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Unrealized potential, but potential nonetheless. "Goblinoids" had so far been completely dull, but this was potentially interesting. They were writing from a perspective where they could just say "orcs bad" and nobody would question it. When it said "the good guys (meaning the merchants, adventurers, and civilized peoples) seem to triumph more often than not" it was not being sarcastic. Eventually, the dwarves themselves were forced to retreat, but the humans remained behind to continue the war and "the orcs today are contained, if not conquered." Centuries ago, Vastar was conquered by the dwarves who subsequently imported human settlers to fight a never-ending orcish insurgency. See, the area known as "the Vast" is actually quite modest in size, because the name doesn't derive from the English word "vast," but rather from "Vastar," the ancient kingdom of the orcs. See, The Vast interested me because it could very nearly (but not really) be read as a critique of the way D&D treats its humanoid species. The key revelation came after I finished reading the chapter about The Vast. I'd do this mainly because I'd somehow gotten the impression that the Realms were, in fact, a superficial Tolkien ripoff, or, at best, the most straightforward possible interpretation of the D&D implied setting, but loaded down with a ton of interchangeable proper nouns.Īnd look, there's some of that at work here, no doubt, but I have no idea where young me got these prejudices, because mostly what Forgotten Realms has been so far is an exercise in worldbuilding for the sake of worldbuilding. In years past, I'd do little more than raid the supplements for unusual feats, spells, or prestige classes. This is actually the first Forgotten Realms book I've read cover to cover.
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I'll admit, there may be some confirmation bias at work here. I remember thinking, "oh, you're taking something from Tolkien and using it in an extremely superficial way." I mean, can you imagine, having that kind of imagery just completely slip your mind? Then again, I have been sleeping on an air mattress the last few days and that has taken a toll on my baseline energy level. I didn't even remember the part about elves riding giant butterflies until I consulted my notes. There's part of me that wants to blame this book for me not remembering it better, but truthfully, I'm just getting old.
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Turns out I was mixing it up with Sessrendale (the one that got destroyed by Archendale - not Anchordale - and maybe they deserved it because the pretext for the invasion was dark magic of the sort that definitely exists in the Realms, but maybe didn't actually exist in that particular -dale). "Deepdale" should have been "Deepingdale." "S-dale" did, indeed, start with S, but neither of my guesses was close. So let's go back to the list and see how I did. That's all I can remember from the first chapter of this book. A -dale with a big ol' army, but they only genocided one of the other -dales a generation ago - now, they're not interested in conquest anymore.Īnd, um. Stressedale? Sassedale? I got nothing.Īnchordale - another politically interesting one. But I can't, for the life of me, remember the name. It tried to take over the other -dales, but nearby kingdoms intervened and helped the -dales unite against it, causing it to lose its place on the Council of Dales. Shadowdale - This one's a freebie, the second book in the boxed set is all about it.ĭeepdale - Shit. The dark wizards started moving in and they changed the name. Okay, quick pop quiz - how many of the 15 -dales from the Dalelands can I remember without looking at my notes:ĭaggerdale/Merrydale - I remember that one because it was really on the nose. And even with all that, I'm certain that I've already forgotten like 75% of it. I've got 15 pages of notes for 128 pages of book, probably my biggest ratio yet. Oh, God, I hope there's not going to be a test after this.