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    Canonfire :: View topic - Pre-migrations nonhuman realms
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    Pre-migrations nonhuman realms
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    Adept Greytalker

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    Sat Nov 06, 2010 9:07 am  
    Pre-migrations nonhuman realms

    Does anyone know of canonical info on this? The most extensive source seems to be the LGG, but even that is sparse. Here's what I've dug up thus far:

    Elves: "Elves were present in the lands east of the Crystalmist Mountains for uncounted centuries prior to the rise of the first human kingdoms there. Slowly driven from open country to more secluded and better defended strongholds by the growing strength of both human and nonhuman folk, elves still held a number of forest and upland realms at the rime of the Twin Cataclysms. The invading humans, ores, and others pressed them further, until some prominent elven realms made military and political alliances with dwarves, gnomes, and halflings, and even with certain major human tribes (usually Oeridian)." (LGG.8)

    Dwarves: "The dwarves do not speak of their origins to outsiders, so little of their ancient history is known. However, it is understood that they once had great underground halls in the northern Crystalmists that were destroyed by the Invoked Devastation. Their last High King perished in the aftermath, and the clans have ever since been sundered. Led by lords and princes of differing noble houses, the dwarf clans allied with elves and gnomes during the Suel and Oeridian migrations, and even joined humans of reliable disposition to defend their territories." (LGG.9)

    Gnomes: "Rock gnomes of the Flanaess have their origins as trappers and herders in the remote wooded highlands of the north. Their southward expansion began only a few centuries before the Invoked Devastation, bringing them into lands populated by other races. Their lairds and chieftain recognized the authority of elven or dwarven sovereigns, but discouraged any mingling of peoples until the Suel and Oeridian migrations encouraged cooperation between races." (LGG.9)

    Halflings: "Halflings originally occupied small settlements in the river valleys of the west-central Flanaess. They spread slowly into other territories, so that by the time of the Suel and Oeridian migrations, few were north of the Gamboge Forest or east of the Harp River. They are common in much of the Sheldomar Valley, interacting freely with humans, dwarves, elves and gnomes. Historically, they prefer to dwell in stable nations ruled by stronger folk." (LGG.10)

    Valley elf kingdom: "Gnomes lived as citizens of the valley kingdom even before the first grand duke reigned in Geoff. By the time the Keoish built their empire, humans from the lands west of the Barrier Peaks had immigrated to the Javan Vale." (LGG.127) This likely means before -342 CY (founding of Keoland), not 316 CY (1st grand Duke, LGG.48), given implied migrations & length of valley elves time in Vale. WG12.11 implies they'd been there since -14,419 CY: "However, the valley elves are in fact a separate race of elvenkind that traces its presence in the vale back about 15,000 years." Date determined by date of CoG (582 CY, tAB.3, published 1989) & date of Wars boxed set (582-584 CY, published 1991). Plus, gnomes didn't begin moving south from the northern forests until "only a few centuries before the Invoked Devastation" (LGG.9)

    Celene: "Celene has ever been home to the gray elves of the Flanaess. In ancient days, elven princes held sway from the Velverdyva to the Wild Coast; by the time of the Migrations, their rule had diminished to isolated pockets such as Celene." (LGG.39)

    City of Summer Stars (Ivid.74): Date of fall unknown, but likely prior to Great Migrations.

    Sunndi: "These men and women made the place their home, easily befriending the indigenous gray elven lords, who claimed to have lived in the land since the first tree had broken ground." (LGG.110)

    Highfolk & the Vesve: "The Fairdells and the Vesve Forest were home to high elves for untold centuries." (LGG.53)

    "Elven legend states that the bushes sprang up when Corellon Larethian,
    still bleeding from the wounds suffered at the hands of Gruumsh the orcish deity, first set foot in the Vesve." (Marklands)

    Fellreev: "That castle itself is said to be built on the ruins of a high elven city razed by Oeridians neatly nine hundred years ago, and Dahlvier himself is thought to have many unique, ancient, elven magical items and lore in his citadel home." (Iuz the Evil) [-316 CY]

    Ulek states: "The Uleks have provided shelter to Good-aligned nonhumans for untold centuries, while wars and displaced human nations have moved across the Flanaess, consuming most of the habitable lands" (LGG.118)

    Lortmils & P. of Ulek: "Dwarves have lived in these hills since well before the Great Migrations a millennium ago. Treated as an extension of the legendary dwarven kingdoms of the Lortmils at their height, there has been a dwur prince in these foothills long before there ever was a human king in Niole Dra. These dwarven lords protected the wealth and resources of the southern Ulek hills for ages, establishing their lonely halls in the earth and interacting little with the native Flan who inhabited the flatlands. This remained true until the Suel and Oeridians came together in the central valleys to found Keoland." (LGG.121)

    Greyhawk domain: "The demihuman settlements of Grossettgrottell and Greysmere are centuries old but do not date back more than 900 years, their ancestral citizens having come from undisclosed clan holds in the area."

    Anyone else have anything?
    GreySage

    Joined: Aug 03, 2001
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    Sat Nov 06, 2010 11:16 am  

    Player's Guide to Greyhawk, page 37:

    Quote:
    Elves (called "olve" or "olvenfolk" in Flan) inhabited the Flanaess for centuries before the fall of the Baklunish and Suloise Empires. Suloise, Oeridian, and humanoid invaders pushed the elves from their grassland and prairie homes.


    The Glorvardum article on the WotC website has a little more:

    Quote:
    Millennia ago, giants and ogres infested the lower slopes and foothills of the Glorioles Mountains in great numbers, preying with impunity upon the Flan dwelling on the plains below. At this time, hobniz and noniz did not yet make their homes amid the forested hills, but the dwur had already come to the high crags and peaks. Eventually, the dwur and ogres with their giantish leaders drifted into conflict that quickly escalated into a genocidal war that raged throughout the Glorioles.


    Also see Dominions of the Flannae:

    Quote:
    Forty centuries before the golden sun of the Aerdi rose in the east and the rampant lion of the Rhola and Neheli crushed Vecna’s undead legions, a twisted civilization rose and fell upon the fertile plains of the Dragonshead Peninsula. Caerdiralor was a fell land dominated by Tiamat-worshipping priests and mystics. Obsessed with eradicating the dwarves and gnomes of the Headlands, the masters of Caerdiralor waged terrible war on them, giving no quarter.


    We've had another thread where we've tried to resolve the seemingly anomalous placement of gnomes in ancient Caerdiralor. Either rock gnomes arrived there far in advance of the rest of their kin, or these were another gnomish subspecies with a different origin. While only rock gnomes and svirfneblin are accounted for in the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer, there are another of other subspecies included in other sources (including forest gnomes, arcane gnomes, chaos gnomes, fire gnomes, and whisper gnomes). This mystery species might have become extinct during the wars with Caerdiralor.

    I started a thread - which I can't find now - where I asked the forum community when they thought the City of Summer Stars would best be placed. The best clue I found was this line in Ivid the Undying:

    Quote:
    Some of these Sentinels are gray elves from the old city itself, which brings them close to the limit of their years. When a Sentinel grows old, and the time comes for him to pass from the world, another takes his place, usually sent by the Silverbow Sages of Lendore.


    That means it's been less than a gray elf's lifespan since the city fell, but long enough that even gray elves who were young in those days are very old now. What's more, Sargent seems to have been using the 2nd edition conceit that elderly elves pass bodily into other planes before they would die of physical old age (which is the 1st edition age limit). So using the 2nd edition Complete Book of Elves, grey elves live 425+5d100 years before they pass on, or 430-925 years. Grey elves become adult around the age of 120, but Ivid doesn't specify they were adults when they lived in the city. So elves who were children or infants when the City of Summer Stars fell would still be "close to the limit of their years" now - so I'd place the fall of the city around 900 years in the past.

    I remember in the earlier thread, everyone universally expressed a preference for making the City of Summer Stars more ancient than that, and to use 1st edition ages instead (which allow a grey elf to live for 2000 years). That'd be my preference too, actually, but the above is my estimation of what was likely the author's intent.

    How long the City stood prior to its fall, I have no idea, but I'd assume the answer is centuries, at the least. There's also a reference to ancient elves who lived in the Adri Forest before the coming of humanity in Feuds, Folks, and Factions.

    There's a thread on Planewalker.com called So when exactly was the Law-Chaos war? that might interest you. We kind of went back and forth on the available evidence, and ultimately we seemed to have decided that it made the most sense to use dates from the Forgotten Realms timeline as a model, and assume that cosmic events and racial migrations happened in parallel between Oerth and Toril. It's somewhat arbitrary, but reasonable, I think, assuming the 2nd edition model of a shared multiverse. We got kind of hardcore and pretty much mapped out the history of the entire D&D multiverse from the dawn of time.

    Basically, we decided:

    circa -31,778 CY. The Battle of Pesh. This syncs up roughly with the Tearfall in Toril, which ended definitively the Dawn War between gods and primordials. Assuming a multiversal war between Law and Chaos, it seems a reasonable match-up, though the Tearfall could easily have been centuries after the main war was over. We synced them more closely under the (perhaps dubious) assumption that the end of the Law-Chaos wars coincided with an ice age on several different worlds at once.

    circa -31,710 CY. The battle between Corellon Larethian and Gruumsh (date very approximate). The blood of Corellon brings the first elves to life. The blood of Gruumsh brings the first orcs to life.

    circa -30,710 CY. Lolth is banished to the Abyss. The elven race already existed at this point, and had reached some level of sophistication (thus the previous date). Kiaransalee has already become a goddess and established a territory in the Abyss.

    circa -23,720 CY. The Elder Elves, as described in The Gates of Firestorm Peak, destroy their civilization by opening a Vast Gate to the Far Realm. Refugees from this civilization become the nomadic high elves who found elven lands on many different worlds. The Lost Realm of Olefin is swallowed by the Bay of Gates, becoming known as the Sinking Isle. The events of Erik Mona's "The Great Embarkation," when the Elder Elves slaughtered the quaggoths, kuo-toa, and other bestial races and created the sea elves, would have occurred some time between this date and the creation of the elven race. Shortly after this, another ice age is created by a Far Realm entity called Father Llymic.

    circa -13,409 CY. The alien race known as the Juna establish colonies of dwarves, elves, gnomes, and humans on various worlds. This is based on when those races appeared all at once, suddenly, on Athas. It doesn't necessarily tell us anything about the history of Oerth specifically (or, really, Spelljammer), but it gives us a non-arbitrary (at least, relatively non-arbitrary) date for placing the immigration of some races.
    Master Greytalker

    Joined: Jun 25, 2007
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    Sun Nov 07, 2010 5:57 pm  

    I just love it when hardcore 'hawkers start doing research... Wink
    Adept Greytalker

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    Mon Nov 08, 2010 2:29 pm  

    rasgon wrote:
    The Glorvardum article on the WotC website has a little more:

    Quote:
    Millennia ago, giants and ogres infested the lower slopes and foothills of the Glorioles Mountains in great numbers, preying with impunity upon the Flan dwelling on the plains below. At this time, hobniz and noniz did not yet make their homes amid the forested hills, but the dwur had already come to the high crags and peaks. Eventually, the dwur and ogres with their giantish leaders drifted into conflict that quickly escalated into a genocidal war that raged throughout the Glorioles.


    Also see Dominions of the Flannae:

    Quote:
    Forty centuries before the golden sun of the Aerdi rose in the east and the rampant lion of the Rhola and Neheli crushed Vecna’s undead legions, a twisted civilization rose and fell upon the fertile plains of the Dragonshead Peninsula. Caerdiralor was a fell land dominated by Tiamat-worshipping priests and mystics. Obsessed with eradicating the dwarves and gnomes of the Headlands, the masters of Caerdiralor waged terrible war on them, giving no quarter.


    We've had another thread where we've tried to resolve the seemingly anomalous placement of gnomes in ancient Caerdiralor. Either rock gnomes arrived there far in advance of the rest of their kin, or these were another gnomish subspecies with a different origin. While only rock gnomes and svirfneblin are accounted for in the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer, there are another of other subspecies included in other sources (including forest gnomes, arcane gnomes, chaos gnomes, fire gnomes, and whisper gnomes). This mystery species might have become extinct during the wars with Caerdiralor.


    Yeah, likely the author of that piece (Broadhurst?) missed the relevant passage in the LGG on gnomish migrations. I like to think that they were wiped out, personally--it gives Caerdiralor a nastier flavor.

    I also find it interesting that Caerdiralor only seems to have lasted less than 150 years, counting back 4000 years before the fall of Vecna's empire (c. -358 CY) & the founding of the kingdom of Aerdy (-217 CY). See LGG, 64 & 23, respectively (though the date of -216 CY given in this source is miscalculated from 428 OR, due to the lack of a year zero).
    Adept Greytalker

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    Mon Nov 08, 2010 3:31 pm  

    rasgon wrote:
    I started a thread - which I can't find now - where I asked the forum community when they thought the City of Summer Stars would best be placed. The best clue I found was this line in Ivid the Undying:

    Quote:
    Some of these Sentinels are gray elves from the old city itself, which brings them close to the limit of their years. When a Sentinel grows old, and the time comes for him to pass from the world, another takes his place, usually sent by the Silverbow Sages of Lendore.


    That means it's been less than a gray elf's lifespan since the city fell, but long enough that even gray elves who were young in those days are very old now. What's more, Sargent seems to have been using the 2nd edition conceit that elderly elves pass bodily into other planes before they would die of physical old age (which is the 1st edition age limit). So using the 2nd edition Complete Book of Elves, grey elves live 425+5d100 years before they pass on, or 430-925 years. Grey elves become adult around the age of 120, but Ivid doesn't specify they were adults when they lived in the city. So elves who were children or infants when the City of Summer Stars fell would still be "close to the limit of their years" now - so I'd place the fall of the city around 900 years in the past.

    I remember in the earlier thread, everyone universally expressed a preference for making the City of Summer Stars more ancient than that, and to use 1st edition ages instead (which allow a grey elf to live for 2000 years). That'd be my preference too, actually, but the above is my estimation of what was likely the author's intent.

    How long the City stood prior to its fall, I have no idea, but I'd assume the answer is centuries, at the least. There's also a reference to ancient elves who lived in the Adri Forest before the coming of humanity in Feuds, Folks, and Factions.


    Yeah, I think 925 years isn't really long enough either, as that would place the fall at somewhere around -341 CY (counting back from 585 CY). By that time, the Aerdy tribes may have already arrived in the area.

    A point in favor of a post-Cataclysm date, however, appears in Dragon #293, which states that the Aerdy were “first reported on the western shores of the Nyr Dyv” in 1785 FT, or -366 CY. Also note that the Suel clans did not settle the western shore of Woolly Bay until -345 CY (tAB.55).

    That said, I'd still lean toward using 1st edition ages for elves (which can actually go up to 2399 years (see 1st ed DMG, 15), or saying that the Sentinels are able to delay the "call" to go the the Lendore Isles for a few extra centuries. This could push the date back to as far as -1815 CY.

    I think many assume that the Ur-Flan who fought the Adri elves were the Tyrants of the Trask (the Trask currently isn't too far from the Adri, & the forest likely was bigger in those days). Also note that the Flan of the lands that would become North Kingdom were "vile and decadent" (LGG, 73). The Tyrants were also likely the same Flan that the Aerdi defeated at the Batlle of Chokestone in -171 CY (Ivid, 53) & the Battle of Arrowstrand in 11 CY (Ivid, 50).

    One might also speculate that Keraptis originated from this area, as Dragon #241 states that he first “rose to power in the lands abutting the southern Rakers,” in the region encompassing the Bone March (p. 77), before moving on to Tostenhca c. -1410 CY (RtWPM, 3). As the Adri may have once covered the Flinty Hills (as the Gamboge does in their western portion--see LGG, 145), it is tempting to think that Keraptis may have led his people to assault the CoSS before being driven back by Darnakurian (Ivid, 74). His failure to take the CoSS could have been the reason Keraptis left his homeland (voluntarily or not) and journeyed to Tostenhca.
    GreySage

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    Mon Nov 08, 2010 5:21 pm  

    I like the idea that Keraptis was involved in the campaign against the City of the Summer Stars, and I'm happy enough with the rationalization that the guardians are able to resist the call of Sehanine, and thus live their full 1st edition allotments. That's not a completely literal reading of the text (which makes it sound like they have to answer Sehanine's call like everyone else), but it's not unreasonable. So 2,399 years ago is fine by me.

    That said, I don't think it's impossible that the Aerdi were already in the Flanaess when the City of Summer Stars fell. The only real upper limit is that it had to have fallen before the houses of Naelax and Torquann began conquering the area. The Aerdi could have been in the south, warring with the Suloise, oblivious to the elvish slaughter to the north. I do prefer your theory, however.
    Adept Greytalker

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    Sun Nov 14, 2010 11:21 am  

    rasgon wrote:
    I'm happy enough with the rationalization that the guardians are able to resist the call of Sehanine, and thus live their full 1st edition allotments. That's not a completely literal reading of the text (which makes it sound like they have to answer Sehanine's call like everyone else), but it's not unreasonable. So 2,399 years ago is fine by me.


    Actually, scouring through my 2E PHB last night, a came upon this bit of info regarding elven lifespans (p. 21):

    "Elves often live to be over 1,200 years old, although long before this time they feel compelled to depart the realms of men and mortals. Where they go is uncertain, but it is an undeniable urge of their race."

    As 1200 years is the typical lifespan for a high elf in 1E (MM1, 39), and most 2E PCs are assumed to be high elves (2E PHB, 21),it's likely safe to assume that elven lifespans in 1E & 2E are the same, the only difference being they have to go to the Gray Havens halfway through in 2E.
    GreySage

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    Sun Nov 14, 2010 4:09 pm  

    Robbastard wrote:
    As 1200 years is the typical lifespan for a high elf in 1E (MM1, 39), and most 2E PCs are assumed to be high elves (2E PHB, 21),it's likely safe to assume that elven lifespans in 1E & 2E are the same, the only difference being they have to go to the Gray Havens halfway through in 2E.


    Yes, that's what I meant when I said that if they were able to resist Sehanine's call they would live by their full 1st edition allotments. They may be assumed to live at least part of this time in places like the Spindrift Isles rather than in Arvanaith.

    You could conceivably argue that prior to the very recent conquest of Lendore, elves remained in the Flanaess considerably longer than they have in the last decade or so. That might help reconcile the different 1e and 2e assumptions.
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