@@mangacomics1601 The kingdom of Miyeritar which had dark elves, moon elves and green elves was attacked and invaded by the Sun elves (the dark elves and sun elves were the two great elven powers at the time) so it basically started a war between the two superpowers and engulfed the smaller kingdoms of the other elves in proxy wars with the Sun elves invading other regions in the north and the dark elves invading the other regions in the south.
In addition to the history of drows, it's worth mentioning, that the Fearzress (magical energy of the Underdark) is actually the remnant magic of the Corellon's Curse. So the drows now use as the source of their magical power the same magic, that made them what they are. And please, give Imaskari some love in the next episode, they are greatly unappreciated
From the Forgotten Realms wiki: "The word faerzress is composed of faer (magic) and Z'ress (to hold dominance or to remain in force), which together mean magic that remained. However, its original term had faer and Z'ress inverted, which rendered the term as dominating magic. That older composition was much more telling about the primary task of these emanations: to keep the drow in the Underdark."
Is the Fearzress the reason Drow magic enchanted items lose their enchantments when they make contact with sunlight? I don't know how it's done now, but back in the earlier days of the Drizzt novels, when he first came to the surface, his Drow magical scimitars, armor, and piwafwi cloak eventually degraded and became useless or fell apart due to contact with sunlight.
@@arthurdotson9579 everyone forgets that Lieral Baenre carved a rune on the world tree allowing drow magic on the surface, this includes faerzress. If the surface folk ever realized what they could do with this physical magical substance, there would be a great "gold rush" into the underdark because it would become like oil in powering their fantasy world.
I swear and continue to believe the Sun-Elves got a slap on the wrist as to comparatively what happened to the Drow. They should have been equally given the same curse to never see the sun again as the Drow were.
An ironic twist on the curse for the Sun Elves could have been to bind them to the sun. Meaning that as long as they are in the light of the sun, they are healthy, but they will weaken and potentially even die whenever they are away from the sun. Such a curse would break their proud civilization and force them to be nomads, constantly traveling the world to stay in the light of day.
(whispers) the golds started trying to murder anyone strong enough to force their descent as they did the dark elves. And there were other elves besides dark who were turned into drow. The curse also hit their allies too. Ever wonder why drizzt's eyes are lavender and his mother's eyes were green? It's because of the light elf blood in their lineage.
As someone who has been reading Forgoten realms books for the past 21 years, i cant say in words how much i love those Lore videos. Thanks you brother for your time and effort !!!
@@theisjepsen22 Icewind dale is the start of the Drizzt series, that has been going on for 30 some odd years. Time of Troubles is a great trilogy and the Elminster series is really good as well.
@@حَسن-م3ه9ظ You are right. But I don't know, I always imagined gods to be above humans, and therefore, be above this kind of actions. But I guess gods in D&D must have the exact same flaws as humans and aren't necessarily wiser. Just more powerful.
@@cubescihist6737my friend read some mythology, the greeks are a soap opera, the norse are brutal and the Egyptians are weird as hell. That's with out getting into meso america or the celts whose gods demanded blood sacrifice. Gods are just people with more power.
The book where the sacrifice of the winged elves was revealed was well done, the bladesinger has such a powerful character arc. Dnd has such loving loresmiths.
You missed 4 "big" things 1st. The excuse for the peaceful annexation. The high elves were elves that escaped the fey. The king of the sun elves traced/claimed his ancestry went back to the lost prince of the green elves (abducted by fey). So pretty please give me the kingdom it should have belonged to my ancestor. 2nd. (Not sure of the cannonicity of this) it wasn't prayer to the gods that caused the descent. It was a ritual on par with the first sundering to force corellon to sanction the dark elves. It backfired horribly killing all the mages involved though its purpose fulfilled. This also led to the sanction of sun elves that had commissioned the ritual. 3rd. When the leaders of the sun elves were cornered in the 5th war they too resorted to foul pacts including a fallen angel that was pretty important if memory serves. 4th. The dwarves had travelled to the western continent during the crown wars. They bore witness to war crimes (I now suspect that storm) and offered shelter to the other sentients. When the other peoples left the new dwarfholds they carried with them the dwarves name for the land Faerüin, a direct callout to the elves actions; this is how the continent got its name. The dwarves took all this as a lesson not to get involved in others politics which has led to their largely isolationist nature. Dwarves also hate how the subsequent generations of elves act as if their people had never sinned, though that's more likely projection of their biases as the dwarves also don't talk about the spawn wars and their ancestors misdeeds. (This is good roleplay fodder, though last time I used it I just got shouted down with "DUG TOO DEEP, DUG TOO DEEP" which is weird because she wasn't playing an elf and we weren't in middle earth.)
Interesting detail about the Ilythiir: Dun-Tharos, the seat of the Rotting Man in 3rd Edition, was built on top of dungeons of Ilythiiri make. So they spread far more east than shown on most maps.
Excellent video! I've previously incorporated Crown Wars history into a drow character. He starts out with typical drow supremacist attitudes, and an evil might-makes-right alignment. In the course of his ruin-delving adventures, he finds evidence that his House was originally founded by dark elf refugees from Miyeritar. This causes an identity crisis, and he's initially disgusted by the thought of being descended from innocent victims. Hopefully he mellows out and becomes more kind-hearted. A big theme for him is, "You can take the drow out of the Underdark, but can you take the Underdark out of the drow?" Ideally I'd want one of three endings for him. A) He's last seen walking into a magical storm to stop it, mirroring the wizards who fought against the Dark Disaster. B) He retires to his own private demiplane where can finally relax and study The Art to his heart's content. C) He and a group of other dark elves reconcile with the surface elves enough that he is able to go live on Evermeet and study to be a High Mage.
One of the things i heard/read ( it's been so long, i don't remember where) was that Corellon's anger at Lolth was so great that all he needed was an excuse to curse and banish those that resembled her.
very well done. glad to see such in depth history and lore brought to the internet for ppl to learn. i have met so many players that have no idea why the FR is the way it is. they just look at the FR and whine about how they dont understand and how it should be changed for whatever reason. thanks to you and others like you we can point ppl here to watch a video that summarizes entire works of lore into digestible pieces for ppl that had no previous knowledge of the world and its history. Gratzi Good Creator...
@Lana's Art Life lol exactly and to bad they tried to retcon the past lore and novels and versions of the game. I started with adnd first edition and swapped to 2e and then players options. At one time i had every dragon and dungeon magazine and every lore book and novel. Now i just play for fun once and awhile. I was always the one getting ppl to read lore and the novels lmao
I created a "Return of Araushnee" campaign 5 years back because I always thought she got a bad deal with the writing of elf lore. Corellon just happened to marry an "evil bitch" out of all the other seldarine? No! So the campaign has your elf or drow characters re-examine clues about the fall and the descent to prove her evil or exonerate her culpability. In my own homebrew you discover that while the overgod AO deals with deities the overgod OO (the grey one) deals with mortals. And the mortal races would be hampered by how OP the elves were. Corellon was given a choice, willfully diminish them or watch their dominion be shattered from with in. Corellon could not take any action that would demand he shine any less brighter. OO departed and everything was good for a time. With Araushnee's help ( because she was friends with the Goddess Nauladii who returned from the Prime with the mortal Template required to make mortal species) they made elves into a reality and many different flavors. Her people were darker skinned and lived closer to the earth and hunted the things that flourished in dark places, keeping other elves safe as they lived high in the trees mostly ignoring the combat below. Corellon would be tricked into giving her a bejeweled spider necklace that was in fact was a slime called Lolth from the abyss. Lolth need only Bite her, and did so while she carried the twins. Lolth could not corrupt her heart but her children weren't protected. Seeing his sister suffering, Vhearun breathed in all the poison that was in the womb. When the twins were born Corellon rejoiced at seeing his Daughter but rejected the corrupted Vhearun, even question Araushnee fidelity (which causes the scorpion God to leave the seldarine in disgust). This breaks her heart and lolth seeps in. From that point it was a losing battle against lolth for control of her body. Previous lore picks up here with lolth striking Corellon and being banished. But Corellon realized this was how OO would break him, and a deep melancholy set in that affects all elves thru him. A desire for the perfect past. The second part of the campaign see the characters help the goddess Nauladii separate Araushnee from lolth. (She had to wait until lolth was a greater God with power enough for both of them to become intermediate goddess.) This allows Araushnee to create a trinity with her children, and creates a proper redemption arc for drow characters. It also touches off a major civil war in the underdark (which would have been part three but we never got that far). Sadly, WOTC and RA want to go a God vs godless civil war for drow, which I think is terrible lore.
@@Gen-Rev D&D will always need an antagonist for the party to face, and drow historically have been among the best of the bad guys. Dragon magazine with drow on the cover sold 20% better than typical covers. But as years go by they deserve a proper character arc. D&D is mostly correct that races or species should not be inherently evil or good, but they go about the wrong way enforcing real world views on to the game arbitrarily instead of giving a story oriented theme explaining the change of view. Now in forgotten realms they say "oh there were good drow all along, hiding away". A real cop out retcon. Instead I had the players engage in a titanic proxy fight between multiple powers, engage with a history and its mythology including interviewing some of the participants of those events, and then allowed them to make the choice and either light a spark of hope or snuff it out. At the end Araushnee returns as an actual mother/fate goddess and forms a trinity with her two kids. Her alignment is chaotic neutral (with good tendencies), she moves to Ysgard (because each soul is worth fighting for). Eilistree moves back to Avandor. Vhearun shifts to CN (with evil tendencies) and moves to pandemonium (a realm of perfect silence in a plane of screeching wind). Lolth being originally a slime, like her handmaidens, is attacked by shevaresh the black archer. But she defeats and devours him providing her a new core and allows her to extend her influence it more surface elves and encourage them to in time to commit evil in their hunt against the drow. So in the end she has both drow worshippers and unknowingly surface elf worshippers. (The yochol that helped set the event into motion, correctly tells you that lolth actually gained in all of this matter. But that doesn't stop lolth from punishing the yochol, having a goddess ripped out of you and having to eat a new one is pretty painful.)
@@josephjohnson5415 I don't know if I would call it a copout. To me it makes sense, This was a large group of people and not all of them would respond to Lolth. A lot of Drow were cut off, but Eilistraee left specifically to give them something else to follow. I do like what you've done here, and I do agree maybe they didn't do it the right way. But I do like the idea of there being Drow who slipped through the cracks. Maybe they worship entirely different gods after being cut off... I also like the idea of it not being Corellon who cut them off but something the other elves did, they just blamed Corellon. I tend to always have a city of Drow that didn't leave the surface, curse or no curse. But that's just me. Normally another god had pity on them and claimed them... (depending on who I'm running the game for, lol)
@@Gen-Rev My issue with the recent changes is the drow is the narrative motive behind the debacle. The drow have been "allowed" to have isolated good communities since 1999 in the TSR published "The Drow of the Underdark" in 2nd edition. This has clearly being forgotten or conveniently ignored to smear gen X and early millennial players as inherently racist for pre-assigning the evil moniker upon the drow and thus... "black people" (which they also co-opted orcs into their fantasy identity. Or anything else the corporation decides to levy against the players as being a "hate crime of imagination"). Thats the real issue I have with the recent drow changes. While for 20 years it's been acceptable to say that while most drow are evil and under the sway of an evil goddess a small minority were in fact good. I believe if one wishes to earnestly change the dynamic it should be in play and not in mandates. My own drow city (Ssirn'uniaren, Beautiful water or as Lolth calls it Li'Nruun Che'el, aka The Boring City) is an extremely ancient city that lies beneath Kozakura/Wa on the continent of Kara-tur ( I lived in Japan at the time of the campaign and half the players were Japanese) Its a city of 5 main caverns that descend like a spiral staircase and connected mainly by a major underdark river that runs thru the first four levels. Each main cavern has a ruling noble family (which are controlled opposition to each other) above the typical nobility which were governed by a group of Yochol, that Lolth correctly accuses of purposely making the city boring but seems oddly less interested in intervening as the governance was a reward for a great victory the head yochol achieved. There's also whisper gnomes (who are good) and a hobgoblin legion (who are lawful evil) which are 2nd class citizens. And a traveling band Myconiods that that help with mushroom cultivation which are illegal to impede or disturb (plentiful food and water after all make this city a veritable paradise and to threaten that is immediate death.). There are then the slaves which are mostly orc and goblins for menial tasks, while human "pets" are seen as status symbols. The drow operates as Yokai on the surface, often "spiriting away" unwanted children, kidnapping skilled workers or assassinating folks that ask too many questions. But thru a portal system they can get almost anywhere in the world.
@@josephjohnson5415 actually this works for some of them as they are created either directly by their god or are so entwined with them that they really should be reflections of them. Also, the Mind Flayers are just generally incompatible with all sentient life.
I love the idea of playing a coven of spellcasters who came from times of great ruin. A survivor from the Saruuk, Dark Elves, Netherese, and Imaskari respectively, maybe trying to avenge their fallen people or preserve what little of their culture is left and ensure such ruin never befalls another civilisation
I really want to make a campaign where after having some time to get your party known by people, you’re approached by either the mayor of the city you’ve been working in, the leader of the underground crime syndicate, or some outside force that isn’t truly known. Regardless of who contacts you, it leads to you descending into the Underdark to steal/rob/buy a spelljammer from mindflayers, then to travel into some dwarven or gnomish place to get weapons with the end goal being to travel to space and destroy the comet. It turns out that the mayor is a gold dragon and the crime boss is a green dragon, the two of them having pooled their resources to hire people to destroy that comet and free dragon kind from the Draco rage. The third party, however, is a black dragon, who also wants to destroy the comet but intends to drop it on top of the city in the process, ya know typical comic book villain shit like black dragons do
Loving the content man. I always appreciate the deeper dives into the lore since they always give me ideas to use for the games I run. I am going to run the escape from the crystal moon from your store and this video gave me the idea to include an Easter egg about the moon getting blasted by dragons.
I literally just found your channel, and inly watched this, and the previous one about Toril's history, but it already helped me a lot! I'm starting DMing next month, amd I'm not confident enough to build a new world, but I like to be (or at lest seem) well-informed and historically accurate. This little (?) series of yours helps me a lot in this, thank you so much for making them!!! (And you earned a new subscriber:))
One thing you forgot to mention, is how much this curse changed the dark elves physically (and I can't remember if you mentioned it in one of your Videos about the elves or drow, or if I read it somewhere else). Apparently, they were called dark elves due to their dark skin, which was of a rich brown hue (so they seem to have looked pretty much how most Anime portray them), before this curse turned them a coal black. But anyway, great Video, and thanks for doing these videos. You explaining these is conveying way more and much more understandable than when I look them up. Your Work is much appreciated. Also, can we agree that almost everything is the sun elves fault?
That matter is actually a bit inconsistent. Going by the Evermeet novel the drow were *always* ebony-skinned with white hair, well before the Crown Wars and their banishment to the Underdark, and it was such on other planes that had them too-Kiaransalee was a 'dark elf' from another plane who taught Lolth herself the name 'drow' for elves that looked like her. (again, before their banishment to the underdark)
Yes, but Moon elves were not too good themselves. Moon elves helped the Sun elves in most of their crimes. The Sundering and dracorage as well as the crown wars. Where they did not help, they stayed neutral. Still Sun Elves were mainly at fault
I always wonder if it was actually Corellon who created the curse, or something else. For one the dark elves had only just seen some of them drawn to Lolth by the time the sun elves started committing atrocities. Like they sun elves pushed the drow towards embracing Lolth out of necessity. And the Dark Disaster, be it a rebel cell, the sun evles, or LOLTH who created it, only served to cement their depenancy on Lolths power and offerings. The curse could have been targed by the sun elves. Because in the end of the day, it'd have been easy for a God of Corelleons nature to simply target specifically the elves corrupted by Lolth, not unborn, not the innocent, not the Ellistrians and the Seldarinites. I personally see it as high magic cast by the elves and not of Corellons INTENT to damn ALL dark elves. Afterall, CORELLON OFFER ELLESTREE a place in the Seldarine. They said she didn't have to go with her mother. That she was forgiven for her 'role' since she was innocent and had no intended to hurt her father. So why would that SAME God who cared for their daughter and didn't hold her responsible for the actions of her mother, hold HER flock responsible and push them for the actions of her MOTHERS flock and the other Dark Seldarine.
Perhaps you're right, perhaps Corellon may have intended to only affect those that worship loth, but due to the recent surge of power Lolth obtained, she twisted the curse to affect all dark elves. As both a spiteful act against Corellon, but to also ensure that she would hold the Drow as her own possessions and source of power forever. Since of course in Lolth's god portfolio she is the god of all Drow.
@@lauraw2526 It's definitely possible. I mean she's just fucking unleashed demon lords in the underdark as part of her plot to seize more power, but in that case she's weakening the LOLTHIAN Drow and all their main rivals in the underdark AND weakening the Demon Lords in the abyss to seize more power for herself. Also I cannot suggest as a fandom adopting the term 'Lolthian' and 'Eilistraean' when talking of the Drow, because they're the main two denominations of Drow and honestly as time goes on, Eilistraee is going to have more sway over the drow, ESPECIALLY since the whole 'UNLEASHED DEMIGORGAN IN THE MIDDLE OF MENZOBERRAN' will likely lead to a large exedos of Lolthian Drow to Eilistraees embrace and subsequently a larger faction of Refugee Drow in the northern folds of Faerun. In my campaigns set 30-50 years post current canon I tend to have Eilistraean Drow being more prevalent on the surface in major cities like Waterdeep, Silverymoon, and Neverwinter.
There's something he didn't mention for some reason. the sun elves were ALSO dealing with devils.. The same Fallen Solar that had attempted a coup alongside lolth had been working alongside them, using thier hubris. Malkazid, now an archdevil, wants ALL elves and thier gods dead, including Lolth and the drow. During the third crown war, he was directly helping them, and to this day he continues convincing elves to war with each other to weaken the power of both Lolth and the Seldarine. So a good chunk of this was likely something Lolth was just taking advantage of. Definitely involved, but hard to tell how much was her and how much was Malkazid just wanting the Sun elves to kill thier own kind.
Or the more reasonable and realistic reason for why is because all gods are a bunch of selfish assholes that only care about the domain they hold power over and little else. We've seen gods of all sorts, even the "good gods" do some fucked up shit, Lathander for example destroyed many gods and caused so much chaos in his quest for making everything in his image, he didnt care, he did what benefited him and his godly domain. Helm also an example, didnt care that the world needed Mystral to exist correctly, he still killed her when she tried to stabilize magic and resulted in countless deaths and even entire planes of existence being destroyed, cuz he is the god of "protection" but only cares about his duty at hand, regardless of consecuences. Ao himself, the literal all powerful made lots of incredibly stupid decisions despite having the power to solve them in a perfect way, and even then he, the all knowing, didnt care what the consecuences were. So yeah, not hard to think Corellion would just dont care and take the easiest route he could, the own elvish pantheon allowed and permited the elves to suck all magic from the world, regardless of what may that cause in the future or for existing creatures, so i dont think morality or compasion should be expected from deities unless it relates to them and their whims. Like the Loth theory is pretty ineresting, still it may just be that he is an asshole.
Thank you so much for all your videos, in my group I'm essentially considered the lore master and a lot of that is because of you. It also really helps me appreciate the things that we encounter during the game Also it feels good when I ask to make a knowledge check, and the answer to a particularly high roll is "yeah your character knows whatever you know"
You can always find free downloads of PDFs of every Forgotten Realms books from previous editions to read through. Far far more lore there than 5e crap will ever provide. WotC stopped lore writing when 5e came out.
@@razzelmire2008 I like the system of 5e (not quite as much as I like Pathfinder 1e, which is basically 3.5 with a couple of key changes that I thought made it better) but they definitely put lore on the backburner when it came out.... Then dumped it in the trash in the last few years. My group primarily plays 5e nowadays, but we've got so many houserules that bring back a lot of what we liked about 3x/pf1. But even when we aren't playing 5e we still play in the forgotten realms, although because WotC decided they didn't care about lore anymore we use a lot of lore from older editions
What an amazing video. I've read through the grand history of the realms multiple times, but still couldn't get it sorted right. The visualizations helped a lot.
Thinking about all the creatures and races in DnD made me think about the insane growth in the lore. When I first played the original game there was 3 or 4 playable races and only 9 monsters none of which included a dragon but did for some reason include 3 varieties of slime monster (Green, Black, and Cube). The big bad was a Beholder and most the fights were Kobalds and Gnolls with skeletons being a problem mostly while camping or near loot. Trolls, Bugbears, and Owlbears rounded out the serious threats.
Idk where else to say this but I love your PDFs! You should consider making a mega bundle where you can buy them all for maybe a discount of the total price
Thank you for the history lesson! Years ago, when I didn't know anything about the different settings, I didn't think I liked Forgotten Realms. But now I love the comprehensive lore.
Amazing video as always Mr Rhexx! After watching the whole thing I can't help but feel like not only the Sun elves were responsible for the whole ordeal. But also the Elven Pantheon that most elves worshipped were also at fault. For they allowed and assisted the Sundering to occur, that scoured many parts of the land of Toril and Killed many of their own followers for the sake of the hubris filled Sun elves that they seemed to have favored most during that time. They also did nothing to stop the wars the sun elves and dark elves were doing before it was far too late. I like to imagine a lot of elves that weren't aligned to the two empires or it's wars, that weren't those that went to the neutral kingdoms to pray to their gods may have straight up abandoned them for allowing all of this to happen and might have been the cause of the Dark disaster. As they would mostly been the rebel elves that were conquered. But not just as a last bit of defiance against the sun elven empire, but against their own gods by destroying not only the center of elven civilization but probably of the center elven god worship too.
Thank you Mr Rhexx. Long time subscriber. Watch about 90% of yiur videos i reckon over the years. This was really informitive. So the elves made a fixed point in time. In a sense. Cool.
First off love your work, great as always, 2ndly I kno monster classes are probably your best sellers but I love dragon hoards and wondering if plan on expanding that series covering more monsters and creatures?
The Sun and moon elves also killed all the good dark elves and destroyed the green elf kingdoms. With the Dracorage destroyed, I imagine the dragons would want some retaliation
What's the chance it was Lolth who blasted the swamp onto existence, using the sun elves as a scapegoat? She certainly has reason to hate them enough, and this war could have eliminated at least one faction she despised, if not two.
My main take away from this is that the elves are just as petty, fallible, and prone to mistakes and greed as any other race, but they'll pretend they're better right up until (and even past) the end.
Great video as always! One recomendation for a video: a quick fire of races' origins, kinda like what you did with the Derghars at the end of this one. Then people will show more interest in some of them and it makes for next videos...
saw the d&d movie yesterday (can definitely recommend it). there was a short shot that showed the tears of selûne (as explained in this video around 4:20) which i only learned about one day prior, thanks to this very video. it made me realize that the script truly respected the source material (not a given these days) which made me enjoy the movie more. so... thanks for that.
Fun fact: this time period is probably about when quaggoths were driven underground. According to 5e, they were surface dwellers until elves showed up, drove them to near extinction and forced them underground. Sadly, this seems to be about half their lore. Looking back on the 1e fiend folio and the 2e monster manual, they're just savage tribal monsters who the drow like enslaving. At least the thonots are a cool twist. Also, loving your videos! Keep up the great work, can't wait for more!
Great videos ! It's always a good moment to relax and watch your videos to learn more about the world we play in ! If you have the time, something that could be nice for this series of videos is a general timeline with all the event and how they are connected to each other.
When I was younger and started playing dnd we started with the dragon and elf wars. It was a great game at the time I had zero idea on dnd lore but our dm at the time had old lore and had us play through it it was a great time and I have remade my old character into a 3.5/5e version but he's in the dusty binder with so many other good memories.
Amazing stuff, Rhexx! Will be waiting for more lore dives, as I'm looking at a challenge to master play-by-post organized roleplay in Forgotten Realms.
I remember watching this guy’s videos back when he made elder scrolls content. Once he switched to dnd content, I wasn’t around for a long long time. Now BG3 came out and I actually have a reason to be interested in dnd lore😂
Hey Rhexx, I loved the video and the history, super cool to learn about the tears in particular. I also wanted to say thanks for putting out your PDFs, I’ll be starting a campaign of Rime of the Frost Maiden soon where I’ll be playing a Vampire from your rules (gonna take advantage of that darkness), so thanks for providing this cool new way to play.
Pretty off topic, but regarding the Sands of Doom part of the video. Hearing the premise and title of the campaign I already thought that some inspiration from the Red Hand of Doom campaign was present. I am running this campaign atm converted to 5e and enjoying it so much, and so do my players. It's the main reason I backed your project Rhexx, looking forward to it's release and seeing what kind of similarities and difference reveal themselves with the RHoD campaign!
Honestly it may be the dragon lover in me but i really want destroy that comet. I feel it could be such a interesting adventure for a party, to undo something the ancient elves did. To bring back draconic rule for better or worse.
I really love that you’re doing this. For close to a year I’ve been trying to find comprehensive content for the lore of Forgotten Realms, but I can’t seem to find much outside the wiki (which as far as I can tell doesn’t have a chronological history page). Where do you go to find all this information?
I never understood why the dragons didn't just use a wish spell to make the comet vanish or transport it to another plane or make it so that it won't pass by Toril anymore. I feel like there are many solutions that are never used due to plot contrivence.
I'm assuming that the comet was then bound by that incredibly powerful spell, and Wish just wasn't gonna cut it. Wish can do an awful lot, but it can't do every single thing, and sometimes, the results of using it may actually be worse than the present condition.
It's worth noting that the spells we know today were invented by the Netherese, who haven't quite appeared yet. Though I don't know if that's the answer. I will try and ask Ed Greenwood, see if he wants to comment.
@@arnox4554 Worth noting, if it was so resistant to alterarion that a wish spell wouldn't work on it, how was Sammaster able to change it? He was just a normal necromancer lich at that point, not a chosen of Mystra.
As an outsider who does not know play or know much DnD Lore, my question is that the Sun Elves got off way too easy. Like how the Drow Elves were cursed like that, they should have suffered the same. It feels like the Elvish Gods were more worried about the rogue pantheon than the shit the Sun Elves put everyone else on the continent through.
@@andrecro1 Falling cities are better than being forced to kill everyone and eat your own kids for millenia, or a spell that reshaped the continents just to make an island. Elves are petty
I love how the lore starts off with the background of "The Year of Rogue Dragons," which was the first trilogy I read from the Forgotten Realms. Though it's a pretty big spoiler from late in the trilogy.
I'm so glad we got a more in depth series on the history of forgotten realms, the crown wars are so vague but so important I could be mistaken, but I believe Miyeritar was founded by green and dark elves, not moon. That explains a bit more of the connections between the sun and dark elves to me at least
whelp, the draconic civilization just proved to everyone that even an entire society, working together, can still roll a 1.
You mean a 1.
😂😂😂
Sun Elves: Start brutal war
Dark Elves: respond and get punished
Kinda f*cked
Wait until you hear they are not even allowed in Evermeet
Why did they respond?
They weren't being attacked.
This story is at the level of Game of Thrones…all the injustice and war
@@mangacomics1601 because another dark elf kingdom got attacked????
@@mangacomics1601 The kingdom of Miyeritar which had dark elves, moon elves and green elves was attacked and invaded by the Sun elves (the dark elves and sun elves were the two great elven powers at the time) so it basically started a war between the two superpowers and engulfed the smaller kingdoms of the other elves in proxy wars with the Sun elves invading other regions in the north and the dark elves invading the other regions in the south.
Every....Single....Dark Elf....
Chills brother...well said...
Love all your material Rhexx, never stop...
that was really pathosly and thus cringe
In addition to the history of drows, it's worth mentioning, that the Fearzress (magical energy of the Underdark) is actually the remnant magic of the Corellon's Curse. So the drows now use as the source of their magical power the same magic, that made them what they are.
And please, give Imaskari some love in the next episode, they are greatly unappreciated
From the Forgotten Realms wiki:
"The word faerzress is composed of faer (magic) and Z'ress (to hold dominance or to remain in force), which together mean magic that remained. However, its original term had faer and Z'ress inverted, which rendered the term as dominating magic. That older composition was much more telling about the primary task of these emanations: to keep the drow in the Underdark."
Is the Fearzress the reason Drow magic enchanted items lose their enchantments when they make contact with sunlight? I don't know how it's done now, but back in the earlier days of the Drizzt novels, when he first came to the surface, his Drow magical scimitars, armor, and piwafwi cloak eventually degraded and became useless or fell apart due to contact with sunlight.
@arthurdotson9579 Yes, the drow equipment depends on Fearzess to work, partially at least.
@@arthurdotson9579 everyone forgets that Lieral Baenre carved a rune on the world tree allowing drow magic on the surface, this includes faerzress. If the surface folk ever realized what they could do with this physical magical substance, there would be a great "gold rush" into the underdark because it would become like oil in powering their fantasy world.
@@TheBayzent Thank ya.
I swear and continue to believe the Sun-Elves got a slap on the wrist as to comparatively what happened to the Drow. They should have been equally given the same curse to never see the sun again as the Drow were.
An ironic twist on the curse for the Sun Elves could have been to bind them to the sun. Meaning that as long as they are in the light of the sun, they are healthy, but they will weaken and potentially even die whenever they are away from the sun. Such a curse would break their proud civilization and force them to be nomads, constantly traveling the world to stay in the light of day.
Absolutely agree. Sun elves did oppress the Drow until everything befell
(whispers) the golds started trying to murder anyone strong enough to force their descent as they did the dark elves. And there were other elves besides dark who were turned into drow. The curse also hit their allies too. Ever wonder why drizzt's eyes are lavender and his mother's eyes were green? It's because of the light elf blood in their lineage.
@@mondric4519 gasp! holy... this straight fire lore and no idk about drizzt's eyes color as well as his mom either.
As someone who has been reading Forgoten realms books for the past 21 years, i cant say in words how much i love those Lore videos. Thanks you brother for your time and effort !!!
Any names on those books for somebody who wants to nerd this out?
Top 5?
@@theisjepsen22 Icewind dale is the start of the Drizzt series, that has been going on for 30 some odd years. Time of Troubles is a great trilogy and the Elminster series is really good as well.
D&D: "In this universe, Good and Evil are OBJECTIVE and ABSOLUTE"
Also D&D: Corellon, a GOOD-aligned deity, curses the innocent and the unborn.
I don't see the contradiction, just because a Good being can do something bad it doesn't mean Good and Evil aren't objective
@@حَسن-م3ه9ظ You are right. But I don't know, I always imagined gods to be above humans, and therefore, be above this kind of actions. But I guess gods in D&D must have the exact same flaws as humans and aren't necessarily wiser. Just more powerful.
@@cubescihist6737my friend read some mythology, the greeks are a soap opera, the norse are brutal and the Egyptians are weird as hell. That's with out getting into meso america or the celts whose gods demanded blood sacrifice. Gods are just people with more power.
The book where the sacrifice of the winged elves was revealed was well done, the bladesinger has such a powerful character arc. Dnd has such loving loresmiths.
Which book is it?
You missed 4 "big" things
1st. The excuse for the peaceful annexation.
The high elves were elves that escaped the fey. The king of the sun elves traced/claimed his ancestry went back to the lost prince of the green elves (abducted by fey). So pretty please give me the kingdom it should have belonged to my ancestor.
2nd. (Not sure of the cannonicity of this) it wasn't prayer to the gods that caused the descent. It was a ritual on par with the first sundering to force corellon to sanction the dark elves. It backfired horribly killing all the mages involved though its purpose fulfilled. This also led to the sanction of sun elves that had commissioned the ritual.
3rd. When the leaders of the sun elves were cornered in the 5th war they too resorted to foul pacts including a fallen angel that was pretty important if memory serves.
4th. The dwarves had travelled to the western continent during the crown wars. They bore witness to war crimes (I now suspect that storm) and offered shelter to the other sentients. When the other peoples left the new dwarfholds they carried with them the dwarves name for the land Faerüin, a direct callout to the elves actions; this is how the continent got its name. The dwarves took all this as a lesson not to get involved in others politics which has led to their largely isolationist nature.
Dwarves also hate how the subsequent generations of elves act as if their people had never sinned, though that's more likely projection of their biases as the dwarves also don't talk about the spawn wars and their ancestors misdeeds. (This is good roleplay fodder, though last time I used it I just got shouted down with "DUG TOO DEEP, DUG TOO DEEP" which is weird because she wasn't playing an elf and we weren't in middle earth.)
Interesting detail about the Ilythiir: Dun-Tharos, the seat of the Rotting Man in 3rd Edition, was built on top of dungeons of Ilythiiri make. So they spread far more east than shown on most maps.
1:24 A fairly gritty adventure in the Sands of Doom. Well played
Excellent video!
I've previously incorporated Crown Wars history into a drow character. He starts out with typical drow supremacist attitudes, and an evil might-makes-right alignment. In the course of his ruin-delving adventures, he finds evidence that his House was originally founded by dark elf refugees from Miyeritar. This causes an identity crisis, and he's initially disgusted by the thought of being descended from innocent victims. Hopefully he mellows out and becomes more kind-hearted. A big theme for him is, "You can take the drow out of the Underdark, but can you take the Underdark out of the drow?"
Ideally I'd want one of three endings for him. A) He's last seen walking into a magical storm to stop it, mirroring the wizards who fought against the Dark Disaster. B) He retires to his own private demiplane where can finally relax and study The Art to his heart's content. C) He and a group of other dark elves reconcile with the surface elves enough that he is able to go live on Evermeet and study to be a High Mage.
That's awesome :D I hope they have some amazing adventures!
Drow characters are great, there's just so much there to play with. This is pretty rad.
What an epic tale brought to us by one of the greatest loremasters on UA-cam!!! Thank you for all of your hard work brother!! 💚
Yeah, Ed Greenwood, Scott Ciencin, Troy Denning, J. Robert King, James M. Ward, or David Wise didn't bring it to you.
@@joshuaosiris I'm not subscribed to any of those people.
Dude they are some of the people who wrote the lore, fool!
@@joshuaosiris Who's the fool here me or the person who thinks MrRhexx has not mentioned all those names in literally all his videos?
26:46 Sir, I need to commend you for the delivery of that part. It is so good, caused goosebumps and all. Excellently done!
One of the things i heard/read ( it's been so long, i don't remember where) was that Corellon's anger at Lolth was so great that all he needed was an excuse to curse and banish those that resembled her.
very well done. glad to see such in depth history and lore brought to the internet for ppl to learn. i have met so many players that have no idea why the FR is the way it is. they just look at the FR and whine about how they dont understand and how it should be changed for whatever reason. thanks to you and others like you we can point ppl here to watch a video that summarizes entire works of lore into digestible pieces for ppl that had no previous knowledge of the world and its history. Gratzi Good Creator...
@Lana's Art Life lol exactly and to bad they tried to retcon the past lore and novels and versions of the game. I started with adnd first edition and swapped to 2e and then players options. At one time i had every dragon and dungeon magazine and every lore book and novel. Now i just play for fun once and awhile. I was always the one getting ppl to read lore and the novels lmao
@@Shadowslave604 Wait wasn't it AD&D and 2nd AD&D?
i'm running Forgotten Realms and we're all playing elves. i knew some of this history, but this is just so well-laid out. Thank you!
I would recommend Elaine Cunningham's Evermeet: Island of Elves
@@lusalma5404realms of the arcane and realms of magic also have tales relating to these times.
I created a "Return of Araushnee" campaign 5 years back because I always thought she got a bad deal with the writing of elf lore. Corellon just happened to marry an "evil bitch" out of all the other seldarine? No! So the campaign has your elf or drow characters re-examine clues about the fall and the descent to prove her evil or exonerate her culpability.
In my own homebrew you discover that while the overgod AO deals with deities the overgod OO (the grey one) deals with mortals. And the mortal races would be hampered by how OP the elves were. Corellon was given a choice, willfully diminish them or watch their dominion be shattered from with in. Corellon could not take any action that would demand he shine any less brighter. OO departed and everything was good for a time. With Araushnee's help ( because she was friends with the Goddess Nauladii who returned from the Prime with the mortal Template required to make mortal species) they made elves into a reality and many different flavors. Her people were darker skinned and lived closer to the earth and hunted the things that flourished in dark places, keeping other elves safe as they lived high in the trees mostly ignoring the combat below.
Corellon would be tricked into giving her a bejeweled spider necklace that was in fact was a slime called Lolth from the abyss. Lolth need only Bite her, and did so while she carried the twins. Lolth could not corrupt her heart but her children weren't protected. Seeing his sister suffering, Vhearun breathed in all the poison that was in the womb. When the twins were born Corellon rejoiced at seeing his Daughter but rejected the corrupted Vhearun, even question Araushnee fidelity (which causes the scorpion God to leave the seldarine in disgust). This breaks her heart and lolth seeps in. From that point it was a losing battle against lolth for control of her body. Previous lore picks up here with lolth striking Corellon and being banished. But Corellon realized this was how OO would break him, and a deep melancholy set in that affects all elves thru him. A desire for the perfect past.
The second part of the campaign see the characters help the goddess Nauladii separate Araushnee from lolth. (She had to wait until lolth was a greater God with power enough for both of them to become intermediate goddess.) This allows Araushnee to create a trinity with her children, and creates a proper redemption arc for drow characters. It also touches off a major civil war in the underdark (which would have been part three but we never got that far). Sadly, WOTC and RA want to go a God vs godless civil war for drow, which I think is terrible lore.
This is actually really good. I love playing with Drow history, they get such a raw deal.
@@Gen-Rev D&D will always need an antagonist for the party to face, and drow historically have been among the best of the bad guys. Dragon magazine with drow on the cover sold 20% better than typical covers. But as years go by they deserve a proper character arc.
D&D is mostly correct that races or species should not be inherently evil or good, but they go about the wrong way enforcing real world views on to the game arbitrarily instead of giving a story oriented theme explaining the change of view. Now in forgotten realms they say "oh there were good drow all along, hiding away". A real cop out retcon.
Instead I had the players engage in a titanic proxy fight between multiple powers, engage with a history and its mythology including interviewing some of the participants of those events, and then allowed them to make the choice and either light a spark of hope or snuff it out.
At the end Araushnee returns as an actual mother/fate goddess and forms a trinity with her two kids. Her alignment is chaotic neutral (with good tendencies), she moves to Ysgard (because each soul is worth fighting for). Eilistree moves back to Avandor. Vhearun shifts to CN (with evil tendencies) and moves to pandemonium (a realm of perfect silence in a plane of screeching wind).
Lolth being originally a slime, like her handmaidens, is attacked by shevaresh the black archer. But she defeats and devours him providing her a new core and allows her to extend her influence it more surface elves and encourage them to in time to commit evil in their hunt against the drow. So in the end she has both drow worshippers and unknowingly surface elf worshippers. (The yochol that helped set the event into motion, correctly tells you that lolth actually gained in all of this matter. But that doesn't stop lolth from punishing the yochol, having a goddess ripped out of you and having to eat a new one is pretty painful.)
@@josephjohnson5415 I don't know if I would call it a copout. To me it makes sense, This was a large group of people and not all of them would respond to Lolth. A lot of Drow were cut off, but Eilistraee left specifically to give them something else to follow.
I do like what you've done here, and I do agree maybe they didn't do it the right way. But I do like the idea of there being Drow who slipped through the cracks. Maybe they worship entirely different gods after being cut off... I also like the idea of it not being Corellon who cut them off but something the other elves did, they just blamed Corellon.
I tend to always have a city of Drow that didn't leave the surface, curse or no curse. But that's just me. Normally another god had pity on them and claimed them... (depending on who I'm running the game for, lol)
@@Gen-Rev My issue with the recent changes is the drow is the narrative motive behind the debacle. The drow have been "allowed" to have isolated good communities since 1999 in the TSR published "The Drow of the Underdark" in 2nd edition. This has clearly being forgotten or conveniently ignored to smear gen X and early millennial players as inherently racist for pre-assigning the evil moniker upon the drow and thus... "black people" (which they also co-opted orcs into their fantasy identity. Or anything else the corporation decides to levy against the players as being a "hate crime of imagination"). Thats the real issue I have with the recent drow changes. While for 20 years it's been acceptable to say that while most drow are evil and under the sway of an evil goddess a small minority were in fact good. I believe if one wishes to earnestly change the dynamic it should be in play and not in mandates.
My own drow city (Ssirn'uniaren, Beautiful water or as Lolth calls it Li'Nruun Che'el, aka The Boring City) is an extremely ancient city that lies beneath Kozakura/Wa on the continent of Kara-tur ( I lived in Japan at the time of the campaign and half the players were Japanese) Its a city of 5 main caverns that descend like a spiral staircase and connected mainly by a major underdark river that runs thru the first four levels. Each main cavern has a ruling noble family (which are controlled opposition to each other) above the typical nobility which were governed by a group of Yochol, that Lolth correctly accuses of purposely making the city boring but seems oddly less interested in intervening as the governance was a reward for a great victory the head yochol achieved.
There's also whisper gnomes (who are good) and a hobgoblin legion (who are lawful evil) which are 2nd class citizens. And a traveling band Myconiods that that help with mushroom cultivation which are illegal to impede or disturb (plentiful food and water after all make this city a veritable paradise and to threaten that is immediate death.). There are then the slaves which are mostly orc and goblins for menial tasks, while human "pets" are seen as status symbols.
The drow operates as Yokai on the surface, often "spiriting away" unwanted children, kidnapping skilled workers or assassinating folks that ask too many questions. But thru a portal system they can get almost anywhere in the world.
@@josephjohnson5415 actually this works for some of them as they are created either directly by their god or are so entwined with them that they really should be reflections of them. Also, the Mind Flayers are just generally incompatible with all sentient life.
I love the idea of playing a coven of spellcasters who came from times of great ruin. A survivor from the Saruuk, Dark Elves, Netherese, and Imaskari respectively, maybe trying to avenge their fallen people or preserve what little of their culture is left and ensure such ruin never befalls another civilisation
Dude i love your stuff to me you are like a college professor on the history and physics of dnd. Keep going love ya man.
I really want to make a campaign where after having some time to get your party known by people, you’re approached by either the mayor of the city you’ve been working in, the leader of the underground crime syndicate, or some outside force that isn’t truly known. Regardless of who contacts you, it leads to you descending into the Underdark to steal/rob/buy a spelljammer from mindflayers, then to travel into some dwarven or gnomish place to get weapons with the end goal being to travel to space and destroy the comet. It turns out that the mayor is a gold dragon and the crime boss is a green dragon, the two of them having pooled their resources to hire people to destroy that comet and free dragon kind from the Draco rage. The third party, however, is a black dragon, who also wants to destroy the comet but intends to drop it on top of the city in the process, ya know typical comic book villain shit like black dragons do
Amazing idea!
I would love to play through this, or at least hear about it if/when you run it!
OMG finally someone actually makes a video about the Elvs history and fall without just saying they fell like literlly every other d&d channel
Long time watcher, first time commenting. I love your content. I appreciate how much work you put in to these videos 🖤
I watched literally any video you make. I normally listen to your stuff in the car or at work. Keep up the amazing work.
Loving the content man. I always appreciate the deeper dives into the lore since they always give me ideas to use for the games I run. I am going to run the escape from the crystal moon from your store and this video gave me the idea to include an Easter egg about the moon getting blasted by dragons.
I literally just found your channel, and inly watched this, and the previous one about Toril's history, but it already helped me a lot! I'm starting DMing next month, amd I'm not confident enough to build a new world, but I like to be (or at lest seem) well-informed and historically accurate. This little (?) series of yours helps me a lot in this, thank you so much for making them!!! (And you earned a new subscriber:))
One thing you forgot to mention, is how much this curse changed the dark elves physically (and I can't remember if you mentioned it in one of your Videos about the elves or drow, or if I read it somewhere else).
Apparently, they were called dark elves due to their dark skin, which was of a rich brown hue (so they seem to have looked pretty much how most Anime portray them), before this curse turned them a coal black.
But anyway, great Video, and thanks for doing these videos. You explaining these is conveying way more and much more understandable than when I look them up.
Your Work is much appreciated.
Also, can we agree that almost everything is the sun elves fault?
That matter is actually a bit inconsistent. Going by the Evermeet novel the drow were *always* ebony-skinned with white hair, well before the Crown Wars and their banishment to the Underdark, and it was such on other planes that had them too-Kiaransalee was a 'dark elf' from another plane who taught Lolth herself the name 'drow' for elves that looked like her. (again, before their banishment to the underdark)
Yes, but Moon elves were not too good themselves. Moon elves helped the Sun elves in most of their crimes. The Sundering and dracorage as well as the crown wars. Where they did not help, they stayed neutral. Still Sun Elves were mainly at fault
I always wonder if it was actually Corellon who created the curse, or something else.
For one the dark elves had only just seen some of them drawn to Lolth by the time the sun elves started committing atrocities. Like they sun elves pushed the drow towards embracing Lolth out of necessity. And the Dark Disaster, be it a rebel cell, the sun evles, or LOLTH who created it, only served to cement their depenancy on Lolths power and offerings.
The curse could have been targed by the sun elves. Because in the end of the day, it'd have been easy for a God of Corelleons nature to simply target specifically the elves corrupted by Lolth, not unborn, not the innocent, not the Ellistrians and the Seldarinites. I personally see it as high magic cast by the elves and not of Corellons INTENT to damn ALL dark elves. Afterall, CORELLON OFFER ELLESTREE a place in the Seldarine. They said she didn't have to go with her mother. That she was forgiven for her 'role' since she was innocent and had no intended to hurt her father. So why would that SAME God who cared for their daughter and didn't hold her responsible for the actions of her mother, hold HER flock responsible and push them for the actions of her MOTHERS flock and the other Dark Seldarine.
Lolth creating it would be an interesting twist.
Perhaps you're right, perhaps Corellon may have intended to only affect those that worship loth, but due to the recent surge of power Lolth obtained, she twisted the curse to affect all dark elves. As both a spiteful act against Corellon, but to also ensure that she would hold the Drow as her own possessions and source of power forever. Since of course in Lolth's god portfolio she is the god of all Drow.
@@lauraw2526 It's definitely possible. I mean she's just fucking unleashed demon lords in the underdark as part of her plot to seize more power, but in that case she's weakening the LOLTHIAN Drow and all their main rivals in the underdark AND weakening the Demon Lords in the abyss to seize more power for herself.
Also I cannot suggest as a fandom adopting the term 'Lolthian' and 'Eilistraean' when talking of the Drow, because they're the main two denominations of Drow and honestly as time goes on, Eilistraee is going to have more sway over the drow, ESPECIALLY since the whole 'UNLEASHED DEMIGORGAN IN THE MIDDLE OF MENZOBERRAN' will likely lead to a large exedos of Lolthian Drow to Eilistraees embrace and subsequently a larger faction of Refugee Drow in the northern folds of Faerun. In my campaigns set 30-50 years post current canon I tend to have Eilistraean Drow being more prevalent on the surface in major cities like Waterdeep, Silverymoon, and Neverwinter.
There's something he didn't mention for some reason. the sun elves were ALSO dealing with devils.. The same Fallen Solar that had attempted a coup alongside lolth had been working alongside them, using thier hubris. Malkazid, now an archdevil, wants ALL elves and thier gods dead, including Lolth and the drow. During the third crown war, he was directly helping them, and to this day he continues convincing elves to war with each other to weaken the power of both Lolth and the Seldarine. So a good chunk of this was likely something Lolth was just taking advantage of. Definitely involved, but hard to tell how much was her and how much was Malkazid just wanting the Sun elves to kill thier own kind.
Or the more reasonable and realistic reason for why is because all gods are a bunch of selfish assholes that only care about the domain they hold power over and little else. We've seen gods of all sorts, even the "good gods" do some fucked up shit, Lathander for example destroyed many gods and caused so much chaos in his quest for making everything in his image, he didnt care, he did what benefited him and his godly domain. Helm also an example, didnt care that the world needed Mystral to exist correctly, he still killed her when she tried to stabilize magic and resulted in countless deaths and even entire planes of existence being destroyed, cuz he is the god of "protection" but only cares about his duty at hand, regardless of consecuences.
Ao himself, the literal all powerful made lots of incredibly stupid decisions despite having the power to solve them in a perfect way, and even then he, the all knowing, didnt care what the consecuences were. So yeah, not hard to think Corellion would just dont care and take the easiest route he could, the own elvish pantheon allowed and permited the elves to suck all magic from the world, regardless of what may that cause in the future or for existing creatures, so i dont think morality or compasion should be expected from deities unless it relates to them and their whims. Like the Loth theory is pretty ineresting, still it may just be that he is an asshole.
Loving this Rhexx! I could never figure out the time line on my own. Thank you for putting out such a detailed history of the Realms!
Thank you so much for all your videos, in my group I'm essentially considered the lore master and a lot of that is because of you. It also really helps me appreciate the things that we encounter during the game
Also it feels good when I ask to make a knowledge check, and the answer to a particularly high roll is "yeah your character knows whatever you know"
You can always find free downloads of PDFs of every Forgotten Realms books from previous editions to read through. Far far more lore there than 5e crap will ever provide. WotC stopped lore writing when 5e came out.
@@razzelmire2008 I like the system of 5e (not quite as much as I like Pathfinder 1e, which is basically 3.5 with a couple of key changes that I thought made it better) but they definitely put lore on the backburner when it came out.... Then dumped it in the trash in the last few years. My group primarily plays 5e nowadays, but we've got so many houserules that bring back a lot of what we liked about 3x/pf1. But even when we aren't playing 5e we still play in the forgotten realms, although because WotC decided they didn't care about lore anymore we use a lot of lore from older editions
What an amazing video. I've read through the grand history of the realms multiple times, but still couldn't get it sorted right. The visualizations helped a lot.
Thinking about all the creatures and races in DnD made me think about the insane growth in the lore.
When I first played the original game there was 3 or 4 playable races and only 9 monsters none of which included a dragon but did for some reason include 3 varieties of slime monster (Green, Black, and Cube).
The big bad was a Beholder and most the fights were Kobalds and Gnolls with skeletons being a problem mostly while camping or near loot.
Trolls, Bugbears, and Owlbears rounded out the serious threats.
I dont play nor ever plan to play dnd but i just can't stay away from it's lore and especially through your videos. Thanks, Rhexx!
Awesome! So excited to see another deep dive into the history of the Realms!
I got chills when you described the curse released onto the dark elves. Beautiful story telling.
Love this series and all your work, thank you for taking the time to put it all together!
Love your content man. It really makes my day when I see you drop a new video!
Wow you cleared up some hazy and co fusing history of the elves for me. I appreciate the work you put into this.
Idk where else to say this but I love your PDFs! You should consider making a mega bundle where you can buy them all for maybe a discount of the total price
I love this series. Please don't stop.
Thank you for the history lesson! Years ago, when I didn't know anything about the different settings, I didn't think I liked Forgotten Realms. But now I love the comprehensive lore.
1:30 red hand of doom is indeed a great adventure 🤗
one of the first great adventures we played.
Amazing video as always Mr Rhexx!
After watching the whole thing I can't help but feel like not only the Sun elves were responsible for the whole ordeal. But also the Elven Pantheon that most elves worshipped were also at fault. For they allowed and assisted the Sundering to occur, that scoured many parts of the land of Toril and Killed many of their own followers for the sake of the hubris filled Sun elves that they seemed to have favored most during that time. They also did nothing to stop the wars the sun elves and dark elves were doing before it was far too late.
I like to imagine a lot of elves that weren't aligned to the two empires or it's wars, that weren't those that went to the neutral kingdoms to pray to their gods may have straight up abandoned them for allowing all of this to happen and might have been the cause of the Dark disaster. As they would mostly been the rebel elves that were conquered. But not just as a last bit of defiance against the sun elven empire, but against their own gods by destroying not only the center of elven civilization but probably of the center elven god worship too.
4:50 ok thats unbelievably cool.
I may not be running forgotten realms, but this conflict is going in my world lore.
Thank you Mr Rhexx. Long time subscriber.
Watch about 90% of yiur videos i reckon over the years.
This was really informitive.
So the elves made a fixed point in time. In a sense. Cool.
One of the best videos about elves in the channel in my opinion.... Really like it❤
Legit awesome stuff! Thanks for doing all of this deep history research and putting up a video for it.
First off love your work, great as always, 2ndly I kno monster classes are probably your best sellers but I love dragon hoards and wondering if plan on expanding that series covering more monsters and creatures?
I have been thinking of making one for undead :D
@MrRhexx awesomeness, I was gonna use undead, beholders or underdark hoards as an example, but decided to leave it off lol
Given what they did to the dragons it's hard to feel bad for them.
The Sun and moon elves also killed all the good dark elves and destroyed the green elf kingdoms. With the Dracorage destroyed, I imagine the dragons would want some retaliation
I know you said that you don't get much views on these lore style videos but I am subscribing because they are great!
I'm not saying I condone what the dark elfs did, I'm just saying I understand.
I think these are the best videos! Even being long, they're so instructive in the lore and fun to watch! Thanks for making these!
16:25 We Didn’t Start the Fire
Dark elf or not, the amount of booba in those drawings are great.
What's the chance it was Lolth who blasted the swamp onto existence, using the sun elves as a scapegoat? She certainly has reason to hate them enough, and this war could have eliminated at least one faction she despised, if not two.
My main take away from this is that the elves are just as petty, fallible, and prone to mistakes and greed as any other race, but they'll pretend they're better right up until (and even past) the end.
Days of refreshing your channel have paid off
Great video as always!
One recomendation for a video: a quick fire of races' origins, kinda like what you did with the Derghars at the end of this one. Then people will show more interest in some of them and it makes for next videos...
Love this series
saw the d&d movie yesterday (can definitely recommend it). there was a short shot that showed the tears of selûne (as explained in this video around 4:20) which i only learned about one day prior, thanks to this very video. it made me realize that the script truly respected the source material (not a given these days) which made me enjoy the movie more. so... thanks for that.
Fun fact: this time period is probably about when quaggoths were driven underground. According to 5e, they were surface dwellers until elves showed up, drove them to near extinction and forced them underground. Sadly, this seems to be about half their lore. Looking back on the 1e fiend folio and the 2e monster manual, they're just savage tribal monsters who the drow like enslaving. At least the thonots are a cool twist.
Also, loving your videos! Keep up the great work, can't wait for more!
Loved your previous lore video’s and I’m really enjoying this series!
Great videos ! It's always a good moment to relax and watch your videos to learn more about the world we play in ! If you have the time, something that could be nice for this series of videos is a general timeline with all the event and how they are connected to each other.
When I was younger and started playing dnd we started with the dragon and elf wars. It was a great game at the time I had zero idea on dnd lore but our dm at the time had old lore and had us play through it it was a great time and I have remade my old character into a 3.5/5e version but he's in the dusty binder with so many other good memories.
I love your videos. I always have a new campaign idea after i watch these!
Amazing stuff, Rhexx! Will be waiting for more lore dives, as I'm looking at a challenge to master play-by-post organized roleplay in Forgotten Realms.
Fuck yeah! New History Video! This is just what I needed for my campaign! Thanks!
I remember watching this guy’s videos back when he made elder scrolls content. Once he switched to dnd content, I wasn’t around for a long long time. Now BG3 came out and I actually have a reason to be interested in dnd lore😂
32 seconds new record bby!
Amazing content as always
what a good video. I love all of these but this one was intense! such good stuff.
Finally back with lore!!!! I always look forward to your videos man!
Hey Rhexx, I loved the video and the history, super cool to learn about the tears in particular. I also wanted to say thanks for putting out your PDFs, I’ll be starting a campaign of Rime of the Frost Maiden soon where I’ll be playing a Vampire from your rules (gonna take advantage of that darkness), so thanks for providing this cool new way to play.
Oh hell ya , u saved my day sir ty for the new vid. Been nothing but bud light lately
Pretty off topic, but regarding the Sands of Doom part of the video. Hearing the premise and title of the campaign I already thought that some inspiration from the Red Hand of Doom campaign was present. I am running this campaign atm converted to 5e and enjoying it so much, and so do my players. It's the main reason I backed your project Rhexx, looking forward to it's release and seeing what kind of similarities and difference reveal themselves with the RHoD campaign!
As always Rhexx beautiful! Another beautiful video! Love what u do! ❤
So, I guess without the Elves running around, Abeir maintained its draconic overlords much longer.
As far as i know, most of abeir is under their control even in the time of the 5e
Videos like this are wonderfully nerdy.
9:40 "the hubris of the elves was at their peak"
13:14 "the hubris of the sun elves would reach to even greater heights"
welp
Me, before learning Dark Elf history: Man the Drow suck 😤
Me, after learning Dark Elf history: ... So who wants to slay a god! 🔪
Honestly it may be the dragon lover in me but i really want destroy that comet. I feel it could be such a interesting adventure for a party, to undo something the ancient elves did. To bring back draconic rule for better or worse.
I really love that you’re doing this. For close to a year I’ve been trying to find comprehensive content for the lore of Forgotten Realms, but I can’t seem to find much outside the wiki (which as far as I can tell doesn’t have a chronological history page). Where do you go to find all this information?
Best lore videos in the universeeee thank you for bestowing this knowledge upon me
I have been waiting Mr Rhexx ;)
i was JUST looking if this video was out yet
Great work , like always . Also cant wait for my sands of doom ! My players are trilled
I never understood why the dragons didn't just use a wish spell to make the comet vanish or transport it to another plane or make it so that it won't pass by Toril anymore. I feel like there are many solutions that are never used due to plot contrivence.
I'm assuming that the comet was then bound by that incredibly powerful spell, and Wish just wasn't gonna cut it. Wish can do an awful lot, but it can't do every single thing, and sometimes, the results of using it may actually be worse than the present condition.
It's worth noting that the spells we know today were invented by the Netherese, who haven't quite appeared yet.
Though I don't know if that's the answer. I will try and ask Ed Greenwood, see if he wants to comment.
@@MrRhexx I guess a lot of that would then depend on if dragons had access to the info in the Nether Scrolls before Finder's re-discovery of them.
@@arnox4554 Worth noting, if it was so resistant to alterarion that a wish spell wouldn't work on it, how was Sammaster able to change it? He was just a normal necromancer lich at that point, not a chosen of Mystra.
@@arnox4554 If a level 26 necromancer has the magical power to rewrite the mystral than I don't see why a wish spell wouldn't work on it.
As an outsider who does not know play or know much DnD Lore, my question is that the Sun Elves got off way too easy. Like how the Drow Elves were cursed like that, they should have suffered the same. It feels like the Elvish Gods were more worried about the rogue pantheon than the shit the Sun Elves put everyone else on the continent through.
Elves ruined the world, what else is new.
Karsus Folly
@@MultiNumenorThe Sundering and dracorage were worse
Humans will be worse. I guarantee it.
@@muhammadedwards8425 no, it's not.
@@andrecro1 Falling cities are better than being forced to kill everyone and eat your own kids for millenia, or a spell that reshaped the continents just to make an island. Elves are petty
So the lord of the elves isn’t as benevolent as people would believe.
Lol the Dragons Fumbled at the one yard line.
I love how the lore starts off with the background of "The Year of Rogue Dragons," which was the first trilogy I read from the Forgotten Realms. Though it's a pretty big spoiler from late in the trilogy.
My favourite topic: elves. Great video as always.
Another banger of a episode!
I'm so glad we got a more in depth series on the history of forgotten realms, the crown wars are so vague but so important
I could be mistaken, but I believe Miyeritar was founded by green and dark elves, not moon. That explains a bit more of the connections between the sun and dark elves to me at least
I hope you bring up the fallen solar Malkizid and his role in the corruption of
Lolth and the Dark Elves
Best video series ever.
yes the crown wars only place I could find in depth video this is great
It is amazing the information you share in this video
Awesome video. Thanks for the hard work you put into it😊