silvermarches

[silvermarches]

The Definitive Case for a Romantic Reading of Manshoon and Fzoul's Relationship

Allow me to preface this: yes, I'm well aware of what the surface reading of the text says, and that on all levels but physical I am this guy:

Memes aside, this is (finally) the ship meta I’ve been threatening my friends with for months and this blog with for the last week, in which I intend to argue that by canonical text across multiple sourcebooks and novels, one can (and perhaps should) read the dynamic between Manshoon and Fzoul as much more intimate, and indeed potentially romantic, than the intended surface-level reading of the text implies. To this end, what follows will analyze both tabletop sourcebooks, including a published adventure module, and several novels and short stories for what their subtext actually says about the nature of their relationship.

Fair warning: this is long, and continues below the cut to spare your dashes.

Introduction: Shadow, who exactly are Manshoon and Fzoul?

For those of you who haven't spent the last year and a half at least marinating at the bottom of a heap of older Forgotten Realms lore, Manshoon of Zhentil Keep and Fzoul Chembryl are the founders of the Zhentarim, the most infamous espionage, covert ops, and (lately) mercenary organization in the Realms. Manshoon is regarded as one of the most dangerous mortal mages in the region, capable of going toe-to-toe with the likes of Elminster and other Chosen of Mystra; Fzoul began as a powerful priest of Bane and eventually was elevated to the status of Bane’s Chosen. The pair of them comprised two-thirds of the original Inner Circle of the Zhentarim, and led the organization from its founding in 1261 DR to their deaths in 1383 DR. They are first introduced in the original Forgotten Realms Campaign Set boxed set for AD&D 1e, making their initial appearances in the DM’s Sourcebook of the Realms from that set, on pages 22 (Fzoul) and 25/26 (Manshoon), and appear as a set up through D&D 3e. Fzoul's most recent appearance in published tabletop material is in the 4e Campaign Guide, which describes him as having been elevated to the status of an exarch (4e’s demipower equivalent) after his death; Manshoon’s situation is more complicated but at least two of his clones are active as of 5e, one operating covertly in Waterdeep (Waterdeep: Dragon Heist), the other a vampire in Westgate. They're among the longest-running NPCs, antagonistic or otherwise, in the setting. Outside of tabletop sourcebooks, Manshoon and Fzoul make appearances together or separately across a dozen or so novels and short stories, with their first novel appearance in Spellfire, originally published within a year of the Campaign Set’s production.

Officially, source texts claim their relationship is antagonistic, describing them as “[respecting] the power each holds, though each despises the other personally” (Ruins of Zhentil Keep, p. 34), or that “[Manshoon was] hated and mistrusted by his ally Fzoul, [while] Manshoon calmly manipulated the priest as he did all others…” (Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting for 3e, p. 283). However, these self-same texts repeatedly undercut these statements, suggesting implicitly a high degree of interpersonal intimacy and no small amount of trust, which I will dissect in the rest of this essay.

We’ll begin with sourcebook material, which I will be taking chronologically in-universe, analyzing the following texts: Ruins of Zhentil Keep for 2e, which is and remains my primary source, Villains’ Lorebook for 2e, Cloak and Dagger for 2e, and what little is mentioned in the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting for 3e, with brief dips as relevant into other sources. After this, we’ll turn our attention to a handful of relevant novels and short stories: “Lord of the Darkways”, “So High a Price” (both the original Realms of Infamy publication and the revised version from Best of the Realms 2), and Spellfire and Crown of Fire from the “Shandril’s Saga” series.

Canon gives us very little on Manshoon and Fzoul's early years. Our original description comes from the article “Something is Rotten at the Citadel of the Raven” from Polyhedron #83, published in 1992, but the information is repeated largely unchanged in Ruins of Zhentil Keep, which being the tabletop supplement takes precedence. We don't even have an official birth year given for Fzoul, but given that he and Manshoon are described as “childhood friends” in both sources, he’s likely within a few years of Manshoon’s given birth year of 1229 DR. Manshoon’s father was First Lord of the Council of Lords, while Fzoul is described as “the only child of a minor noble of Zhentil Keep” (Ruins p. 107), which certainly places their formative years in close proximity to one another despite Fzoul's early entry into the priesthood of Bane. In 1258 DR, as the son of a council lord, Manshoon—along with his brother, Asmuth, and a close friend, Chess son of Calkontor—was dispatched from the Keep to prove himself worthy of inheritance. While the lord-princes were abroad, their fathers were slain, and their seats on the council usurped; one of the usurpers, Ulsan Baneservant, was Fzoul's own high priest. Upon their return to the Keep in 1260, Ulsan attempted to have the lord-princes assassinated, and it is only after this—and despite the risk—that Manshoon reached out to Fzoul to secure his aid in deposing Ulsan so Manshoon could reclaim his rightful seat. I've already gone on about this at length on this blog, because I'm normal about them.

In 1263 DR, Fzoul schismatized the Church of Bane. The orthodox stance of the church is that it exists solely to “do Bane’s will, kill his enemies, and bring more followers into the nest” (Ruins, p. 65). Fzoul, described at the time as “an intrepid young priest of middling experience” (p. 65) held a different stance: that “the proper worship of the god of tyranny was to support a tyrant, and the most efficient tyrant around was Manshoon,” (Ruins, p. 107) and that they might “reap great profits” (p. 65) by allying with him. The problem with this, of course, is that Manshoon was only 34 and had held his council seat for just three years at that point, and wouldn't be named First Lord of Zhentil Keep for another 70 years (1334 DR). Regardless, Fzoul's doctrinal difference proved popular—other Banites recognized the benefits of both doctrine and collaboration with the Zhentarim, and his faction waxed as the Orthodoxy under the High Imperceptor waned. Ruins says the High Imperceptor “tolerated Fzoul and his followers, despite what he considered blasphemy by these Banites” up until 1357 DR, though several other sources (to be discussed in greater depth in the novels section) mention multiple attempts on Fzoul and Manshoon’s lives during the decades between 1263 and 1357.

While Ruins of Zhentil Keep is quick to reassure us that the two of them dislike each other, it also describes Fzoul as “careful to remain necessary to and friends with Manshoon” (p. 107), the two of them as having “thrown [their] lots in with [each other]” (p. 67), and that Manshoon considers Fzoul “invaluable” (p. 107). Additionally, Villains’ Lorebook describes them as “as close as two evil men can ever be” (Villains’ Lorebook p. 26).

With that all laid out: the pair of them ran the Zhentarim together in this way for nearly a century before the Godswar in 1358 DR. Both of them are quite lethal—Fzoul is described as being perfectly willing to wade into combat himself, and Manshoon is, as described above, capable of going toe-to-toe with some of the greatest spellscasters in the Realms. If the two of them genuinely wanted each other dead, they're more than capable of killing each other. Additionally, we have an example of a genuinely antagonistic relationship within the Inner Circle of the Zhentarim: Fzoul and Sememmon, the third member of their trio and one of Manshoon's former apprentices. Fzoul and Sememmon's relationship is best described as contentious—an “all-consuming (and time-consuming) obsession” (Ruins of Zhentil Keep p. 112) which has led the two of them to multiple attempts on each other's life, and led Fzoul to “[work] out contingency plans with Manshoon in case Sememmon ever makes a play to depose his former teacher as leader of the Zhentarim.” (Villains’ Lorebook, p. 26)

This is, of course, the point where anyone familiar with the lore goes “wait, hang on, Shadow, didn't Fzoul actually kill Manshoon at one point?”

And well. Yes. He did. Ches 6, 1370 DR.

However. The same source, Cloak and Dagger for 2e, that describes the event and that gives us our nice, clear timeline on the lead-up to the assassination and the beginning of the Manshoon Wars (wherein many of Manshoon's clones awakened at once, were driven mad by it, and fought each other all over the Realms) also calls into question just how voluntary this was on Fzoul's part.

I am speaking, of course, of Iyachtu Xvim, the demipower son of Bane. In the early months of 1369 DR, after the destruction of the northern half of Zhentil Keep by forces commanded by Cyric, Xvim made contact with Fzoul, leading Fzoul to turn to his worship and begin leading holdout Banites and forcibly converted formerly Banite Cyricists into Xvim’s faith as an alternative to Cyric. Concurrent with that initial contact, Xvim also begins possessing Fzoul, beginning in Ches 1369 (Cloak and Dagger, p. 9) and recurring throughout that year to accomplish Xvim’s goals. Under Xvim’s control, Fzoul locates the High Imperceptor in Mulmaster and publicly decries him as a traitor to the faith (Cloak and Dagger p. 11), establishes an alliance with Teldorn Darkhope of Mintar (p. 12) and begins work on the artifact that will eventually become the Scepter of the Tyrant’s Eye (p.12). And on Ches 3, 1370, “Fzoul receives a vision from Xvim, demanding the ‘death of the failed tyrant more interested in money and secrets than might’.” (Cloak and Dagger, p. 13) That is, to say: Manshoon. Additionally, Cloak and Dagger does not fully detail the clash between Manshoon and Fzoul that resulted in Manshoon’s death at his hands—Fzoul may have been possessed at the time, or otherwise forced or coerced into it.

Regardless, what Fzoul chose to do afterwards is also interesting—he lies to his and Manshoon's subordinates, claiming first that “Manshoon suffered grievous injuries in this long night of attacks and magically travelled to Zhentil Keep to convalesce” (p. 13) while “revealing” to select high-ranking individuals that “Manshoon had been driven mad by unknown forces, and they were not to trust or obey him until Fzoul gets the chance to cure him” (p. 14, emphasis mine). The claim of madness is not inaccurate—the clone debacle certainly did drive a number of them mad—but the stated interest in curing that madness does not match up with the assassination attempt. Nor does it match up with Manshoon’s ultimate return to the Zhentarim in 1372—notably, after Xvim’s death and Bane’s resurrection—which Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting for 3e describes as “some kind of secret accommodation” and “having arrived at an understanding” (p. 282, 283). If Fzoul truly wanted Manshoon dead or permanently ousted, why allow him to return at all, let alone give him free access to the resources of the Zhentarim?

As a final point, which fits neatly in none of the above sections, in the Curse of the Azure Bonds module for 1e, we get a description of Fzoul's tower which mentions a portrait of him, Manshoon, and Chess as young men, which is hanging in his dining room (p. 59). By this point, 1357 DR, Fzoul and Manshoon have long since fallen out with Chess, but the portrait remains. Additionally, Manshoon is notorious for hiding his face and disguising himself at all times, to the point where "only those who knew him in his youth know his true face" (that is to say, Fzoul); yet he sat for this portrait, a process that would have taken hours and several days' worth of sittings, and historically speaking was not done by people who were not incredibly close. Make of this what you will.

Having exhausted our sourcebooks, we turn now to the novels and short stories I mentioned above. My sample size here is, admittedly, small—I’ve only been reading the novels since December, and the pair appear together quite infrequently—so I will accept contributions from people who have read other novels or short stories which feature both Manshoon and Fzoul’s in-person appearances. I am also taking book recommendations. Please. As above, we’ll take this chronologically in-universe, noting gaps in publication; the original “So High a Price” was published in 1994, Spellfire and Crown of Fire in 1988 and 1994, while the reprint of “So High a Price” was in 2005, and “Lord of the Darkways” wasn't published until 2010 and features a radical shift Greenwood made in Manshoon’s characterization beginning in the 2000s (in my humble opinion, to the detriment). This section, unfortunately, will be without page numbers; I have only ebook copies rather than physical ones of the sources I reference herein.

The original printing of “So High a Price” (‘94), set in 1334 DR during Manshoon’s bid for the seat of First Lord, features very little in the way of direct Manshoon and Fzoul interactions, but mentions that the two of them are said to “meet often” in secret. During the climactic scene in the council chamber the two indeed work together—while appearing to not be doing so at all—until the conspiracy is outed by Chess and the scene devolves into violence. Afterwards, with their collaboration revealed, Manshoon is openly seen convincing Fzoul to stand down from further violence, “[leaning] over the priest and murmuring a few words” to bid him cease. The 2005 printing includes a new scene between the two of them at the beginning of the short story, where Fzoul calls on Manshoon in the Tower High to discuss their plan. Manshoon speaks openly and honestly with Fzoul about his aims, and is generally solicitous with him, inviting Fzoul to stay and share a glass of wine, which Fzoul declines. The other added scene to note features a coterie of assassins, sent by the High Imperceptor, to target Manshoon—intending to remove him so he cannot continue to fortify Zhentil Keep against them.

“Lord of the Darkways” (‘10, published in Dragon issue #390) is set later in 1334 DR, and focuses on Elminster thwarting Manshoon’s bid to control a portal network leading between Zhentil Keep and Sembia. Before I go any further with this analysis, I would like to note that Manshoon’s interest in and concerns about this network are valid—a portal network controlled by certain powerful merchants of Zhentil Keep is, in fact, a threat to their security, as well as a means for these merchants to cheat the government of Zhentil Keep of the taxes they would owe on imported goods via smuggling—though his…methodology is dubious (and, in my opinion, out of character for Manshoon as he is otherwise portrayed during this period). However, my primary focus at this point is on the scenes where he and Fzoul are on-page together. In the first, he and Fzoul have met over lunch to discuss Manshoon’s bid for control of the portal network; Fzoul is rightly angry with him for acting without telling him first, while Manshoon reassures him that he didn't mean to do so and intends to make sure Fzoul is more involved with the decision-making going forward. Manshoon is charming and solicitous with Fzoul, yet again, for the whole interaction, and is described as “eager” and with “a smile as bright as it was genuine”. Fzoul, for his part, is quickly settled by the explanation, and the pair of them get quite drunk together. In the final scene of the short story, the pair of them face off against Elminster together, and it's made quite clear that without Mystra’s intervention on his behalf they might well have destroyed him.

Lastly, we come to the novels from Shandril's Saga, Spellfire and Crown of Fire. While notably the two of them do little face-to-face interaction in this series, a lot is said around those spaces—namely, their knowledge of each other's works and the way Manshoon behaves towards Fzoul.

Spellfire is thin on the ground for both of them, but it does set up two interesting points. Firstly, the High Imperceptor makes another strike against Zhentil Keep, this time on Fzoul himself—but, notably, states that “[they] cannot move against the traitor Fzoul with Manshoon in the city, or [they] shall know certain defeat,” and indeed only acts against him while Manshoon is missing and presumed dead after a battle with the protagonists. Secondly, I want to note the lead-up to the said battle, namely because it sets up an interesting pattern in Manshoon's behavior that carries out through the rest of Spellfire and into Crown of Fire. I’ve already discussed elsewhere on this blog how I feel about Greenwood's use of female “love interests” for Manshoon—namely, that I don't find them at all believable, and he mostly introduces them just to kill them off—but the one in this series, Symgharyl Maruel (also known as the Shadowsil), is the only one I find plausible as a person Manshoon actually cares for. His involvement in the plot is entirely due to her death—he’s magically notified of it when the protagonists slay her, and immediately drops everything he's doing and leaves Zhentil Keep to go after her. This is not the only time in this series we see him set out to retrieve someone he considers valuable to him: later in Spellfire he intervenes to prevent Sememmon and Fzoul's feuding (which has already seen Fzoul dropped into his own blade barrier) from proving fatal to either of them, and when Fzoul is slain by the protagonists in Crown of Fire, he bullies one of Fzoul's subordinate priests into retrieving his body to have him resurrected.

The excuse for Fzoul's resurrection is also…incredibly flimsy. He claims, to one of Fzoul's subordinates, that he wants Fzoul resurrected because Fzoul is “thrice the administrator you'll ever be”—when despite the casualties the Zhentarim face in this novel, Manshoon has had no one else raised from the dead. Not one other person. Only Fzoul.

While Fzoul is less overt, his behavior during Crown of Fire is no less interesting. Early in the novel, he and Manshoon negotiate separately with their beholder allies for control of a lichnee (a sort of failed lich) with the intention of using it against the protagonist Shandril. It’s clear the beholders intend to play Manshoon and Fzoul against one another in this—the beholder offering Fzoul the second method states that “[his] identity and mind will be shielded from Manshoon” if he uses it, to give Fzoul opportunity for treachery (a note: at no point do either of them use the lichnee against anyone other than Shandril). Later in the book, after Manshoon is temporarily slain by the protagonists, Fzoul implies to the same beholder allies that it was permanent, and that he had a hand in destroying Manshoon's remaining stasis clones. This is a lie. It’s revealed at the end that not only did Manshoon have four remaining, but that they were in Zhentil Keep, and guarded by a human guard in Manshoon's employ. If Fzoul had wanted, it wouldn't have been difficult to track down said guard—yet the clones remained unmolested.

A final point. In the lead-up to Fzoul's confrontation with Shandril, he makes use of a spell engine Manshoon had set up in the Citadel of the Raven as part of a trap. The relevant passage follows:

Then he descended to the forehall of the tower, stood on a paving stone that had been enchanted by Manshoon years ago, and spoke one of the words the mage had taught him. An almost inaudible singing sound answered him as the hidden spell engine Manshoon had prepared spun silently out of another plane and into solid existence in Faerûn. It could appear only in this place, but Fzoul—being the spellfire maid’s target—was just the bait to bring her here to face it.

Fzoul could not see the spell engine, but he knew that it now filled most of the room behind him: a great wheel that would begin to spin if spells struck it, absorbing the magic to power itself. Manshoon’s greatest work. It drank all magic cast at it.

The purpose of a spell engine is to siphon off magical energy in the vicinity, effectively preventing spellcasting. If Manshoon truly distrusted Fzoul, Fzoul wouldn't even have known it existed, in order to give Manshoon an edge in a fight, should it come to it. Not only does Fzoul know it exists, he’s explicitly been taught how to use it, and is using it to set a trap of his own.

If you've read this far (...over 3,000 words), I think I've made my point clear. While the text claims Manshoon and Fzoul distrust and dislike each other, what it demonstrates, time and time again, is that they do trust each other a great deal, and are more than willing to lie to protect each other. The question remains, then: if they actually do care for each other (or are, indeed, romantically entangled), why hide it? Out of universe, the answer is obvious: the Forgotten Realms as a setting debuted in the 80s, and many of the works I've referenced in this essay were published in the 90s. Queer characters were non-existent in that space at that time; indeed, Greenwood himself makes a dig at queer men in Spellfire. Nowadays, of course, this relationship couldn't possibly be canonized—they’re villains, after all. In-universe, Zhentil Keep is markedly more conservative than many of its neighbors (they didn't have a woman on the Council of Lords until the late 1340s or early 1350s DR), and even if that weren't a factor, Manshoon and Fzoul both have a lot of enemies. An open relationship would be a death sentence.

Fortunately for them, they seem to have done well to hide it.

[silvermarches]

fucked up the roster for the week and accidentally scheduled two guards who only tell the truth on the same day. fuuuuck now anyone can find out which is the right path to go down

[silvermarches]

handful of scribbly doodles of those old men from the last couple months

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and all that was before he becomes fzoul “my Chosen power is to be one of the sexiest guys on the planet” chembryl! you just have to give up at that point. move to cormyr and live your life out on a farm or something bc he would be insufferable. (and it’s *the best*)

every so often I remember that it's CANON that Bane's Chosen, his special little princess, is not the Head Of The Church Everywhere™ or leader of the biggest and most powerful temple anywhere in Faerûn, he's a known and avowed heretic who wifeguy'ed so hard for an evil wizard that he schismed the local church and they spent the next several decades trying to assassinate him for it, and everyone just has to put up with that

[silvermarches]

and let’s not forget: he also had a *fantastic* handle-bar moustache!

every so often I remember that it's CANON that Bane's Chosen, his special little princess, is not the Head Of The Church Everywhere™ or leader of the biggest and most powerful temple anywhere in Faerûn, he's a known and avowed heretic who wifeguy'ed so hard for an evil wizard that he schismed the local church and they spent the next several decades trying to assassinate him for it, and everyone just has to put up with that

[silvermarches]

Everybody say, “Thank you, Mr. Steven ‘Traffic Cop of the Realms’ Schend”!

Sometimes I’m baffled by how insane the timeline of the forgotten realms is and then I remember they had like 10 people making lore with a deadline of like three months

Also they were probably all on coke

[silvermarches]

in my dream world. we would have a 5e forgotten realms campaign set. i feel like the issue is that in early 5th edition, wotc was still struggling from the backlash to 4th edition and was just trying their best to recover, and d&d was far from the cultural behemoth it’s become today. i’m not saying it wasn’t popular, but it definitely wasn’t mainstream - now, you have critrole and taz and d20 and baldur’s gate iii and even stranger things. but when they made 5th edition, being only like 10 years after the events of 4e, they probably thought that those fans that cared about the lore side of things could just… keep using their 4e lore books. and yes, technically, that’s the case, but it would be just so much more accessible to have stuff specific to this time period, especially given the difference in mechanics.

10 years is a long time!! especially when the whole of the second sundering, which basically worked to undo everything that made 4th edition what it was, was… told in novels. it’s fair not to want GMs and players alike to have to read decades of lore to play their game - so make a game book about it, a proper sourcebook, instead of like a seven novel series. it isn’t that difficult!!!

[silvermarches]

obviously these candlekeep mysteries could still use candlekeep as a central base regardless of its being set in the past or the present, but i like the idea of repurposing certain adventures to either be encountered on their own (i.e. doing away with the book that acts as a plot hook - the plot book, if you will) or fitting them to the libraries of silverymoon, since that’s the central repository of knowledge in the north. still, i do think candlekeep is really iconic and i would love it if the PCs had a chance to visit - maybe they get sent there by one of the silvaeren librarians, because the players need access to a book or some information whose only surviving copy resides in candlekeep? that could be fun!

[silvermarches]

more on the topic of candlekeep mysteries, “the price of beauty” (5th-level adventure) is centrally set in the high forest near to silverymoon, so it could work as part of the campaign. the main temple/bathhouse was built “over a century ago” in 5e, so it would be fine for both past and present campaigns, but the main conflict that sets off the adventure described in the module only happed “ten years ago”, so on a strictly canonical level, it could only work as an adventure as written in modern day faerûn.

[silvermarches]

finally been giving my copy of candlekeep mysteries a proper read now that i want to run a realms campaign. was anyone going to tell me there were some actually interesting adventures in here?? so far, my favourites are “the scrivener’s tale” and “the canopic being”, and i feel like the latter could definitely be adapted for this silverymoon campaign idea

[silvermarches]

Don’t have some great insight about this, but it’s Silverymoon, so I have to! This’ll supplement the stuff listed in the Silver Marches sourcebook perfectly.

Transcript:

February 9, 2023

illuminatirob — Hi @Ed Greenwood, You know, I thought about asking Steven on Candlekeep, but it got pretty heated on the Khelben question, so I didn’t pursue it. I didn’t want to have it get any more heated, so I left it there. If another question isn’t Bogarting too much here….. if so, my apologies. A question on Candlekeep that was bumped from 2005 was, “Where is the Cantlowe Library located?” I dug around as much as I could and came up with The Conclave of the Silverymoon / The Great University of the Gem of the North.

Ed Greenwood — You are correct. The Cantlowe Library is a “special collection” that has resided in other places before being moved to the Great University, but it is now both a special collection AND the rooms that collection is specifically housed in…in the Great University.

– From the Greenwood’s Grotto Discord server.

Please support Ed Greenwood’s Patreon for Forgotten Realms lore! The Discord server is open to the public, however only patrons can ask Ed questions directly. Become a patron for as low as $3/month!

[silvermarches]

More Larloch goodness! Larloch being a Chosen of Mystryl, rather than Mystra, and what’s more, according to Ed’s The Herald, the “First Chosen of Mystryl, and her herald” (p. 173), is a very interesting notion. I love the Chosen, and specifically the Seven Sisters, so having the PCs possibly cooperate with someone with a similar relationship but to a Lady of Magic that is, unquestionably, dead, gets my love of parallels going.

I do appreciate the idea that in Larloch’s past, he had some kind of romance with Mystryl. It humanizes both him and her, and adds a new dimension to his obsession with magic. I’d definitely have to read through the whole of The Herald to play him and characterize him better, but this is already making him way more interesting than I could have expected!

Transcript:

February 8, 2023

Cdawg — I have endless questions for Ed but am trying to repress my enthusiasm. He’s got things to do. I’ll ask one last question. Is there anything you can tell us about Larloch’s actual life? How did he end up becoming a Chosen of Mystryl, and how did he serve her. That’s a book I’d love to read, frankly. (Probably all NDA)

Ed Greenwood — Let’s just say there was love involved. Elminster wasn’t the first mortal to enjoy the charms of a goddess. If the deity began as mortal, after a time they really, really miss mortality, and want to taste it again.

– From the Greenwood’s Grotto Discord server.

Please support Ed Greenwood’s Patreon for Forgotten Realms lore! The Discord server is open to the public, however only patrons can ask Ed questions directly. Become a patron for as low as $3/month!

[silvermarches]

I’ve been thinking about creating a levels one-to-twenty campaign in the Forgotten Realms (that’s part of why I made this account, to have a space to collect all these disparate fragments before I puzzle-piece them together), and this has immediately gotten my mind racing.

I’ve been debating what sort of high-level BBEG such a campaign would have, and I’ve collected myself a list. I think it’d be fun to make a series of posts on different characters that could serve that role, because the Realms has more than plenty.

However, for my main idea, I’ve been working with Vecna in mind. He’s iconic, he’s incredibly powerful, but he’s also not unknowable and unkillable. Given my fascination with Silverymoon, once-called the greatest repository of knowledge in Faerûn (as opposed to Candlekeep’s place as the number one source of lore), I also think it’s fun to have a secret-based villain to end off a campaign initially set in the knowledge-focused city.

It’s very surprising to me, then, to hear that Larloch is more powerful than Vecna. I’ve read of a few of Larloch’s exploits and, being Netherese, it isn’t unheard of that he could reach such heights (Karsus’ Folly remains one of the most interesting bits of Realmslore. Ooh, what if the PCs have to meet/find some spirit of Karsus or a relic of his… putting a pin in that.), but it surprised me nonetheless, given that Vecna’s canon exploits seem to far surpass Larloch’s. Remember, dear reader, that he was and, as of writing this, is the only deity to ever break through into Planescape’s Sigil. Still, the idea that there’s an even stronger lich has piqued my interest.

I thought, momentarily, that maybe Larloch should take Vecna’s place as my working BBEG. It could still turn out that way. But after a quick perusal of his page on the FR Wiki (a great resource, by the way), I found out that he wasn’t necessarily as power-hungry as Vecna. Even as such a powerful lich, he respects Mystra greatly (something he might have learnt, again, after Karsus), and mostly works to be left alone while he gathers knowledge and experiments. Naturally, these are experiments with curses on adventurers and other creatures, because he’s still an Evil guy, but that’s comparatively a much lesser crime than pursuing godhood to achieve total domination of everything ever.

I was thinking, then, what if at some point in the higher Tiers of Play, the PCs had to seek out Larloch’s help? I doubt it would be so simple as a “Hey, can we do a quest for you so you can just kill Vecna for us?”, but the fact that he’s on a similar, and even greater, power level as the BBEG is very interesting. Hearing that he has agents on other Crystal Spheres sold it to me. I’d already known that, as Ed says here, at higher-levels, the scope of the player characters’ influence would extend beyond merely Toril, and so I was planning on somehow introducing that sort of thing at some point, especially when the BBEG himself is originally not from their same world. It would be very poetic, after all, if the PCs had to travel to Vecna’s home of Oerth and figure out his secrets, his past, etc., to find a way to defeat him.

There are many interesting ways this could be achieved, and I have a hard time picking just the one. Maybe there will be multiple quests where they have to hop between worlds, but what this Greenwood response made me think is… what if they’re sent there, to Oerth, by Larloch himself, working with an Oerthian lich bound to him in servitude and that’s how they begin unraveling Vecna’s true story?

It could be really fun! Larloch himself would likely have plans for the PCs, of course, he’s not exactly a good guy, but it could lead to an interesting dynamic! Depending on what level this happens at, as Ed says, maybe the heroes are tasked with robbing something from Oerth or another world for Larloch on their way there, whether it’s retrieving an artifact or capturing a monster or something else, something minor, whose consequences the characters can’t even know (like killing a certain noble, or bringing back a seemingly-mundane book, or whatever). I’ll have to keep thinking about it!

Transcript:

February 8, 2023

Cdawg — Did you have the notion of Vecna having visited or influenced Faerun in the past before WotC introduced it in 5e? Was there no need for it as Larloch fulfilled the preeminent inscrutable lich role?

Ed Greenwood — Oh, yes. TSR in the old days went back and forth on “are the TSR Worlds connected or not” (the Wizards Three DRAGON articles were an editorial assignment to keep visible support for worlds TSR was then englecting), but I had them ALL linked, via gates (portals), as that’s where high-level Realmsplay inevitably went: hopping from Prime Material Plane to alternate Prime MAterial Plane (Toril, Krynn, Oerth). So Vecna and others had visited, and been visited. Archvillains can often bankroll their schemes, or get monsters or armies for them, by “robbing” another world.

Juniper Churlgo — Which reminds me of an ancient unanswered question for Ed. Any gates between Abernys (Birthright) and Toril?

Ed Greenwood — Yes, there are gates linking Abernys and Toril, but the NDAs stand thick and strong on this, still.

Cdawg — This makes me wonder if Larloch and Vecna ever met. (I doubt it would be directly). If so, how did that encounter go?

Ed Greenwood — They’ve met more than once. Most of their meetings did not go well. They are…guardedly polite with each other, since Vecna discovered how much more powerful Larloch is than he is.

Augustoc — Larloch is above deity level? Really?

Ed Greenwood — Larloch has HUNDREDS of “bound” liches working for him, in three worlds. And where Vecna has a Plan B, Larloch has a Plan E. That shook Vecna a lot.

Augustoc — Also, Larloch is canon in other worlds? I wasn’t aware of that. Where else can one see his influence besides Toril?

Ed Greenwood — Another meaty SMACK. Those NDAs are EVERYWHERE. Old friends; you’ll come to hate them as much as I do, soon.

– From the Greenwood’s Grotto Discord server.

Please support Ed Greenwood’s Patreon for Forgotten Realms lore! The Discord server is open to the public, however only patrons can ask Ed questions directly. Become a patron for as low as $3/month!

[silvermarches]

made this blog to encourage my hyperfixation on the forgotten realms. this shit is wild and i love it. ill be reblogging any interesting realms stuff i see on tumblr onto here, but ill hopefully contribute some of my own stuff because i think there’s a lot of interesting stuff to explore in the realms that people just don’t know about because wizards of the coast hates canon settings. 

if you’re a 5e fan like me, most of this stuff will probably be from a century before 5e’s in-universe time, by virtue of wotc not putting out nearly as much realmslore as tsr used to in the older editions (which were, as you might or might not know, set around a century or so before the time of 5e).

i’m a huge fan of silverymoon and the silver marches, as well as alustriel of the seven sisters, and also interested in cormyr, tethyr, vecna, and the general notion of planescape. there’s a lot to the realms and i’m far from an encyclopedia on them, but i hope this blog will be helpful and inspirational, encouraging people to really dig deep into this setting and to find real ways to use it in your own campaigns.