AMIA ARCHIVE • View topic

It was brought to the Team's and my attention that an error had been made in filtering the list of lore that is recognized on Amia as having happened following the hack attack. As you all have likely put together from my posting choice of the UD forums, it concerns you guys the most.

The Silence of Lolth has not happened. The error in the Lore section stating that it had happened in Amia's history has been corrected as to avoid any future misunderstandings. This is to say that the events found in the series War of the Spider Queen simply have not occurred in our timeline nor have the events said series inspired.
((Such as: Cosmology wise, the Demonweb Pits are still a part of the Abyss. Eilestrae and Vhaerun are still alive and kicking. Ghaundaur has not seperated from the Drow Pantheon. etc...))

So completes this public service announcement.
Cheers!
~Dust

Thanks for letting us know! I think, for the most part, I've heard all that as true so that's good.

Oh, just found this. This wasn't the original intention. Lolth did go silent in game around 2006 and it was sort of hinted that reflected WotSQ (but never explicitly confirmed). As the timeline says, everything that happened in canon until 1372 happened in Amia's canon, and that's the start of the WotSQ.

What did not happen was the transition between WotSQ and Lady Penitent. The line was basically drawn between editions, with the former being still 3.5 and the latter clearly a mouthpiece of 4e. The events are interconnected but not that closely. Lolth is supposed to be a Greater Deity after her rebirth and there are plenty of PC refugees from Ched Nasad in Amia's history.

It's your perogative to retcon old decisions, but I wanted to clarify this if the hack attack did indeed destroy the old discussions: it was always a conscious and discussed decision to draw the line between those two series to accomodate in-game history and PC backgrounds and the widespread use of a popular series, but not go into the lame transition to 4e. The cosmological changes you summed up at the end were indeed never intended to be incorporated into Amia, but the mundane war in Ched Nasad, the involvement of the Jaezred Chaulssin etc. were not meant to be retconned simply because the latest 3e game material reflects this information and that's what a large portion of the drow playerbase use for their lore.

So I ask that you review this issue and discuss it again. Whatever decision you come to, at least you ought to know that it was never an error.

Last edited by Aeqvinox on Mon, Mar 11 2013, 13:05 PM, edited 1 time in total.

Just found this aswell, and i'm like my avatar.

My main character inspiration has been forged by the events which transpired in City of the Spider Queen, not to mention our entire faction genesis is based on those events as well. I'm not sure what to do right now, how do i exactly adjust to this? How do we proceed with half of the lore on Kiaransalee being thrown out of the window?

I might be wrong but the only thing that really changed was Kiaransalee gained more followers, I think? It's complicated though because from what I can find the Silence is when Lolth created the Demonweb Pits on the 66th Layer, and it's canon that the Demonweb Pits are her home, so did she accomplish that without invoking the Silence? No where in the history of Amia has Lolth stopped granting spells, ergo there was no Silence, hence why there is confusion.

I think the history of Lolth and the Dark Seldarine needs to be cleared up somewhere, that way we can avoid things like this. Because now that I look at the pieces it doesn't make sense in some places lol.

Naivatkal wrote:

No where in the history of Amia has Lolth stopped granting spells, ergo there was no Silence, hence why there is confusion.

She did, actually. Not for a RL year, but for what I think was several weeks. Around 2006-2007? In all honesty it wasn't originally conceived as a way to represent the Silence but we quickly figured out it might be interpreted as such. (It was Nekh's plot, I don't recall if I was involved or even a DM yet.) The real problem with matching dates is of course that our timeline doesn't follow the WotC timeline, and we've also stretched history backwards. There couldn't have been an Amian Silence real-time-contemporaneous with the canon Silence because Dissolution was published in 2002, before Amia existed. So it's always been history and background for drow RP, even if now those first events of drow RP on the server are seen to be decades old.

I already PMed Dust some old quotes so I don't want to get too deep into it until the DMs look at the issue again. But when we decided to include WotSQ (and the City of the Spider Queen adventure module) in the official timeline and stop before Lady Pentitent, the idea was to avoid all that cosmological mumbo-jumbo and dying gods but just stick with the actual mundane history that happened in various drow cities. Lolth had been silent and reborn, and it had had dramatic consequences on society in the cities described, but it did not imply any cosmological shifts that the PCs would be aware of - unless DMs in the future chose to make something of it. I'm not sure what doesn't make sense about that - it doesn't have to lead to deicide.

IronAngel wrote:

She did, actually. Not for a RL year, but for what I think was several weeks.

Which is cool, so long as it's mentioned somewhere XD I have never once heard or read (before or after that hack attack, I delved into the forums a lot for Amia-drow research before it as well) that there was even a brief period of no granted spells. So IC there's no knowledge of that happening and such, so like Aeqvinox is referencing Kiaransaleeans might be not playing the right lore the Lolthites might not as well.

tl;dr: Agreeing that we should get lore properly stamped.

The events are ignored as it was deemed that simply too many people hadn't read those books. When, after a few weeks prior to the original post of this thread, this was the only thing talked about mostly in OOCly and ICly arguing as to the location of the Demonweb Pits and why Eilistrae and Selvertarm were still alive at all, Ainjyll and I brought the issue to the team and we came to the conclusion that it was best to simply drop it all together.

Personally, I agree that the series offers a fantastic view of a plethora of Drow societies, and there is nothing stopping players from finding inspiration from the books for their own RP. I feel that they can still do so regardless of Ched Nasad still sitting in the middle dark and the cosmos remaining unchanged.

Last edited by IronAngel on Mon, Mar 11 2013, 17:14 PM, edited 1 time in total.

It seems that the confusion is precisely due to people not reading the books. There's nothing in those books about gods dying or the cosmos changing, as far as I can tell. Those events come in another series and/or extrapolated in outside sources. What we're talking about is Ched Nasad's descrution, the City of the Spider Queen module, Lolth's re-emergence after a Silence as a greater deity, and riots in Menzoberranzan. All events which have been consistently referenced in game for years.

The 3.5e Underdark, the primary source of up-to-date drow lore that most people probably go to, already incorporates the lore. In fact, the previous book about drow was a 2e product so if you retcon WotSQ, there is no relevant book about drow out there. They're not just "events in a novel"; the primary authoritative game supplement on the Underdark reflects those events. They're also not news: the series was publish ten years ago. It's older than Amia.

If it's a matter of confusing the players, might I suggest asking the players which solution they find more confusing and whether they want to retcon the lore or not? We've always been extremely careful not to ignore canon material on Amia without solid reason, because trying to remember just which details are retconned is considerably harder than assuming it's all part of the setting (up to the date we established in the timeline specifically created to address this issue). If there is still unclarity about whether gods are dead or alive (which can only be the result of players not having actually read the books) it should be clarified in the timeline, just like we clarified that Myth Drannor was not restored and the elven Crusade still goes on. That's what the timeline is for. Are we going to start retconning other established lore just because people haven't read Evermeet: The Island of Elves or The Last Mythal or whatnot?

I'm probably one of the few active drow PCs from back when there was an actual lolth's silence in game. Now, I've never read any of the books, and all the drow lore I have is stuff I've learned while playing on Amia. I was always under the impression that we were at a point in history where Iron said, there was a silence, there were riots in Menzo, ched nassad was destroyed, but Selvetarm and E are both still alive and kicking.

Oh. Page 10 of Underdark actually has a box about this. The book assumes the drow are in the middle of Lolth's Silence and there's trouble everywhere. "If you would prefer not to incorporate these events into your campaign, you can rule that Lolth's silence has ended and that the drow clerics have regained their spell ability." Which is exactly what we did. We didn't retcon the physical changes to the world that the three available sources (WotSQ, CotSQ, Underdark) outlined, but neither did we follow the storyline to the next, separate series that features deicide.

It's not confusing at all. It was spelled out in the timeline with crystal clarity. What's confusing is if players have to guess which of the lore in their primary sources is valid or not. Not only does it affect the state of Ched Nasad and Menzoberranzan, but also the current state of the Jaezred Chaulssin - members of which are among Amia's PCs and/or planned PCs as well. If you come to the conclusion that you won't adjust your ruling, it's going to be a lot more confusing than dealing with an incomplete story.

The shift of the Demonweb Pits is part of WotSQ itself. The Lady Penitent picks up where WotSQ leaves off, as I recall, and culminates in the deity death part.

Without WotSQ, the events of TLP never transpire. Either story is left "incomplete" as you put it, but removing it has worked for the past 4 months.

It can be reviewed, but it has proven to be just as easily done without.

I don't know if it can be said that it has really "worked" given the low activity in the UD in general and the fact that most people (myself included) seem to have forgotten this post was made and defaulted to what's in the Timeline and the Underdark sourcebook. It is where we tend to look to first when investigating these things, rather than poking for this tucked-away thread.

I would probably prefer the Timeline version if I had a choice but it doesn't hugely matter to me I suppose?

Character history doesn't come up that often, so retconning it doesn't necessarily cause practical problems. It's still awkward, though. Assuming people even realized they need to change their backgrounds.

I don't really even play drow anymore so I think it should be up to other players to weigh in on. I was just surprised when I was pointed to this thread, as this was one of the few specific questions that motivated the timeline in the first place and I thought it was solved. And yeah, I am a little insulted that a very conscious, very practical decision that was consistent with the general policy guiding the history project was referred to as an error. I know it wasn't meant as an insult, but still. I may come across as unduly aggressive.

As for the shifting of the Demonweb Pits, I don't recall it being very explicit in the novels. Whatever you make of that, though, it isn't very critical: we've made the decision anyway not to specify the cosmology for players because it's a mysterious clusterfuck. We use both the Great Wheel and the Great Tree with all their various overlapping planes, and specific questions of "where is that place" are just answered with vaguely. That has been the practice in the past, at least. Ruling one way or the other on the Demonweb Pits doesn't seem that critical since it's not something PCs would have a very clear idea of. Dunno, I just have very little interest in cosmological gimmicks when weighed against historical events.

The destruction of Ched Nasad And Maerimydra and a lot of the other stuff during the WoTSQ series seem like they were very purposeful choices for leading into the lady penitent series and the destruction of most of the drow gods, that was meant as a way to "simplify" FR for 4e, cutting down significantly on the number of cities and thus culminating all the evil drow stuff to focus on Lolth and Menzoberranzan.

I personally prefer the current choice even if I did like much of the WoTSQ series. Also the depictions of drow and all that can still be considered cannonical, it is simply the setting lore within those books that Amia is choosing not to follow.

Ideally we could get some custom amian lore for that period and some of the time following until present however I know that is asking quite a bit.

I'm very confused. In my first year as a player (2010), my characters interacted a lot more with UD drow than they do now (this was during the days when House Tinnerai and Qos'yutsu were running things), and I recall a *lot* of references to the fall of Ched Nasad. Like, a couple of characters made reference to their whole House being refugees from there, and their entire IC stories started with it. These were players that would have been around in 2007 and 2008, too. Obviously, DM lore supercedes player lore. But, if the Silence never happened and Ched Nasad never fell, it seems to me that the players have somehow managed to never have gotten that message. If the point of making this lore clarification is to restore the Amia timeline to some way it was previously widely understood to have been, I think that the premise of what exactly had been previously widely understood may bear some re-examination.

The reason there were a lot of references to it falling was because that was the previous DM on the issue, if it had not been then there would not have been those same references and instead would have been replaced by an off shoot branch of a house coming from Ched or somewhere else or someplace else entirely.

Also a lot of those players or at the very least the vast majority of the characters no longer are active. The issue instead seems that a lot of new players had not read the books or seen the previous DM standpoint and were thus already under the assumption that it still existed and were RPing as such.

Even if a new player hadn't ever read the novels, they'd still be working off of things like 3rd Edition sourcebooks and FRwiki, all of which refer to the Silence extensively. Whether people have read the novels is irrelevant, since FR fiction isn't typically anybody's primary source of lore anyway.

Ahhhhh a problem however in that the FR wiki incorrectly seems to reference the fall of Ched Nasad as 1374 instead of its correct time of the end months of 1372. Which if added to the fact that amia's timeline states that cannon lore only goes up to 1373 likely helped cause the issue of many new players looking it up and assuming that it had not fallen either.

And as most players only check lore in small chucks instead of looking through the entirety of it they most likely wouldn't catch that error.

To be honest, not reading the books shouldn't have anything to do with it. I've interacted with a lot of players over the past couple of years and not a since one has made any reference to the WotSQ (not that it comes up often). In fact, it seems to be common knowledge that it never happened ... in Amia's timeline. Anyone that has ever mentioned it has referred to it being outside of our timeline and having never occurred.

That is where the disconnect happened, it's not stated anywhere that it has. I checked the timeline several times and it has never stated Lolth's Silence. Even a period of a few weeks is significant enough to warrant a noting in the timeline, because that is a lot of clerics to suddenly stop getting spells.

So I think the issue, that Dusty is finalizing, is deciding what the lore is. Right now, everyone knows about the Silence of Lolth but no one thinks it ever happened on the server. Once that's decided, it can be clearly notated (I would suggest both in here and also in the 'drow readings' thread).

Also, Lizzie ninja'd me. That's been happening too often lately ;_;

Equalizer, that's kind of a stretch. I think more likely, people would assume the same thing I assumed: someone made a typo.

Last edited by IronAngel on Mon, Mar 11 2013, 21:26 PM, edited 1 time in total.

I doubt Equalizer's explanation, since anyone reading the timeline would have also seen the summary of those events that was there until, I assume, last October.

Anyhow, open stories of conflict between duergar, drow, Kaanyr Vhok's troops, Jaezred Chaulssin etc. is good material for PC stories and DM hooks. Now that the Amian UD is on the mainland, there's even more reason for the aftermath of these events to affect future plots. I don't see why you'd want to give up on that resource, even if it didn't involve retconning. And in my opinion, the integrity of history is a value in itself and retconning should be avoided at all cost. If we change history whenever fashions turn and new players come along, we don't really have a mirror to reflect on the present. But maybe that's just the historian speaking.

EDIT: Naivatkal, it was always in the timeline until the team made this decision a few months ago and removed it. It's still in the general discussion topic where I posted the timeline for feedback before we made it official.

Quote:

Lolth falls silent. The silence lasts into the next year. During it the Jazered Chaulssin attack drow cities all around. Ched Nasad is destroyed, Menzoberranzan weakened, Eryndlyn fallen to Vhaeraunians and Ghaunadaurians. Maerimydra is fallen to Kiaransaleens, but later destroyed by monsters. In the meantime, drow harass Daggerdale, but adventurers put a stop to it. Lolth finally emerges as a greater deity. (War of the Spider Queen, City of the Spider Queen.)

Its stated more than once on the page as well as having been an issue of debate prior to the release of "The Grand History of the Realms" which means you can find a number of sources incorrectly referencing that date. I am not saying that is the only reason as many were as Naivatkal said it is likely that some VERY new players have been under the (now correct) assumption that the Silence and events around it had not happened since they have not been mentioned lately.

Also we did indeed have our very own mini silence on the server. Although that lasted no where near the time of the Cannon one it could be used by an inventive dm to help merge some of the cannon lore, possibly having caused attacks and damage to but not the total destruction of places such as Ched Nasad.

Naivatkal wrote:

So I think the issue, that Dusty is finalizing, is deciding what the lore is. Right now, everyone knows about the Silence of Lolth but no one thinks it ever happened on the server. Once that's decided, it can be clearly notated (I would suggest both in here and also in the 'drow readings' thread).

This isn't quite true.

If I remember correctly (and I usually do about server matters) there was a silence ICly and overseen by DMs back in the realm of 06/07. I don't remember how it panned out, but eventually clerics of lolth could cast spells again.

So did it happen on our timeline? not exactly, but the silence of lolth is part of amian history and characters like Isen were around to experience it.

With in game timelines as messed up as they are, who knows how long ago that would be in terms of character age.

There is another solution to the 'did the silence happen here' problem as well.

That happened back in Ultrinnan. Since then, two cities have fallen, one drowned and the other had the cavern collapse over it.

There are no living priestesses around that experienced the silence anymore

Its entirely feasible that any an all records of it have been lost/ intentionally buried.

It's entirely possible that several people have thought it didn't happen in our timeline. However, ignorance is not an excuse. Our R&L forum said it happened, our DMs in the past said it happened, canon sources from Underdark to wikis said it happened, and nobody said it didn't happen. In fact, I can't imagine why anyone would believe the contrary, given no evidence. There wasn't really a good reason for someone not to know. If you believe what you're told in game without checking the sources yourself, you deserve to be confused. >_>

I guess my underlying thought would be... it's a bad policy to toss out sections of FR lore just because people are unlikely to have read the source novels. People are just as unlikely to have read the novels that gave us the Avatar Crisis and the Godswar; should that be tossed out, too? We have Ffolk in the server, despite the Moonshae trilogy being extremely obscure. Come to think of it, novels that most of us probably haven't read are what gave us Menzoberranzan and the entirety of Lolthite culture as we know it. This forum owes its whole existence to novels. Discounting lore events that originated in novels is a bad precedent to set, and one that's never been practised anywhere else on the server. Why start now?

Yeah Iron mentioned there was a brief silence (that I touche don in the last post), I was just exaggeration on the 'everyone' and 'no one'. Ironically, I figured Isen was there for it XD

Zanthair wrote:

There is another solution to the 'did the silence happen here' problem as well.

That happened back in Ultrinnan. Since then, two cities have fallen, one drowned and the other had the cavern collapse over it.

There are no living priestesses around that experienced the silence anymore

Its entirely feasible that any an all records of it have been lost/ intentionally buried.

I actually like that idea. Though, it would matter if it was a widespread silence or only in that city/area.

Last edited by IronAngel on Mon, Mar 11 2013, 21:39 PM, edited 1 time in total.

Amen, Nemesis. That is really the crux of the issue for me: I don't think anything should be retconned or ignored unless there are extremely pressing reasons to. If we don't do our best to respect the setting, we give license for future DMs and players to retcon what we have according to the tastes of that day.

popular backstory back in ultrinnan was last daughter of noble house that survived ched nasad

really, it doesn't affect isen that much, his backstory never related to it and he has managed to change his official history after much work and twisting of the facts.

Naivatkal wrote:

Yeah Iron mentioned there was a brief silence (that I touche don in the last post), I was just exaggeration on the 'everyone' and 'no one'. Ironically, I figured Isen was there for it XD

Zanthair wrote:

There is another solution to the 'did the silence happen here' problem as well.

That happened back in Ultrinnan. Since then, two cities have fallen, one drowned and the other had the cavern collapse over it.

There are no living priestesses around that experienced the silence anymore

Its entirely feasible that any an all records of it have been lost/ intentionally buried.

I actually like that idea. Though, it would matter if it was a widespread silence or only in that city/area.

That happens to be one thing I have absolutely no recollection of. Back then Isen was only a fighter I think and I had no idea what I was doing and didn't really care. I might have not even had my forum account yet.

The WoTSQ and LP series were lead ups to the changes made by the spell plague and 4e to Forgotten realms lore. And while they are an awesome look at drow and the underdark some of the setting changes in them and reasoning behind it all is quite frankly kind of awful. So if the DMs want to overwrite (Note: not simply remove) that part of the lore for amia then I am all for it as it makes for a better setting.

Plus we already completely ignore literally years of 3.5 lore.

What exactly do you mean, Equalizer? Which parts were bad or paved the way for the Spellplague? The war between duergar and drow and the various insurrections around drow cities give plot hooks in what would otherwise be a stagnant world, and they shake up the idyllic illusion of Lolthite dominance that suffocates every fresh story idea. Not to mention you'd have to filter out all the Silence-related material from the Underdark geography chapters and effectively have no idea what's the current state of those settlements. As I said, there is no up-to-date lore on the Underdark that does't integrate the Silence.

We don't really ignore years of 3.5 lore, I think. The intention was to look at them case by case after a certain point of iffiness, which was decided to be 1372. You could bring a specific series to a DM who happens to have read it and ask how the story is resolved in Amia's timeline, if at all. That actually gives DMs free hands to finish promising but ultimately disappointing stories the way they want to for Amia, too. The Risen Sun Heresy is a good example of that: we refused to resolve it out of game and now it's being played out, just like I hoped it would. Would like to see more of that.

Oh I don't mean to say at all that they aren't well written, I own them all and quite enjoyed the writting. However those two series as opposed to simply giving the UD a shake up (which was nice to see) lays the ground work for greatly segmenting the Lolthite drow (which would soon after mean ALL drow) to a small number of cities followed by the systematic removal of all of the drow deities except for Lolth and the splitting of the drow race into the good dark elves and the completely evil on Drow ruled by Lolth.

Also by spell plague I mostly just meant the transition to 4e. Apologies for that, just a switch my brain has a habit of making.

Actually I didn't find them very well written. Especially the first book was all action, no depth. :lol:

But I'm not sure what you're going for. Sure, WotSQ leads to Lady Penitent which leads to 4e. But that doesn't make the events of the series inherently bad. They open many doors for conflict and story. Whatever the intention of the authors, we can make the most of it. What does it matter thant WotC took the setting to hell after that? Is there something specific in these six books you find bad for Amia's setting?

It can indeed. I'm just saying that it never seemed like the events were to make things more interesting but more as part of the process of "streamlining" things. And I just think that we have enough writing talent on the server and DM team that we could replace it with something far better.

I wouldn't be a fan of just tearing it out and not saying anything for that part of the timeline though that seems worse than just leaving in a mediocre plot but one that still adds rp potential.

I recall being around when the 'silence' period happened on Amia. It never affected my character as he was a sorcerer, but I remember it had the priestesses in a tiz and was a major plot point at the time. Though this character is not likely to ever come back, for various In-Game reasons, should I assume if he does that this period never happened? I'm sure there are still one or two players around with characters who Were directly affected by this period, and may have developed differently because of it. I don't think we should retcon the events themselves, though retconning interpretation (maybe Lolth was just being a btch to Amia for a few weeks as a test or something) could easily be done.

I'm not at all phased by the end decision: the War of the Spiderqueen's occurrence (or lack of) doesn't affect me being Chaotic in the slightest.

I was around for the brief silence as well, though I don't remember much of it. I prefer not to speak much about those times: it was a different server back then.

That's it, I'm building a character with Epic Spell Focus Divination to find out what y'all are talking about.

Seriously, is it wrong for me to think of Amia as an alternate reality? I figured if it's not a DM event then nothing along the timeline that supposedly happened /will/ happen? Keep us guessing. It'll be like it's chaotic and everything.

OOC: Lore Clarification

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