Mysteries of D&D: Behind Manshoon's Mask: #Realmslore Ep5 (Extended Video)

Manshoon harbors a secret not even the most devout Realms fans know. An air of mystery has always shrouded Manshoon, and on this episode of RealmsLore we dive deep into the founder of the Zhentarim and the Lord of Zhentil Keep.

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Ed: By the way, Mystra knows about Manshoon because she's been watching Manshoon because she wanted to sucker Manshoon into being one of her chosen. She's been watching everything he does.

Ivan: I'm Ivan with many realms, and today we're talking about Manshoon, Lord of Zhentil Keep, and founder of the Zhentarim, this master spellcaster has always been as dangerous as he is charming. Manshoon has always been shrouded in a bit of mystery, including "is that person that I just ran into actually Manshoon, or is that just another one of his clones?" To add to that is the real Manshoon even still alive?

Well, Ed Greenwood answers all these questions and more on today's episode of Realms Lore, and he also tells us a secret about Manshoon that's never been revealed before, anywhere until now. And don't forget, if you wanna show your support for Ed and get exclusive access to all of the extended cuts of these conversations, including tons more Realms Lore, be sure to go to patreon.com/EdGreenwood and become a Protector of the Realms today 

Ed: in

in the definition of villain that says, I am in this for my personal gain. And if you are in my way, I will be ruthless about walking over, around or through you. Um, I, I think, I think in modern parlance we label some people like that psychopaths, , you know, they can be charming. They're not necessarily, uh, going to do any bad things to you unless you're in their way.

And then all bets are off. Um, so Manshoon is one of those, for instance, um, one of the first stories I wrote about Manshoon, a story called The Long Sword years ago, which I also created spell singers for that story. In that short story, Manshoon and his older brother, amongst other people go off. Lord Chess is also there.

He's not a Lord yet, by the way. Uh, but they're all as sort of young punks. They all go off to, um, explore a tomb. And Manshoon murders his brother on the way. Oh, so that, oh, he can be the head honcho instead of his older brother.

Ivan: I think that one of the aspects of great beauty of your stories and the Realms and also D and D is that there's a lot of subtlety to the, the quote unquote villains.

um, you know, they have an extraordinary depth, which is something that I think you really achieved with Manshoon, as you were saying. He's debonair. He's, he's handsome. Uh, he's an extremely powerful wizard. Uh, I believe he even has the favor of Mystra. Um, and he has a lot going on with him. Mm-hmm. , but you're right that he's very in it for himself.

And I guess that would be the best qualifier, if any, to, to call him a villain. 

Ed: Mystra was interested in him as a chosen. And see here, here's the thing. A lot of fans get the mistaken idea about Mystra, that she's a goodie two shoes, that she's a good goddess and she is in that she values mortals and doesn't think you should mistreat mortals.

She thinks that's stupid and shortsighted to mistreat the people you want to worship you, the people who. In, in unintentionally dictate how much power you have as a deity. She just think it's, it's good, it's good farming to take good care of, of mortals, but she's dedicated to protecting the weave and increasing and augmenting magic, magic use everywhere in the world.

And for this Manshoon would be a great, um, servant tool. and she offered him a role as one of her chosen and Manshoon rejected it Truly. Wow. Yeah. And, and we see that in, in, um, it's in my Sage of Shadowdale, uh, uh, not the initial rejection, because the initial rejection happened way in the past. What you're seeing is her trying to give him a second chance and, and he basically

smiles and nods, and then does exactly the opposite of what she wanted him to do. , she, he attacks Elminster or whatever at the time. Yeah. It's like, yeah. Yeah. Right. I, I, I recall your, I recall your offer goddess and guess what? Here's what I think of it. You know, . Um, so yeah, he wants to do his own thing.

Richard Lee Byers came up with this marvelous saying years. He said in my father's house, there are many Manshoons, um, , and of course, uh, that is in keeping with the Manshoon Wars. 

Ivan: Yeah, I was about to say that's gonna come up today. 

Ed: Well, for years I had the fact that Manshoon could be a recurring villain because every time you killed him, he came back.

Because he could clone, he had his own special cloning spell, and he'd already stashed many clones away. The, the good thing, the advantage you got if you killed Manshoon was that his, his clone, whichever clone, activated, and he was trying to activate the older ones first. because they don't keep, you know, they have a shelf life in his, um, that, that clone, that clone that came back, um, knew less than the one you'd killed because its memory started when it had been made into a clone.

So sometimes you could in effect get Manshoon off your back by killing him. And then the one that woke up and came after you wouldn't come after you because it didn't know about you. because you weren't part of its memories. 

Ivan: Well, I would actually like to take a quick step back if we could and just talk about the Manshoon Wars because it is wild and I'm not sure that everybody exactly understands kind of the origins of that.

Ed: That was a fun idea plot device that occurred I think to Steven Shen when he was traffic cop of the realms, when he realized we had these multiple clones activated and the way the game works. If you have multiple clones active at once, they go mad and they try and kill each other. They start hunting each other to kill each other because, um, you can't have multiple copies of the same mind, or so the spell claims.

Now, Manshoon had a special clone spell, but it was still, let's use this thing where all the, the clones. They're aware of each other and gunning for each other. In Manshoon's case. They had a little more control than the classic, um, clone spell, where they literally go gaga and do nothing else but, um, charge towards each other.

Kill, kill, you know? Yeah. That was the stasis clone spell, right? Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So Manshoons have a little more self-control than that. Or so the the thinking goes, but yeah. Steven looked at this and said, so we have all these like clones running around and they would be trying to kill each other.

Haha, the Manshoon Wars. And of course what happened was, uh, the personnel changes and uh, an edition to the game changes and the new designers working on the Realms think this is a dumb idea and they drop it like a hot potato . So we never get it properly. and then they say all Manshoons clones died offstage in between and oh my goodness.

Then someone else at the company says, ah, I wanted to tell that story. And I said, and you still can. And they say, well, no, they, and I said, Realms Agreement if I write about them. And so I just have the clone.. Some of the clones come back and they all go, thank you. We can tell that story now. See, good thing you have me along, you know?

So , um, yes, the, the, the, um, Manshoon Wars would, would be up and running again. We do these sort of fun things as we, as we, you know, it's, it's like Fzoulhions change and uh, and sometimes an idea is in vogue and we get to push it a little further and. Then it's not in vogue anymore and we drop it again. And some of the ideas never get brought to fruition, but others keep going.

And one of the fun things is yes, the Manshoon Wars, there are in fact multiple Manshoons running around right now because I made sure that they were canon and put back there. Now someone could change that again, but, uh, Wizards of the Coast has very wisely. I think in this edition to the game. Instead of saying, no, there are none in absolutes, which was one of the original rules that Jeff Grub came up with as the original Realms

traffic cop, you don't say so-and-so is the best swordsman in the world, or the only chosen of whatever. You never, ever talk in absolutes because every time you do. You're shutting down a storytelling opportunity for a dungeon master somewhere in the world who's come up with this great idea and then just been crushed because somewhere in print, in one line it says, no, you can't do that.

So , we don't talk in absolutes, we avoid things. So there are more Manshoon clones around. And they're doing things and which was very useful in the last few Realms novels I've written where you could have Manshoons running around and he's ever so much more useful when he's still alive and running around.

You can have fun with him. And I did. 

Ivan: Now, the reason why he made these clones, initially it was a, it was a power play, right? A, as the leader of the Zhentarim, it was to exert more control over the Realms. 

Ed: It was also to make sure that he couldn't be eliminated because here's the thing, um, the Zhentarim, uh, gained power and, and we see this in So High a Price, which is the short story I wrote for Realms of Infamy all those years ago.

Uh, but it's an uneasy alliance. Manshoon is, um, uh, allied with priests of Bane. And they're going through all this stuff with the high end preceptor and Fzoul and, uh, vying for power within their own ranks. And he also is, um, they are getting to be as prominent as they can be by being in league with Beholders. And he, he rapidly realized that the Beholders are using all the humans.

They don't care. And any particular human can drop out of the story at any time. If the Beholders get tired of him, they'll just off him. And Manshoon had plans and he realized that his plans would bring him into conflict with Beholders multiple times. And one of the ways of making sure that he didn't fall out of the story by being killed off too easily was to have all of these clones, because some of the Beholders would say

"oh, let's not bother because Manshoon will only come back. Let's not bother. That's a waste of our time." And Manshoon, like everybody else, doesn't want to be killed horribly. It hurts . So, um, he was setting things up so hopefully he wouldn't get killed off horribly. And, you know, um, they would, they would think of, uh, him as still a useful tool as they, in fact, that's how most of the Beholders think about Fzoul and everybody thinks, oh, Fzoul is such hot stuff.

No, uh, Manshoon was the hot stuff when Fzoul quote defeated Manshoon. It was because Manshoon saw this as a perfect way of getting out of the terrible desk job, . It's the sort of thing where some guy with a big ego wants to become president of the United States. And the moment he becomes president of the United States, he realized his life is gonna be held for four years.

He's gonna have to work , work, work, work. His time is not gonna be his own. There's gonna be restrictions on everything he does because national security, Mr. President, he's never gonna have a moment's peace. He's always gonna have to entertain strangers at the White House all over the world because they're important.

And you know, it might, it might add to his nice written legacy in the history books. , but he suddenly realized he's not gonna have a lot of fun for the next few years. . Well, Manshoon was the same way. He was finding it was very restrictive. Running the Zhentarim, could he possibly get out of this and put the target on somebody else's back and go back to doing what he wanted to do?

Yes. So he tricked Fzoul. And Fzoul wanted the power, and Fzoul got the power, and then Fzoul was stuck in the director's chair and not having fun. And Manshoon was going, ha ha ha, . I, I recall a Saturday Night Live skit years and years ago in which George Bush won the election and is having second thoughts, and he's phoning Al Gore.

And Al Gore is sitting in a beach chair at his pool and he's going, it's hard. It's so hard. wouldn't you possibly consider? And of course, the Al Gore characters saying, ha ha, no, sorry, can't hear you, George, you know, . And, and it's, it's all about the, you know, the, the get outta jail free card. And yes, this is the thing.

Um, Manshoon, foxed, Fzoul, he got out of the, uh, running the thing. I want to tell these sort of stories where we explore what power means and what it does to people. And for instance, by our yardstick, the seven sisters, Elminster, all of the chosen by our yardstick, they're all insane. Sure. Really insane. And why wouldn't they be?

They've been alive for so long. Uh, our frame of re they, they've, every country that they knew when they were a child is dead and gone. All the people they loved and knew all their loved ones, their family, they're all dead and gone. What does that do to you when you outlive everybody and you've got a job to do thanks to a goddess?

And do you try suicide? Do you try to, uh, fall outta the picture? What happens if the goddess doesn't want you to? and just puts you back in, you know, you can't escape. Um, you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, Selûne is gone, but she's a spirit in the weave. She's a voice in the weave and she's still there.

The symbol the same way, but is the symbol gone? And if the symbol is gone, good for the point of view of the Red Wizards cuz they can just move in and take over Agroulas. But Szass Tam and the other red wizards have to think twice because what if she is still around somehow? How's she gonna react if we move in on Agroulas?

So it's a deterrent and Manshoon popping back up with his clones. It's the same sort of deterrent. Yeah. Um, yeah, you gotta think twice. Is it worth doing this thing? We want to. If this guy is gonna appear outta nowhere, rise in fire and wrath and, and pin our hides to the wall because he doesn't like what we've done cuz we thought he was safely dead and gone, but he's not.

And I, I, I love to play those games over and over because it makes for a far more interesting, um, published realms at the heart of things. Dungeon Masters can do what they like in their own campaign, but it also keeps feeding them ideas that are different. Yeah. From the ideas that, yeah, other fantasy novels and non-gaming things are feeding them and it's like, oh, I didn't, I never thought of that.

Good. It does that. It doesn't matter whether you like it or don't like it, or you're gonna use it or not use it, it's to make you think, oh, I never thought of that. Good. That's, I've achieved my goal . So that's now one other arrow in your quiver. You know, something else that that you can use. If you like it and if you don't like it, don't use it.

That's okay. I'm not gonna be offended.

Ivan: I feel like the realms has faced a unique challenge that not a lot of other folks in the TT R P G space have encountered, and that's just like the massive breadth of lore. Primarily created by authors, right? I mean, in most games I feel like you've got Sourcebooks and you've got some supplemental material that you can add into your game to flesh out the way you play it.

But the Realms, it's like you're maintaining two fronts. You're battling on two fronts. You're first having to make the, the, the game of Dungeons and Dragons interesting. And also, you know, uh, leave things open for the interpretation of Dungeon Masters and players alike. But then you also need to leave room to be able to write things and like put things into cannon and make official decisions and kill characters and birth new characters.

I feel like that's a challenge that hasn't been met by many folks other than people like yourself that have been working in the realms for this many years.

Ed: Uh, in the old TSR there was this tension between books and games and, uh, as in the novels, department, books as it was called, and the games department.

It is, it is easy to view it as a, a personal turf battle and say, why can't you guys all grow up? Or whatever. But there is a built intention in that, in a novel, the writer has to make a decision about how the story goes. A in a game. It's decided around the gaming table and you have to plan for everything.

There is no false front. There is no, the author takes you to the left down the street, not down the right. And you never get to see what's down to the left, which is what happens in a book. Uh, your, your, your, uh, classical fiction work. Um, but you have to design for everything in the game and you can't fudge things like somehow so and so beat that.

And we used to have all these, um, these silly questions posed to us. In a fight between Elminster and Drizzt, who would win? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. When you're writing a book, you have to make a decision. If they come together in a battle, there is, and there are many ways of backing out of it. Having them both interrupted at the last, you know, the psychological moment or whatever.

But yeah, somebody has to win. You have to have a, um, You can't leave it till next week. You have to decide on the page. And that builds in a tension. And we've seen it also in games down the road once they are there for a long time, leaving the books and games for a moment, in that you put together this huge mega adventure and then the company, the copyright holder, has to make a decision about what happened in the cannon Realms.

For instance, Szass Tam had this dread rings, uh, thing, right? And there are many others where you can defeat a villain. The player characters can defeat a villain. Well, the copyright holder has to make a decision as to what officially happened, because if they go on to write other adventures in the same area, sure, they can only have one conclusion about what happened in the past.

So again, they're stuck in this. And, um, one of the ways of avoiding that is to try to keep hopscotching and moving around and not having to go back to where you were before and revisit it to make clear what decision you made. And, and that was tried for a bit and it's tried for a bit at the beginning of every edition, and you can see it with, um, Uh, the Tiamat stuff and then moving around to Tomb of Annihilation and so on.

We are physically moving around geography to stay out of our own way from a previous thing, but eventually that stops working cuz you've run outta spaces. Now of course you wouldn't have run out spaces had you been showing us the entire Realms. , but in this case, there is a decision made for a another reason.

Mm-hmm. to restrict to the Sword Coast, which means you are running out of real estate. And again, these are, um, other examples of how real world considerations always get in the way of storytelling or at the gaming table. Because, not because anybody's a villain, not because anybody is a meanie in management or whatever, but because these are different medium.

the media have different, uh, needs and different powers, and you're running into their different qualities. And the only way outta that is to stop using a particular, uh, media. Sure, sure. And medium. And that's what they did. They stopped publishing novels, you know, , it, it's, it's the easy way out or the quick way out.

But then again, you want to have your cake and eat it too. So now, um, we have a movie, a D and D movie coming up. So of course there are going to be novelization mo, um, novels, you know, because you want them to go with the movie, right? But here's the problem. You are handed back the problem when you write those books.

Of it makes decisions about what happened in the movie. Now the, the best way outta that is to tell backstory, to tell what happens before they come on stage in the movie. And then you can't spoiler the movie or contradict anything in the movie. And I think you'll find when you see those books, that there's probably a pretty good chance that that has been chosen as the avenue.

To avoid this problem, but the problem will always be there. It's not, like I said, it's not anybody being a meanie. It's the nature of the beast puts the problem there. Before you. 

Ivan: Ed, why don't we talk a little bit maybe about the origins of the Zhentarim and Zhentil Keep and, and maybe Manshoon's thought process and, and what went into that and, and his motivations behind starting something like the Zhentarim.

Ed: Well, Manshoon was what we would call. An idle, an idle rich kid. And there's nothing wrong with being an idle rich kid, uh, unless you're down the pecking order, which Manshoon was, which means you don't have any control over anything and you're not gonna get much of the money. You've got an older brother in the way, you're not gonna inherit anything, and you're pretty much a wastrel and everybody sneers at you because you're a wastrel.

Yeah. You know how to get drunk. Isn't that an accomplishment? You know how to misbehave, you know? Isn't that an accomplishment? Yeah. Yeah. What we see in those early stories is him getting outta that and we're also seeing something else. Um, we're seeing him make his bid for real power. Manshoon wanted two things.

He wanted endless riches, and that's how he convinced all of these other people... Wizards. Wizards don't like being told what to do. I don't think many people do. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Not many people . But if you don't kill a wizard, the wizard has the power to be exceptional. It's like being the um, one guy in your poor block, your poor neighborhood who actually has the skill to make it in the national football league.

So you can get a payday that other people are only gonna dream of and your career might be short, but you could still get money and power and respect. And lots of people know your name and all this stuff. Well, that's the thing Manshoon was gunning for, but he was also thinking, here's how we can get loads of money forever.

And you're thinking, well, what do you need more money for? Are you just nuts? Well, no, if you are a wizard, Um, spell research is getting all these special things in the early editions of the game. These material components, which were quite often rare and expensive, it costs lots of money, and you want to be able to sit in your tower and do experiments and read books and getting the books costs money.

You either have to endanger yourself by going adventuring or you have to hire adventurers like mercenaries, and they're, they're very expensive. These people to go and get books for you or to go and get whatever, and you want to spend your time in your lab, you know, being a mad scientist, uh, you know, creating your new spells, um, it, it all takes money and you want a, a steady stream of money.

And the Zhentarim was originally formed in order to get the. Shortest trade route between the, the ore, the metals coming out of the mines, north of the Moon Sea, to the wider world, and in particular across the Heartlands. Those long perilous trade routes perilous because of brigands and monsters. And, you know, you're out in the open in a caravan and,

a dragon awakens and it's hungry, and there you are, spread out sitting ducks from the air, a target. And if you can control the shortest trade route and that shortest trade route is across the desert where nobody else will go, then you can make money. And the plan B was to go through. , um, the Stone Lands just north of the rest of Cormyr cuz that's the shortest trade route through Yellow Snake Pass and so on.

If you're not going into a Anauroch, the Great Desert. So, I mean, uh, that's what the Zhentarim was formed to do. Get the shortest trade route, make all this money. Okay? That is where Manshoon was concentrating himself early on and what he was also doing. He set up the Zhentarim with all of these magelings. They were no, you know, uh, it's a, you know, slang term, but magelings, young mages, and he didn't care what happened to them.

He didn't care if they offed each other, which is why he let them have this cutthroat kill each other competition because he was intersted in the fittest, surviving the strongest and most ruthless. Wow. Because that's what he wanted for his thing, and that's how he sets it up. And then in the early stories, and they stopped publishing a lot of these just because they stopped having, uh, easy avenues for short stories to be published as opposed to novel length works.

There were tons of things happening and it was cut out of Spellfire. My novel Spellfire got cut by a third. Of what was gonna be in it. And again, the personnel changed at the head of the book department, what they wanted to publish changed. So in between my being told, uh, Ed, we need you to write us a novel in which you show us the Realms.

And don't worry about word count, uh, whatever it is. We'll publish it because we need, we need you to show us the Realms down to, no, it has to be this long. Let's chop it off. Okay. So two-thirds of that novel got left on the cutting room floor. and one of the things that got left out was a lot of scenes that were quite nasty by the, the code of ethics standards of Manshoon letting people off each other.

Oh my. And because that was his goal. Yeah. He wanted the, he wanted the wizards that were left to be very capable and to know that if you cross me, you will die. So don't cross me. You know? That was the two things he was wanting, trying to drive home. . And the other thing was they were in league with Beholders and the Beholders did not care one wit what happened to humans except as tools to further their, and the Beholders were playing off the Fzoul and the high-end preceptor who was, there's civil war amongst the, the priests at this point.

Um, and, and Manshoon is just taking shameless advantage of all that, and I wanted to show all that how messy it can all be. Not because I was a sadist or anything, but because it's maximum play opportunities time. If you are there when all this stuff is going down, then your adventures can actually have a meaningful role.

You can change the world, right? What? What your adventures do matters. All of a sudden and it's really inter, and it's also in flux for a long time. So if you think you've defeated this and fixed things, which was the problem with fighting the Cult of the Dragon and thinking, oh yeah, you know, you know, we, we, we took care of it.

We killed the dragon. Yeah. There's another one. They just made another dracolich . You know, you know what you thought you got away with, you didn't. and it's like, oh, what do you do when you save the world? Go and save it again. But , but in new and interesting ways. And that's what I was doing with Manshoon and his clones.

I was keeping them, you know, you may think you beat the big baddy, well, you get to beat 'em all over again and you're going ah. And you say Yay, twice the experience points. Ha, you know? But, but it is up to the dungeon master to do it in new and interesting ways. Right? But it's also on me. As a guy, uh, designing stuff that you are paying good money for.

If I don't give you enough tools to last for years, and that is why you deserve cuz you're paying money. The very best I can do and the very best I can do is to give you more and more and more. Cuz I don't know what will work in your campaign. So I can't just say, look, I just wrote this. It's brilliant.

It's the best thing since sliced bread. You're gonna love it. because it may not be true for you in that situation. So my way of taking care of it, cuz I don't know what works at your gaming table, is to just give you more and more and more. So there's so much stuff you can say, oh I hated that, but I can use this

And that is the whole point, is to give you so much and make the tapestry so rich that it will go on serving you for as long as you want it to because we all have busy lives. We don't have time to sit down, design a whole new world. Each time our friends want to come over and play d and d. I want to do the scut work for you so that you can sit down and have fun with your friends and worry about the storytelling, the adventure right in front of them.

Because if you can worry about the adventure, then it's a lot more fun and the adventure will be a lot better. because you could concentrate on the adventure, not on the setting. The setting is done, and if you're overwhelmed by the detail, just don't use that detail. It doesn't matter. Yeah. But I want you to know that someone somewhere designed it properly.

So if you need and want that answer, it's out there. Somebody has designed it, and if they haven't, they're working hard on it right now. . That's what we're doing at this Patreon. That's what you know. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, and that's what everybody does at DM's Guild, who publishes something. They're making something cool for their game that they hope and think will also be cool for yours.

Ivan: Yeah. That's one thing that I noticed even just in, in Discord and, and the comments on some of your Patreon posts. It's just like, I think I know something about the Realms. Until you meet these people that have this unbelievable breadth of knowledge that just spans. So much farther than I can even possibly imagine.

But that's what I really love about the Realms is I think that you can have people like that. And there's one person that can be an an expert on the entire history, history of the Zhentarim and the entire history of Manshoon, and then one that's an expert on the entire history of Thay, so on and so forth.

And these people can have un an unbelievable breadth of knowledge. But then there's 

still somebody else. That knows even more about another thing in another 

corner of the Realms, and it's very rare to have that much, I guess, meat to play with, um, and to offer to your players as somebody like a dungeon master.

Okay, so Ed, I feel like this is the question on most people's minds, at least mine. Can you give a definitive answer? Is the real Manshoon still alive, or is he dead?

Ed: The very first Manshoon? 

Ivan: The very first. The original Manshoon. 

Ed: He's still alive and he's watching all this. Yes. Yes. He's still alive. . 

Ivan: All right, man.

Ed: He realized long ago that this, this thing he was trying is crazy toons uh, it's not gonna work and it's gonna drive him insane, and it's gonna be far more damage than it's worth. So, he bugged out, and by bugged out, I mean he graduated to the, I'm just gonna sit back and keep myself hidden and watch, I'm going to watch what things happen and I'm going to try from time to time doing tiny, small things in the way of manipulations and seeing how they affect people and seeing how this all turns out.

And that is how I'm gonna derive my entertainment and that is what my life is going to be because I've now got all the stuff I wanted to get. So now it's just a question of, let's see what happens if I do this . And so then Manshoon turns into that sadistic doctor who leans over the helpless patient who's restrained on the table and he's, he's trepanned the top of his or her head off.

And he's poking . And he says, what happens when I do this? Oh, and what happens when I do this? Can you feel anything when I do this? That's Manshoon. Now I don't mean he's any less of a villain, , but he's off stage and what that means is he's watching. He's watching you right now. Oh no. Which means if you do something to something, something or someone he likes, like perhaps he wants his Zhentarim to succeed

this, this thing he struggled so hard for, and perhaps you are making headway about killing Zhents, stopping them here, there, and everywhere. So maybe he's just going to alert your foes so somebody can come gunning for you and maybe he's just gonna thwart your next grand scheme so you can't get away with it because it's time to take you down a peg or two because you've done things

to the Zhentarim that he loved or wants to see succeed if not loved. So he's now going to play with you a bit. You see that you can do this. Uh, again, it's all story opportunities. Isn't the original Manshoon being like that a lot more fun for story opportunities than another sort of Manshoon? Yeah.

Yeah. So that's why you do it. You do it for the, and, and that's the thing. Somebody once said. All these realm shaking events and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I said, yeah, I hate the realm shaking events too, because every time I detail, some designer wants to blow them up, , and I have to detail them all over again and, and what is it like to live through it?

It must be absolute hell, but if the whole thing is to come up with better play opportunities, I can't argue with that. We've now come up with another great play opportunity. And after all, isn't that what you guys want for your games? Um, so, you know, there it's always six of one half dozen of the other because it's, it's also may you be cursed to live in interesting times.

You know, if you're actually on the ground in the realms, you probably don't want to be there at ground zero when this or that happens. and you probably cursed the day that some designer, if you knew about there were designers jerking you around, you know, if they were the gods of your Realms, you're probably furious that some designer decided to do this because you liked your farm and your wife and children and you know your peaceful, happy life.

You liked all of that, and now they're all gone and you're gonna have to rebuild. Well, you know how to get new children and you know how to get a new wife, but it's not fun. and you, you probably wanted to keep the old one, you know, . Yes. Because at least you knew the old one. You know, , . I mean, it all sounds flippant, but I mean, that's the best way to view the world because you're gonna get hit every five minutes, so you might as well laugh about it.

Yeah. That's what human beings do. No matter how horrible things are, we get used to it. Right. And that's a, that's both a curse because we become inured to what's wrong. But it's also, it's a, it's our, um, our coping mechanism to make sure we survive as a species. We just keep going, you know, uh, whatever it is, we get used to it and eventually we adapt and we move on and it's terrible now.

But that's the other thing I'm showing in the. how people who have huge magical power and outlive everybody and live for centuries, how it changes them. How it affects them, yes, they're going insane, but it's a coping mechanism, right? They are changing, right? And they are being changed by their environment.

What would it be like? And you know, there are lots of writers of fantasy classics who've done the same thing. Um, Guy Kay's classic novel Tigana, and I don't want to spoil spoiler Tigana, so I won't, but I will say one of the characters, uh, early in the novel said, and they took away our name because only people from the conquered area of Tigana could hear the name Tigana spoken.

Thanks to a spell that a wizard has cast. And that's a very powerful moment when you're reading that. When this guy yells it at the stars and they took away our name, and you realize, wow, what must it feel like? And of course, that's what the best fiction does. It puts us in things we would never have thought of and puts us in the shoes of this person to experience it.

Um, we will. Hopefully none of us will experience being eaten by a swooping dragon in our lives, . Hopefully none of us will experience. Having some guy with a, a beard he hasn't washed and uh, um, turn us into a frog with a spell cuz he didn't like us. Hopefully none of that stuff will happen in real life, but we can experience it by reading good fantasy fiction or playing around a table, uh, playing a fantasy roleplaying game by gamers who are into the game like we are and are.

You know, the game is really flowing and it seems just for a moment real. And we can you know. We feel like we're there.

Ivan: Okay, Ed, so I figured we can wrap this up by doing the usual segment of the show where I ask for secret knowledge of the Realms. Uh, do you have anything that's special or particular that is about Manshoon that most people might not know about, or something that you wish more people knew about when playing Manshoon? 

Ed: Oh yeah, Manshoon has a daughter. 

Ivan: Oh. Oh, is that so? Can you go into more depth? 

Ed: Consider shapeshift. Consider mating with a dragon. Okay. Consider how insane you'd have to be to mate with a dragon. Okay, . Consider how man, how insane Manshoon is. Okay, say no more.

Ivan: That's fantastic. 

That is fantastic. So is this something that if folks go ahead and look up on their own they're gonna be able to get more details on? Or is this something that 

only we know here right now?

Ed: Not a thing. Yeah. Only we know it until I write more in the, you know, for the Patreon or somewhere else.

Only we know it. Cue all the questions tomorrow. No, um, , right. And. And to all those people who ask questions tomorrow, I will simply say, you're gonna have to wait till I write it because there are real world obligations that that slow me down on feeding you Realms Lore. But like I said earlier, I want to be there for you and eventually, um, scratch your itch when it comes to provide lore for the Realms so that you too can, um, be killed by Manshoon's daughter.

I mean, I, I mean, so that,

Ivan: that's perfect. I 

mean, you've heard it here. Nowhere else in the entire world are you gonna hear about Manshoon's daughter. This is the only and most exclusive place 

to hear about stuff like that. By the way, Mystra knows about Manshoon's daughter because she's been watching Manshoon because she wanted to sucker Manshoon into being one of her chosen.

She's been watching everything he does. and so therefore she knows about the daughter and she hasn't done anything to reveal the daughter to her chosen. Hmm. Okay. Okay. . Now I'm feeling itchy, man. I'll leave it there. You know what I mean? Now I'm like, you gotta scratch the itch man. 

What 

I need to know more. I'm gonna have to talk to you after this episode.

I don't know about you, but it's always a really special moment to me when Ed chooses to share something that's never been revealed before, especially when it's something like the Forgotten Realms, which has been around for like a while now. If you liked what you saw in the video, be sure to hit the like button because your support means a lot to us.

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