setting up to 1372 with all available information vs accuracy of the setting from when it was when 3.0/3.5 IRL? I can definitely see both.

Edit: Which stuff was retconned for 4e? I know they added in a "ooooohhhh the Sundering actually -also- went to the Future!" for the 5e setting. The only major retcon I remember is in 3.0 when FR was published with its own cosmological model and removed virtually all connections to Planechase stuff (at least according to Candlekeep's description of the 2e->3e transition).

That's actually really the point of contention.

If you ask a 4/5e player/GM, then usually the answer is yes, they were always Primordials, we just didn't know it.

But if you ask a 3e or prior player/GM who doesn't use 4/5e continuity, they'll usually say no, there's no such thing as Primordials, that was a 4e creation/retcon; the things they changed to call Primordials in the newer editions were just ancient gods in the older, with no universal thing that divided them from the rest of the Pantheon.

Since we are an exclusively 3.5-canon setting server, I recommend going with the latter, and avoiding references to anything such as Primordials that was established, changed, or renamed in the 4e conversion.

Alright, going to gut the list substantially. I tend to use the full breadth of lore, and just make the edition be the cut off point, and then people think about what they know about things at that point (such as the Great Wheel cosmology is believed in 1358, but the World Tree is actually what is going on, it just isn't discovered until the 1360s and 1370s with the 2e->3e shift. It doesn't mean, at least to me, that the World Tree wasn't there in 2.0, it just means people in that time period didn't know about it yet).

Give me a bit, and I'll edit the changes in.

Yeah, that's pretty much the jist of it. To me, they rewrote all of FR for 4th edition, and made sweeping retroactive changes. I don't accept those, and nor have we as CD been willing to accept those for our game - which predated the changes they were making, for one.

Things like... there never was a separation of two parallel worlds, "Abeir-Toril" is just a fancier name for the same world, the way it always was until they took some obscure 1st edition reference and retconned a bunch of stuff behind it.

Things like the gods really are separate - Sehanine isn't Selune, Talos isn't Gruumsh, or any of that BS (though divine portfolios can merge, be absorbed, gods can die off, etc, just none of that stuff from 4th).

Augh, I'd forgotten about the "X god was really Y in disguise all along!" retcons.... haaaaaaaate... hate hate hate hate hate...!!

Okay, so then I would like a tiny bit of clarification for updating this:

Can we consider all earlier edition lore canon, insofar as it doesn't conflict or get changed by a later edition, with 3.5e being the final say on whatever question is presented?

So for example, there are only 3 FRCS, the 2e, the 3e, and the 4e. From what I can see, there's no unique 3.5 FRCS, but there is a 3.5 player's guide. So, can we take the 3e FRCS as canon unless one the 3.5 FR source books is in conflict? So the 3.5 FR source book overrides the 3.0 FRCS, but if the 3.5 source books have no say on the matter, then we can go with the 3.0 FRCS content?

Another big one is the Crown Wars. The 3.0 FRCS dedicates a paragraph to the Crown Wars, while most of the information on the wiki about them comes from stuff like the 2e book Cormanthyr: Empire of the Elves, or the 2e novel Evermeet: Island of the Elves which gives all the backstory about arrival of the elves to Toril and the Sundering which created Evermeet... Are these sources valid since they expand in detail upon content that 3.0 and 3.5 books don't retcon?

And last big thing to ask: The 3.5 book The Grand History of the Realms was released in 2007 and in FR time, was 1375ish. Is this book canon for all information up to 1372? If not, are all 3.5 books which are past 1372 not canon?

Thanks, knowing the answer to this will help a lot in making this timeline as CD friendly as possible!

In the absence of anything from the 3.0 FRCS overruling them, 2e and earlier sources are perfectly valid. There wasn't much in the way of retconning done until you get to 4th edition. We've used a lot of 2e sources, as well as 1st edition sources, in making CD.

Lastly - anything printed from 2006 on is suspect. The Grand History of the Realms is a classic example of one of the products they put out where they tried to ram in a bunch of retcon-y stuff in preparation for 4th Edition. You're much better off using the timelines from the earlier 3rd/2nd/1st edition works.

Oh, and we also still use the classic Planescape Great Wheel cosmology, not anything FR specific from 3rd edition. Any FR planes are found on their respective Great Wheel Counterparts, or generally in proximity thereabouts. This includes things like the Fugue, etc - they exist, but they're somewhere either on an existing plane, or as an adjacent plane/subplane/demiplane/etc.

In short, any place referenced in 3e's cosmology exists, and so does anything related to Sigil/the classic Great Wheel, and so forth. Forgotten Realms sites have their significance, so for instance, the Fugue is where all dead souls go to first. It's located somewhere near/on/attached to Concordant Opposition. Brightwater exists, and is a part of Arborea/Olympus/etc. The Demonweb Pits exist, and are a plane of the Abyss. Etc etc...

What does this mean? Well, really the only significant difference is in whether you can travel from Plane A to Plane B, and how difficult it is. We tend to use the Great Wheel setup for that, is the answer, but there are portals to/from all sorts of places, especially Sigil.

Yeah, putting this up on a post for new players would be really nice (as SO mentioned, but deleted), because personally, if I knew, I wouldn't have even started here to be honest. When I first heard someone say the Wheel was still something characters in CD believe in 1378 DR, I asked Vincent, and he said this is 3.5 and to go by the 3.5 cosmological model of the World Tree. Letting people know ahead of time would be nice so they don't do as I did and get into something that they don't want to be a part of. Probably best for someone else to make the timeline, someone more in tuned with how you all are applying the lore.

Part of this is that it hasn't come up, because for the most part, what we use is a system designed to incorporate enough of both. We weren't going to just throw out Sigil and Planescape, because a lot of our players and DMs happen to like using those settings. I personally don't see any reason why the two have to be exclusionary.

I've told you several times that, yes, the Fugue is the destination of all souls in our setting, just like it is in 3/3.5 FRCS and follow on supplements. Kelemvor has his city there, with the wall of the faithless and all.

Sigil also happens to be a place, with lots of portals. There are also a LOT of other planes out there, because it's a very big multiverse.

I'm really not sure why this is such a massive problem. None of it invalidates anything with any character created in the mindset of the FRCS. In fact, that's sort of the point - this is the compromise we/I came up with to explain and make coherent the fact that people have been freely using and mixing both 3e and Planescape cosmology from the beginning of the server, in order to not just invalidate what the vast majority had played out.

Scary thing about the plot and a tribute to Arya Algons death was maybe the halfway point, but it was that point of escalation from an Elf problem to a Server problem. Key moments from prior to that. i would say the biggest one would be the Treehouse, changing from Vhaerunite to Lolthite controlled, and no one is quite sure if they are better off or not. On the one hand the Lolthites are more powerful and dangerous on the other hand, it had the nickname Treehouse of horror for a reason, and the Vhaerunites where truely... foul. In the end tis likely a wash, the Lolthites are more powerful but they will just kill you or enslave you.

Other than that I'd also say that key moments I witnessed would be the embaresment of the Shevarash worshippers and their later redemption. Many of the Cult in the region followed a man who later turned out to have been under the control of the Spider Queen. They later redeemed themselves leading a suicide charge into the Underdark buying a group of adventurers time to get out with vital information that later saved Velethuil.

And lastly the defeat of the Matron as mentioned included a multi front battle against the forces of the underdark not just Drow by this point, that while won, did lead to the loss of the Elven Elder that had been acting as the general of Velethuils fight against the Matron both at first behind the scenes and later on the battlefield. That and it may be useful to note that Velethuil is now protected by a Mythal that makes it very difficult for Drow to enter, even if they are Eilistraeens.

There was a lot more but obviously the main bits are stuff that still might affect players today. (Algon I believe became a Saint for example so that may impact folks faithful to Ilmater)

Oh great, so there is a timeline already made which is what Onivel was looking for, though with an added section about the timeline on CD so far since 1372. It would be nice to add a note to that page about the peculiar arrangement of the unique cosmology used here as described by Fire up above.

Probably says about how long it's been since I looked at that forum that I didn't know/remember that was even there.

Well... that certianly changes some things for the drow RP. It was my understanding from a long ways back that we treated Lolth's Silence as never having happened in our timeline. We've treated places like Ched Nasad and Maerimydra as still being there and functioning normally. In fact we have Maerimydra listed as the location of the primary House for the Doth'isheal clan.

Yeah, I missed that. I was under the impression for years now that Lolth's Silence never happened on CD.

It was something we brushed over, because it was something that was said to have occured right around the start of the campaign. Regardless, it was a minor incident in CD, rather than anything of particular importance.

We still do need our own timeline created, with such stated, and continuing on into summaries of each book.  I would do it, but... well... I'm already pulling almost 12 hour workdays currently.

Sounds like something we admins should probably get settled before we put something new up. I could volunteer to take over doing the timeline from this point on, though I'd need some assistance in filling in the parts of CD I wasn't here for.

Honestly the background/history of the Realms is less of an issue to me - beyond making sure we don't get any 4e dribbled on it - than codifying the stuff that's actually happened on CD and the stuff that canon says happened that didn't.

I can help with that, Edge.

I can probably also write up an explanation of the cosmology, how we square all the FR-specific stuff with everything at the periphery, etc.

Between all of us, and the DMs, we should be able to pull this together.  We've just never had the time or resources prior.

I can recall alot

Book IV: The Whispers

It started largely unnoticed.

The ones who already teetered on insanity were the most susceptible, and few pay attention to the ravings of known madmen. A few of the Selunites noticed something was different, in the Arabel Asylum, but it was only when it began to spread beyond that the rumors began to spread of people hearing strange voices, almost like whispers just beyond the edge of their hearing.

The temples tried to care for the afflicted, but it only grew worse, and soon random people were driven to bouts of madness. Word spread of people discovered in back alleys, butchered as if by some strange, massive beast, though none were ever to be seen.

As the plague of madness worsened, groups of adventurers sought information wherever they could, desperate to learn more. The very research itself proved dangerous at times, and attempt to discover more led to the Mages' Guild of Arabel, the Violet Flame, having its entire tower sucked into a strange nightmare pocket.

Through many false leads, forgotten histories, and ancient legends, the source of the madness was determined to lie somewhere within a ruined outpost of the fallen Empire of Netheril, atop a mountain near the great desert of Anauroch. The Steel Regent, Princess Alusair of Cormyr, led an expedition to the peak, along with a troop of soldiers, the Mage Royal of Cormyr, Caladnei, and a group of adventurers.

In the depths of the partially buried fortress, those adventurers would find a dark secret - the prison of a strange and powerful entity from the Far Realm, whose bindings had weakened slowly through the ages. The creature taunted the adventurers, even from within its bindings, and showed them visions of the past - of great and momentous events in Cormyr and Faerûn's history, that it claimed to have been the hand behind, time and again bringing death and ruin. The adventurers then faced the guardians of the beast, as well as its possessed avatar, in a climactic battle whereby its corporeal form was destroyed, banishing it to its plane of origin, and unleashing massive amounts of energy as the prison crumbled.

Meanwhile, on the surface, as rifts opened and battles waged, the adventurers emerged, watching in horror as a final rift opened beneath both the Princess Regent and the Mage Royal, swallowing them both, disappearing in an instant, the great danger vanquished - but not without cost.

Book II: The Shadow War

Although Cormyr and the Shadovar had fought previously, following the appearance of the city of Shade above the Anauroch, the two had settled into a relative peace following the indecisive and costly battle that destroyed the city of Tilverton. This would change with the arrival of a delegation of Shadovar, led by the Archwizard Hadrhune, at the gates of the Cormyrian settlement of Halfhap. The Dark Wizard issued an ultimatum on behalf of the Prince of Shade, demanding that Cormyr formally cede both the town of Halfhap, and all lands north of the Storm Horns. Unsurprisingly, Cormyr refused the absurd demand, and the Shadovar declared war.

For the most part, the war went poorly for Cormyr, as the Shadovar had organized armies from the orc, goblin, and ogre tribes of the Stonelands, augmented by fearsome shadow wizards, who methodically captured or eliminated all the northern outposts one by one, save for the town of Halfhap itself, which was put under siege. Cormyr's War Wizards mobilized to keep the town supplied through portals and other means, and harassing raids were conducted on the relatively poorly disciplined humanoid hordes. At the same time, the Shadovar conducted raids of their own into Cormyr, including one attack on Arabel that burned the city's temple of Sune.

As the war continued into winter, Cormyr was forced to turn to additional measures to mobilize sufficient troop numbers, including a key decision to turn the city of Arabel over to a council of nobles, merchants, and locals, who in turn raised a city guard, freeing the city's Purple Dragon garrison to move north, under the command of Myrmeen Lhal, to reinforce Castle Crag, a key fortress protecting the pass through the Storm Horns through which the Shadovar could have threatened the rest of Cormyr.

Come spring, with the siege progressing, both sides became increasingly desperate, though the Shadovar seemingly moreso. Attempts to assault the town directly increased in tempo, until finally, the Shadovar launched an all-out attack. As the battle raged in and around the town, the Dark Wizard Hadrhune led a contigent straight to the heart of the town, ignoring all else to make for a seemingly meaningless hill. He was met there by a group of adventurers from Cormyr, along with War Wizards and others, who engaged him in a determined battle. At the key moment, the Shade's magical wards all suddenly disappeared, as if stripped away by some unseen force, leaving him vulnerable. Dying, he hurled a powerful bolt of dark energy to the ground beneath him, tearing a crater in the ground.

With the leader of the invading force dead, the hordes largely panicked and fled, followed by their now outmatched Shadovar counterparts. The next day, a delegation of Shadovar led by one of the Princes of Shade, Rivalen Tanthul, came with an offer of formal peace, relinquishing the claims made thereby, seeing no interest in continuing a war for whom the staunchest advocate now lay dead. Rumors would later pass, suggesting that perhaps Hadrhune had been betrayed by his rivals, but most think that to be just talk.

Meanwhile, the truth of Hadrhune's goal was revealed, for in the smoking ruins of the crater he left lay a large crystal, that proved to be a gateway into a long-lost Netherese Library... one that remained guarded and warded, but accessible now nonetheless.

I remember vaguely that I think it was used to explain the Undercity that Lolth's silence had given those who wanted to aim for a more mercentile focus to make their move and displace the Matrons. that it also led to a increase in the worshippers of other Drow Dieties in the city, especially Kirnasalee (Which is why I had taken notice). I think didn't we take many of the diety affects such as the bump in Lolth and other Drow Dieties while downplaying affect on the day to day lives of people on Toril?

That's not why Undercity isn't Llothite, but I'd have to look up the reasons later.

If I remember right, the drow city just west of the Undercity here, Sshamtath or something like that? It is a drow city that isn't Lolthite, instead ruled by a magocracy. Maybe there's some explanation power there.

Really? Huh I remember it being mentioned that the silence was at the very least the reason why Kiransalees faith had taken an upswing in the city, the Lolth was silent leading to many getting angry and turning to Kiransalee but meh, not really important. 

There is a city that is a magocracy, yes. The one beneath Cormyr is Sschindylryn, which was always somewhat trade focused, as it is a city of portals, but we nudged it a little more towards open and non drow specific, though it still is a "drow" city.