Good morning, Sir. I’ve recently been writing a new iteration of a character I played for the last few years and I’ve been suggested to ask for your help. Honestly, I really love Forgotten Realms, but due to lack of time I couldn’t study them the.. way I needed to.
Also it would be an honour for me to get advice from one such as you.
So, these are my questions:
1) My character is a sorcerer, heir of an important dynasty born from a Silver Dragon. I intended for his family to have a palace in a cold and snowy place, but…— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) August 8, 2021
I really can’t find a spot for it to fit in, so I wanted to ask for some suggestions.
2) One of this character dynasty features is to have a little dragon scale growing on some heirs’ neck. This scale gets then removed and forged into a necklace, as it is seen as a strength… and luck sign. I wanted to ask if it is an original yet lore coherent detail.
3) I wanted one of my character descendants to turn into a Lich and use one of his phylacteries on the dynasty palace, to secretly plan a return in complete safety. Although, while thinking about it…— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) August 8, 2021
…again I realized I could’ve mistaken the Lich transformation process, so I wanted to ask the precise steps and if it’s possible to use a phylactery the way I described.
Hope these doubts reach out to you, thanks in advance for the answer! 1)
Hi, well met! Happy to try to help with Realmslore. There are many, many cold snowy places in the Realms, if you don’t mind mountaintops, and quite a few locales at any latitude north of the north shore of the Moonsea, so—how…#Realmslore— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) August 8, 2021
2)
…remote do you want the palace to be? In Faerûn? And “palace” implies the family rules from it, so…close to or far from which neighbours? (As in, who do you want to be next door with an army at their command? Or not? ;} ) 3)
The dragon scale works for originality, but only in the sense your family is using it in. Many folk in the Realms carry or display dragon scales of too small a size to be made into shields or armor, as trophies (as in “I slew…#Realmslore— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) August 8, 2021
4)
…the dragon whose scale this was”), and it’s likely that most folk meeting a member of your family and seeing such a scale will think it’s that sort of battle-trophy.
As for the process of achieving lichdom, it’s something many… 5)
…wielders of the Art achieve through a combination of research and experimentation, and so their processes, like the form their phylacteries take, vary a bit. The original lich description told us all the bare bones basics…#Realmslore— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) August 8, 2021
6)
…(use of a magic jar spell, etc.) and then Len Lakofka, in an early Dragon article, expanded what we “knew” into a complete process, but it’s clear from what many designers have written since that various spellcasters achieve… 7)
…lichdom by slightly different means, so it’s highly likely that if your DM, or you as DM, want the lich character’s plan to work, it will. But then again… ;} Reading your post, I’m not quite sure what the character is planning…#Realmslore— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) August 8, 2021
8)
…(phylactery as a place for the sentience to return to, if destroyed, or something else? Built into the palace physically, or hidden in a secret chamber in it, or…?). Let’s talk about this more… #Realmslore— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) August 8, 2021