LOST LORE OF THE REALMS #27

This time around, Suzail and Sigils. Late again because of life (again). I'll not stop digging for lore!

Enjoy, I hope...

How To Find The Society Of Stalwart Adventurers, And Some Features Of Its Neighborhood

To begin, please procure the map of Suzail found in the 2nd Edition Realms boxed set (specifically, on page 54 of “A Grand Tour of the Realms”). I’m using this map because of its keyed buildings, which allow me to locate features without a lot of “See a squiggle shaped like a flying banana? Well, about the width of my fingernail from it” nonsense.

Find the warehouse of the oil and perfume dealer Ilmur Jhassalan (feature 73) and Blackgorgons, the tower of the wizard Baskor (feature 74). To the east of both buildings, defining the easternmost boundary of the ‘blocks’ they stand in, is a street whose northern ‘end’ is a Y-junction, and whose southern end is a T-junction. That street is Swordstars Lane.

The Society for Stalwart Adventurers stands on the west side of Swordstars Lane, three buildings south of the Y-junction. In other words, it’s the L-shaped building five building-fronts ‘up’ from Jhassalan’s warehouse.

The westfront-Swordstars buildings in between, by the way, are (going north from the warehouse):

Vardrim’s: an always-full rooming-house for carters and crate-makers and warehouse workers, owned by the elderly, energetic, and irascible Bardra ‘Battleaxe’ Vardrim (LN hf F7), who lives on its ground floor. The wild-white-haired, beak-nosed, big-bosomed Bardra has two sons in the Purple Dragons, the dashingly handsome Relikho (LN hm F8), and the quieter, kinder Tarrathur (LN hm F9), who dine with her weekly, and ‘take care’ of rowdy tenants or visitors. Vardrim’s has a rickety back stair (fire escape) where many roomers grow edible plants, which several local low-coin girls use for concealment of sorts while entertaining clients (roomers who let them use “their” stretch of stairs get serviced for free).

Jharko’s Coffers and Crates: a rat-infested firetrap of a decaying former warehouse now owned by the shrewd, miserly Ustal Jharko (CN hm Rog4), who’s filled the place with secondhand strongchests, coffers, travel-boxes, crates, coffins, barrels, handkegs, and every other sort of sturdy container. He repairs them and sells them all for a copper under “new” prices (and buys such things, no questions asked, for about a quarter of new pricings). If one needs containers in a hurry, Jharko can provide. Most of his containers have hasps, but Jharko has few locks to sell. He charges very dearly for hinges and hasps, for those who just want to buy such hardware.

Between Jharko’s and the next building north (Montalar’s) is the main cart-alley into the center of the block. Traffic to and from the warehouses is heavy enough to keep it clear of the usual refuse.

Montalar’s Happy House: a popular local eatery. This dawn-to-dusk place shutters its windows every night and turns out diners “to seek drunken entertainment elsewhere,” as Bhaerusk Montalar (LG hm F5) puts it. Up until then, however, Bhaerusk, his four daughters (all CG hf F1s: scurrying, smiling teens named “Chatha” [Chantathra], Imra, Jessa, and Selbra), his wife (Donathae, a CG hf Wiz4), and her two sisters (Nornlarra, a CG hf Wiz2, and Oparla, a NG hf F2) keep bustling, serving forth hot cider (except in warm summer, when it’s served cold), weak ale, weak but sweet berry wine (beloved by many thirsty workers in the area), and ‘happy helms.’ Helms are circular pastries about the size of a small man’s palm, pinched flat around the edges but filled with a fry-mix of ground meat, diced vegetables, and strongly-spiced brown sauce. They’re portable food, and can be bought hot and fresh for dining on the spot (the vast majority are sold this way, many of them sold right out a front window to hungry buyers standing in the street) or cold (cooked, allowed to cool, and put in a stoppered second-hand clay fry-oil jug or salvaged bottle, to keep) for eating at home, later. Helms are sold two for a copper, and most find them tasty and filling—though many whisper that the strong sauce makes one buy thrice as much drink, and could conceal the taste of, say, none-too-clean chopped rat. (This is scurrilous gossip; Donathae’s sisters source boar and sometimes old ox-meat from farmers, nothing worse. Ever.)

The family Montalar lives on the floor above their eatery, and discreetly rents out apartments on the floor above. There’s also a cellar below, and folk murmur (correctly) that jovial Bhaerusk Montalar rents out storage space in it for all manner of mysterious items, no questions asked. (Including one chest that an unfortunate thief discovered to be full of guardian crawling claws!)

The cellar and the eatery both have rear entrances usually screened from view by heaps of discarded crates and a hanging curtain of runner-vines (edible beans) grown every year by the Montalars (their laundry lines adorn the gently-sloping roof of the building).

Talarkgates: this is the once-grand but slightly decaying home of a retired wool- and ale-merchant who still engages in moneylending and property investments in Suzail. Umbran Daerith (LN hm Rog3) is elderly but in robust good health. He’s rarely seen out of doors before dusk (when his coach calls for him, to take him to this or that nobles’ feast) unless attending business at Court or in one of the clubs along the central Promenade where wealthy merchants talk trade and make deals. Daerith is hard-headed but mellowing as age creeps up on him, and is increasingly seen in the company of beautiful young ladies he hires by the tenday (it’s thought they spend less time in his bedchambers than such ‘ornaments’ usually do, but most of their time simply being his friendly chattering escorts). Daerith has many ties to Sembian trading-partners, and it’s widely (and correctly)  whispered in Suzail that some of his beautiful lasses are really War Wizards, keeping an eye on him.

The many-balconied, slate-roofed stone ground floor and brick floors above four-floors house is surrounded by a high, spear-topped wrought-iron fence, enclosing a narrow, overgrown-by-untended shrubs walkway all around it. Its name comes from its builder and former owner, the long-dead merchant-fleet owner Indrith Talark.

Sigils of The Chosen Of Mystra (Spotlight: Elminster’s Second Sigil)

The second sigil Elminster took into use is a crescent moon, horns uppermost, with an oval floating in the ‘bowl’ created by those horns. He adopted it because Mystra asked him to, he designed it himself, and he chose the crescent moon to echo the symbol of the Harpers (which he’d also designed, earlier) and because it also echoes the sigil of the Srinshee, his first teacher of magic in Myth Drannor, of whom he is very fond. The oval within the crescent symbolizes the ‘Great Watching Eye’ of Mystra, which was one of her favourite manifestations (a semi-tangible form in which she appeared to mortals: a giant floating eye that faded in and out of visibility/prime material plane “existence” and that could vary in apparent size from about nine feet across to about ninety feet across) at that time. (This is of course ‘the first’ Mystra, Elminster’s lover, not her replacement Midnight/Ariel Manx.) Elminster wanted a simple, easily-drawn sigil that pleased his eye, and that meant sweeping elven curves rather than any angular or ‘crossing strokes’ designs.

Thanks to some work Azuth did with Mystra, all of the Chosen of Mystra can use their sigils in some ways that the sigils of “just plain wizards” won’t function unless their ‘owners’ find or create special spells to imbue their sigils with such powers. Such mortals would have to cast one such spell to ‘empower’ each drawn sigil with a particular ability, whereas the Chosen can automatically use the functions I outline below on any drawing they have personally made of their own sigil, no matter where it is in Toril (or rather, Realmspace: in other words, these powers only function when the sigil is in contact with the Weave). These aren’t all of the uses of a sigil, they are merely those Mystra has revealed to her Chosen thus far.

It should be noted that many of the Chosen strongly suspect Mystra and Azuth can both use these sigils for much greater magical purposes (sending healing through them into the bodies of someone touching such a sigil, sending spells through these sigils into the minds of creatures touching them, either to affect the creature or for the creature to cast as if they had themselves memorized it, and so on). This would explain instances of devout worshippers or servants of Mystra or Azuth touching a sigil in personal emergencies and being healed, rendered invisible or gaseous, enabled to fly, teleported elsewhere, and so on. The deities (but not their Chosen) are also believed to be able to temporarily reshape sigils into writing, so as to send short (or slow, a few words at a time) messages.

Elminster (and every other Chosen of Mystra) can use his sigil as a spell focus in the following ways.

Any of his sigils, no matter where the surface (page of a book, tile, or whatever) on which he drew it has been moved (even without his knowledge), are to be considered a known, familiar locale to him for the purposes of his casting clairvoyance ‘through’ the sigil (it becomes the magical sensor of the magic, regardless of distance from him at the time). Such a sigil is also considered a “very familiar” locale, regardless of where it may have been moved to, for the purposes of determining the success of a teleport or teleport object spell.

In the same ‘regardless of distance’ manner, any of his sigils can function as the source (as if the sigil was the caster) for the spells: arcane eye, message, and silent image (remains stationary, anchored at sigil). The arcane eye can move about in the usual manner, or (more often used by Chosen) the sigil itself can function as the sensor.

A sigil drawn directly over the arcane mark placed by another being doesn’t obliterate that mark, but causes it to completely cease functioning until the sigil is removed (this can have implications for the function of a Drawmij’s instant summons or other magics cast by the being who placed the arcane mark).

At will, without casting a spell, a Chosen can cause any of his or her personally-drawn sigils to glow (akin in all respects to a faerie fire spell, with hue and intensity of light governed by the Chosen; the light can be made to pulse or wink in silent communication, for example “Two means yes, and One means no”), and this function can work simultaneously with a spell (such as clairvoyance used by the Chosen).

The Chosen can instead cause a sigil to emit a continual flame (cancelling it by will at any time), but this power, though it can ignite things, apparently can’t be made to change colour or pulse.

Elminster drew his sigil in most rooms of the Twisted Tower of Ashaba in Shadowdale after the Knights of Myth Drannor took up residence therein, and so could teleport objects to them with ease. Said objects often included maps, keys, and other ‘necessary for an adventure’ items, or things that goaded the Knights into prying where they otherwise wouldn’t have.

....And the "wouldn't fit" tags this time around are:

#Society of Stalwart Adventurers (the)

#Twisted Tower of Ashaba (the)

#Vardrim’s

#War Wizards

#warehouse workers

#Weave (the)

#wizard