Go to Part 1

The agents of the so-called Thieves’ Guild of the North, known as krakenar, identify themselves through the secret mark of a purple squid with an incredible number of tentacles. (The number and styling of the tentacles, perhaps encouraged by the decentralized structure of the Society, has actually shifted over time and in different places. This is not an intentional variation, but those who are deeply familiar with the krakenar may be able to identify the origin of a particular instance of their sign.) It would be a mistake, however, to think of the Kraken Society as purely a bunch of thieves. They are skilled spies and information brokers, with their services often being sought even by legitimate powers. The krakenar thus include highwaymen, merchants, adventurers, and more. Anyone with the right skills or in the right place may be welcomed in the tentacles’ embrace.

In fact, the Kraken Society can often abide in these legitimate, mutually beneficial relationships for years. The krakenar refer to this as the “low tide,” getting their foot in the door by selling valuable information, using their newly privileged position to gain access to more information, rinse, wash, repeat.

What the krakenar are looking for is the “crack in the seawall” (which they may refer to in slang simply as a “crack” or “buckling”); a weakness in the existing systems of power which can be exploited. When they find it, the tide comes in.

Operating at “high tide,” a krakenar cell will use all of its illicit knowledge, covert skills, and criminal resources to disrupt the targeted government or organization. They may attempt to destroy the entire institution, but it’s more common for them to target specific individuals. When the leadership has been crippled or wiped out, the krakenar agents who silently infiltrated the organization during low tide simply slip into the power vacuum. It’s not unusual for krakenar agents to enter power promising to end a threat that was created by the Society in the first place, ensuring acclaim as they rapidly “solve” the problem.

ORGANIZATION

The Kraken Society is cell-based. Each city or region is controlled by a Lieutenant, and although the various regional cells cooperate with each other when it’s beneficial, each is operated as an independent organization and has deliberately limited contact. The local structures of the cells are not proscribed, and can vary greatly (although they tend to value secrecy and usually reflect the Society’s general cell-based methodology).

The inner circle of the Society, which consists of the Lieutenants and a handful of other senior members (called Followers), refers to itself as the coterie. The coterie is privy to the inner mysteries of the cult, which feature a highly mythologized “truth” about the Kraken of the Purple Rocks: They believe themselves to be the servitors of the King of the Trackless Depths (Slarkethrel), who is destined to regain the lost hegemony of the kraken empire which once ruled the seas of Toril. Those who advance further into the mystery perform rites which forge a communion (or supposedly do) with the kraken psychopomps who escaped their empire’s destruction within the sanctuaries of the abyssal rifts.

Those becoming Lieutenants travel to the Purple Rocks, where the Heralds of the Deep indoctrinate them through a series of strange rites. Lieutenants who earn great honor may even be invited to Ascarle.

Most krakenar agents, however, are not part of the coterie and just think of themselves as being part of a criminal organization. Even further out on the periphery is the vast web of front organizations which serve the Society’s will without most of their members or employees ever knowing they are part of it.

CURRENT CELLS

Waterdeep/Skullport: The Skum Lord is an aboleth which lairs beneath Skullport. It has quietly spent centuries inexorably expanding its influence within the Port of Shadows, creating a network of telepathically linked agents strategically placed in the nexus of the underworld. Information flows through Skullport, and the Skum Lord skims his take.

Those long-enthralled to the Skum Lord can be noted by their pale, translucent skin. Known by some as the “pale servitors,” they can be seen moving throughout Skullport and, increasingly, the city above. (The Skum Lord used to have a surface counterpart who served as the lieutenant of Waterdeep, but this hasn’t been true in decades. Slarkethrel’s resurgence in recent years has prompted the Skum Lord to become more active in expanding the Society’s presence in Waterdeep. His agents had some success doing business with Lord Neverember’s administration, but have been disappointed by Laeral Silverhand. It’s uncertain whether the Skum Lord wants to expand his base of power, or if he would be happier finding a new Waterdhavian lieutenant.)

In Skullport, the Skum Lord is also rumored to own forty percent or more of the city’s buildings. Each month the pale servitors come to collect their rent: Sometimes they ask for money. Sometimes they ask questions.

Yartar: Yartar was once the primary center of power for the Kraken Society, but in the late 14^th century the Harpers and the Waterbaron systematically broke their power and drove them out of the city. The Society has only returned to Yartar within the last few years.

• Ghald (sahuagin) and Unferth (male Tethyrian human priest) are partners jointly in charge of Society business in the Dessarin Valley. Their approach has been to recruit powerful, ambitious individuals who already have existing power bases and simultaneously turn them towards myriad schemes. Their theory is that they can easily jettison the failures and consolidate the victors into a larger organization. The actual organization that Ghald and Unferth have reporting directly to them now can actually be described only generously as skeletal, but they’ve managed to project to most of the people they’re working with the illusion that the Society is a monolithic force. (Princes of the Apocalypse, p. 210)
• Lord Khaspere Drylund, one of Yartar’s nobles, is a member of the society and spearheading an effort to replace Ruthiol as the city’s Waterbaron. Drylund notably owns and operates the Grand Dame, a riverboat gambling casino. (Storm King’s Thunder, p. 216)

The Hand of Yartar is an all-female thieves’ guild in Yartar which was actually founded as a front organization for the Kraken Society. In the 14^th century it was led by Semmonemily, a doppelganger who assumed the identity of the Hand’s guildmistress, Emily Iramalac. When the Society was purged from Yartar, however, Semmonemily was killed. The remaining members of the Hand had no idea they’d been operating as part of the Kraken Society and no living connection to the organization. They’ve continued operating independently over the last century, and ironically are now one of the strongest opponents to the Kraken Society as the Society attempts to reassert its control of the underworld in Yartar.

Neverwinter: The Reefkin are a group of merfolk who have set up a commune under Neverwinter Harbor. The upper ranks of the Reefkin deliberately infect themselves with lycanthropy, allowing them to transform into wolves when they wish to pursue shoreside agendas.

The Reefkin have a familiar modus operandi among Slarkethrel’s cults: They rescue drowning sailors and, sometimes after showing them some underwater wonder or vision, deliver them to shore. They claim a life-debt from these sailors, however, and subtly coerce them into the Society.

(Do the Reefkin create their own supply of sailors-to-be-saved by covertly sinking ships with damage disguised to look as if they ran aground on the reefs? Of course they do.)

What happens next depends on circumstances: Some can be immediately forced to do terrible things. Others will be manipulated into countless small acts of treachery, each binding them closer to the Reefkin. The end goal is either recruitment, blackmail, or both.

The Reefkin are also known to have formed alliances with fey powers within Evernight, the dark reflection of Neverwinter which lies within the Shadowfell.

Thornhold: North of Waterdeep along the Sword Coast, Thornhold is an ancient fortress which was unwittingly built by the Margaster noble family directly below the caverns of Clan Stoneshaft in the Underdark below. Control of Thornhold has passed through numerous hands and its connections to the Stoneshaft dwarves have grown stronger (primarily due to a period in which Zhentarim slavers were oppressing and exploiting the dwarves).

Most recently, the Margasters have once again taken possession of Thornhold and forged a tentative alliance with the Stoneshaft dwarves: The Margasters protect the Stoneshaft interests, provide defense against surface threats, and facilitate trade relationships with the merchants of Waterdeep. The Stoneshaft dwarves benefit from having economic access to the wealth of the North; the Margasters reap a healthy profit from their role as middlemen.

There are those among the Stoneshaft dwarves, however, who resent the Margasters: They remember the past betrayals of other surface “allies” and they question what the humans are doing to justify “stealing” their wealth. That’s the sort of buckling that the Kraken Society looks for. A krakenar dwarf named Urnom Telrokak has been organizing disaffected Stoneshaft dwarves. What would be ideal is if the Kraken Society could place an agent within the Margasters, who could then be used to exacerbate the tensions between the two factions.

Caer Westphal: Caer Westphal is the capital of Snowdon, a small isle in the southeastern corner of the Moonshaes which was recently annexed by Amnian nobles. The Society has implanted itself among the native Ffolk of the island, characterizing themselves as a popular uprising.

They have an uneasy alliance with the Brothers of the Beast, another resistance group run by a druid named Heinrich Mucklepratt who can summon strange allies from the island’s moonwells. Their mutual efforts have forced Lady Erliza to openly reveal more and more of her dark powers, increasing tensions on the island.

Luskan: The City of Sails is worth mentioning here because, like Yartar, it was once a major center of power for the Kraken Society. The regional lieutenant here was actually a member of the High Captains who ruled the city, often turning Luskan’s extensive resources to the Society’s purposes. As in Yartar, however, the Society was purged in the late 14^th century. Recent efforts have attempted to find a toehold here, but so far Jarlaxle Baenre and the Bregan D’aerthe have been successful in stamping them out.

Addendum: A Brief Word on My Sources

Go to Part 1

Slarkethrel’s modus operandi has historically been to compartmentalize his structures of power. The innermost circles of these organizations have some degree of overlap, with their leaders all becoming indoctrinated in the multifaceted, cultic “truth” of Slarkethrel in different ways, allowing them to cooperate and support each other when necessary. But most members of these groups are largely or entirely unaware that they have any relationship with each other. In the case of the Kraken Society, most of the street-level operatives aren’t even aware that there’s a literal kraken at the top of the pyramid.

PURPLE ROCKS: HERALDS OF THE DEEP

The reavers of Purple Rocks are a recurrent nuisance along the coasts of the Trackless Sea, with small fleets that vary from one or a few ships to as many as two dozen at various points over the past couple hundred years. The Purple Rocks themselves are a small archipelago with a population of a few hundred people dominated by two major islands noted for their purple-and-red sea cliffs.

If a mainlander has heard of Purple Rocks, it’s most likely due to either the reavers acting up again or vilksmaarg cheese – a pungent, salty variety produced from the milk of the strange Purple Rocks goats that is quite popular in the taverns of Luskan. Someone visiting Purple Rocks will find a variety of small fishing villages nestled long the coasts and clefted highlands, filled with Northmen eking out a hardscrabble existence while worshiping familiar northern gods like Tempus, Umberlee, and Auril.

If one were to take a close look at the idols and icons of Tempus and the other gods, however, they might notice the subtle tentacles which have been worked into their design. So, too, is the mundanity of the islands as a whole merely camouflage for the Heralds of the Deep, the Slarkethrelian cult which has quietly dominated the domestic and political life of the Purple Rocks for centuries.

Those who spend time amongst the people here might begin to notice oddities: The curious lack of children, for example. A glassy, too-worn look around the eyes. The strange, fluting trumpets that sound from across the sea and to which many pay an almost uncanny heed. The strange lights that can sometimes be seen from the seacoasts at night and the lights in the highlands above that seem to answer them in kind.

The truth is that the Heralds of the Deep practice rites of human sacrifice, their victims being hurled as offerings into the sea. In return, the people of Purple Rocks receive the Purple Blessing, a strange purple crystal which is boiled down from an alchemical mixture that includes Slarkethrel’s blood and is delivered from the deeps. The crystals are smoked and convey an unnaturally long life. (Those who suffer most from the mutagenic side-effects withdraw from public life and eventually “return to the sea” to join their lord and master.) Most of the population of Purple Rocks is more than a century old. Mainlanders assume that the King Selger who rules here must be the son or grandson of the Selger who reigned before the Spellplague, but not so: It is the same man.

The most recent attempt to free Purple Rocks from the influence of the Heralds came in the mid-14^th century, when a popular rebellion on Utheraal – one of the two large islands of Purple Rocks – successfully rose up and crowned King Bromm. In 1368 DR, however, King Selger of Trisk (the other major island) landed his fleet of longships on Utheraal and retook the island. This was done with the full support of the Sword Coast city-states, who had long blamed King Bromm for the reavers who plagued their shipping.

(Oddly, however, it was Selger who had a fleet of longships… not Bromm. An example of how effective the efforts of the krakenar can be in silently shaping mainland opinion and politics.)

THE ASCARLIAN EMPIRE

The sunken city of Ascarle is the capital of an undersea empire. Once quite vast (spreading across an area larger than the Savage Frontier), its borders have been somewhat curtailed in the 15^th century. Politically it is a patchwork affair, consisting of various undersea peoples and nations who have been conquered or suborned by Slarkethrel and then usually left as distinct entities rather than being integrated into some larger whole.

Those who are annexed by the Ascarlian Empire are organized into satrapies. The satraps rule their demesnes with tyrannical authority, answering ultimately only to Slarkethrel and the Regent of Ascarle. The satraps may or may not be appointed from the same race and culture as those they govern, but they are always fiercely loyal to the divinity of the Kraken of Purple Rocks.

Slarkethrel has also attempted to infiltrate the satrapies of Ascarle with religious cults dedicated to his worship, efforts which have met with varying degrees of success. These cults often employ imagery and dogma which would be familiar to the Heralds of the Deep and the inner circles of the Kraken Society, but Slarkethrel prefers to keep them separate and distinct from each other.

Note: Although the Heralds of the Deep are kept separate from the imperium, King Selger is treated as a satrap and also answers to the Regent of Ascarle.

(This systemic division of power has undoubtedly contributed to a certain lack of stability in Ascarle’s dominion. On the other hand, it also insulates Slarkethrel’s power base from completely collapsing. Even if the kraken loses vast swaths of what he claims, whatever parts are left will remain whole and complete unto themselves, providing a foundation from which he can inevitably rebuild.)

THE REGENT OF ASCARLE: The Regent of Ascarle is a mind flayer named Vestress.

In 1278 DR, krakenar agents discovered the location of legendary Gauntlgrym, the one-time capital of the dwarven empire of Delzoun. An expedition plundered dwarven treasure and even more valuable lore, but ultimately came into conflict with the illithids who controlled the depths of the ancient city. A final operation within the city sought to pillage knowledge directly from the elder brain (and met with some mitigated success).

The operatives returned to Slarkethrel with vast caches of lore that would take decades to fully catalogue and riches which would fund the kraken’s ambitions to previously unimaginable heights. But it also triggered decades of illithid counterattacks, fueling a rivalry between the mind flayers and the tentacles of the deep that has only ebbed in recent years as a result of Gauntlgrym falling to a dwarven alliance (although it could easily flare up again at any time if something were to fan the flames of what is now centuries-old enmity).

In addition to lore and treasure, the krakenar also brought back a prisoner: Vestress.

Vestress was tortured and questioned by Slarkethrel, who opened her mind, peered into its depths, and then rebuilt it. After her brainwashing, Vestress believed herself to be a rogue illithid who had rebelled against her creche and been cast out for her “crime” of seeking freedom. Vestress believes that Slarkethrel found her and welcomed her into the embrace of its ever-giving tentacles.

At this time, Ascarle was still something of a haunted city. Vestress took it upon herself to assemble a force of “heroes” drawn from across Slarkethrel’s empire – merrow, sea elves, weresharks, kapoacinths, and water weirds – and led them in cleaning out the fell creatures and strange spirits. In the process, she transformed Ascarle into a proper capital city, and Slarkethrel named her the Protectress of the city. From that position, her influence and power simply grew, until she was named Regent of Ascarle in the Year of the Striking Falcon (1333 DR).

Vestress apparently remained in charge of Ascarle during whatever catastrophe separated the city from Slarkethrel and the empire. She is now quite aged, nearing the end of her natural lifespan. There is much speculation about who will become the next Regent of Ascarle, along with an increasing amount of jockeying as rivals seek to position themselves for the seemingly inevitable transition of power.

Go to Part 3: The Society

Surface-dwellers know the Kraken Society as a cloak-and-dagger organization that brokers the information they glean through spying, theft, blackmail, and intimidation to gain influence. Once their agents – known as krakenar – have been covertly placed, they use the same methods (plus strategic assassination) to disrupt organizations and topple regimes. Their agents then slide into the power vacuum and “end the threat” that the Kraken Society created in the first place.

What few know is that the Kraken Society is only one slithering tentacle of a much larger – and far older – organization. This organization lacks any true name, but among those in the know it is often referred to as the Tentacles of the Deep.

These tentacles extend from Slarkethrel – the Kraken of the Purple Rocks, King of the Trackless Depths, Consort of the Bitch Queen, the Master of the Veil – and they include the:

• Kraken Society, the so-called “Thieves’ Guild of the North,” most of the members of which (except for those indoctrinated in its inner mysteries) do not realize their service to the kraken.
• Heralds of the Deep, an ancient cult in the Purple Rocks which worships the kraken.
• Forgotten Empire of Ascarle, a vast underwater demesne (once larger than the entire Savage Frontier) ruled by the kraken.
• Assassins of the Purple Veil, a highly trained order that was once part of the Kraken Society but which has since become independent (although its services may still be called upon by those within the Society’s inner circles).

A BRIEF HISTORY

According to the lore enshrined by the Heralds of the Deep, Slarkethrel is more than forty thousand years old, either pre-dating Toril or being born in the instant of its creation (depending on which version of the tale you’re looking at). This would make Slarkethrel one of the preternatural kraken – one of those legendary entities which served the gods before the birth of the mortal races and are said to have ascended to a higher plane of existence.

The inner mysteries of the Kraken Society describe a vast kraken empire which once ruled the seas before they were betrayed and driven into the sanctuaries of the abyssal rifts. In these tales, the King of the Trackless Depths is destined to regain its lost hegemony, and the Society’s members will be wrapped in the loving embrace of its tentacles when that day comes.

None of this is true, however (although the Kraken of the Purple Rocks does yearn for a divine ascension to follow in the footsteps of his “brethren”). The reality is that Slarkethrel was born, according to the Dale Reckoning, in the second century, in the Year of the Kraken (151 DR). It spent its youth exploring the deepest depths of the ocean, its wanderlust slowly transforming into an obsession with the shipwrecks and ruins it found from surface species. It craved the knowledge – and the power given by that knowledge – that it found there.

Slarkethrel eventually stumbled across the sunken city of Ascarle. This ancient elven city was sacked by dark elves and cast into the sea during an ancient ice age. For many long years the kraken studied the troves of lore which he found there and used what he learned to subjugate nearby underwater tribes. Ascarle became the capital of a cosmopolitan empire, with merrow, nereid, mermen, wereshark nobles, whale castes, kapoacinths, koalinths, malenti, morkoths, water weirds, and others.

When he had learned all that he could from Ascarle, he knew that the only way to expand his knowledge and power would be to extend his tentacles into the surface world.

Ascarle lay in the waters just north of an archipelago known as the Purple Rocks, and Slarkethrel began the next phase of his great work by infiltrating the small villages which dotted those desolate islands and creating a cult which would worship him as a dark god of the sea. (He began by rescuing shipwrecked sailors, indoctrinating them, and then returning them “miraculously” to their people.) This cult eventually grew until it completely dominated the Purple Rocks.

From this base of slavish devotion, Slarkethrel used similar techniques to establish the Kraken Society in small settlements along the northern Sword Coast. Harper investigations have concluded that the earliest such agents may have become active in the mid-12^th century (and may have contributed to fostering rivalries which prevented the isolated city-states of the Sword Coast from solidifying into a Northern Empire that might have interfered with Slarkethrel’s long-term plans), but the Society began rapidly expanding in the early 14^th century, pushing inland and establishing major presences in towns like Yartar and Triboar (the former of which became the Society’s center of operations) in addition to expanding their presence in the big coastal cities like Luskan, Neverwinter, Waterdeep, and Baldur’s Gate.

The success of this expansion was likely due to Slarkethrel, under the influence of Vestress, the rogue mind flayer who served as his lieutenant and the Regent of Ascarle, embracing a decentralized structure for the Society. Rather than attempting to control everything himself, Slarkethrel empowered regional lieutenants to lead local operations. (This organization was mirrored under the waves through the appointment of Ascarlian satraps.)

These mortal servitors were limited to much more short-term thinking, but this had the advantage of swift growth.

In the mid-14^th century, Slarkethrel became allied with and later the consort of Umberlee, the Bitch Queen. With the rapid growth of the Kraken Society, the vast domain of the Ascarlian Empire, and the support of this new patroness, the kraken was making a major push towards becoming a true demigod and achieving his dream of divinity.

In the late 14^th century, however, the Kraken Society’s operations were massively disrupted by the Harpers after an attempt to expand Slarkethrel’s empire into the surface world through an invasion of Ruathym failed. The krakenar networks were completely wiped out in many places, including Yartar, and were forced into a much lower profile even in those places where they survived.

The Spellplague then wreaked havoc with Slarkethrel’s undersea empire. The exact nature of the catastrophe (or catastrophes) remains unclear to the Harpers and other surface-dwellers, but it appears the sunken city of Ascarle was temporarily “lost again” or somehow cut off from the rest of the Ascarlian Empire, thus robbing the kraken of its major center of power. (This may have had something to do with the mysterious krakengates — immense teleportation gates once used by ancient kraken, four of which, in Ascarle, the Whalebones, 60 miles south of Ice Peak, and 150 miles west of Leilon, had been reclaimed by Slarkethrel.) In the aftermath, significant undersea clans and peoples separated from the empire, either asserting their independence or becoming tributaries to other major powers under the waves.

Some believed that the King of the Trackless Depths had, in fact, been destroyed (or lost with its capital city). Slarkethrel, however, held onto a small demesne around the Purple Rocks and eventually reasserted its dominion over Ascarle. In the late 1470s, the dormant cells of the Kraken Society were abruptly reawakened, signaling that Slarkethrel’s tentacles were once again groping their way ashore. There have also been a number of minor wars beneath the waves, with Ascarlian troops bringing several of its wayward satrapies to heel.

Go to Part 2: Tentacles of the Deep

When I reviewed Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden, I commented that Arveiaturace — the white wyrm with the dead body of her beloved wizard-rider strapped to her back — was one of the coolest things created for the book.

I wasn’t alone. You can find lots of people saying the same thing.

She’s still very cool.

But it turns out she wasn’t created for the book.

I realized my mistake recently when I was reading through Storm King’s Thunder and noticed a reference to Arveiaturace. (Which is a testament to how cool her presentation in Rime of the Frostmaiden is, because it made her stick in my mind so that future references would stick out like that.)

My curiosity piqued, I started digging deeper. And it turns out Arveiaturace is also mentioned in Tyranny of Dragons, where her mate Arauthator is trying to find a new rider for her in the hopes that it will convince her to take the rotting corpse off her back.

(True story.)

Around this time, Arauthator and Arveiaturace were both mentioned in R.A. Salvatore’s Rise of the King, but their origin actually traces back thorugh Dragons of Faerun (a 3^rd Edition supplement that I’m pretty sure is the source text from which they entered 5^th Edition) all the way to Dragon Magazine #230, where Ed Greenwood launched a column called Wyrms of the North. The first column was dedicated to Arauthator. The second column, in #231, was about Arveiaturace, featuring art by Storn Cook:

You can actually find the original article in Wizard’s online archives. (Thanks to Graham Ward for finding that link.)

If you go back and read it, there are some really interesting games of Telephone that you can trace through the later books where it seems fairly clear authors were aware of one of the older references, but didn’t realize (just like me at the beginning of this article!) that it was all based on a larger body of previous lore.

For example, Arveiaturace’s lair is located in Icepeak, where it is part of the lair of the wizard who was/is her rider.

Because Arveiaturace doesn’t actually appear in Tyranny of Dragons, this lair is not mentioned there. But it is mentioned that her mate, Arauthator, has a lair inside a hollowed out iceberg.

For Storm King’s Thunder, whoever wrote the section describing Icepeak (p. 92, where it appears as “Ice Peak”) knew the original source for Arveiaturace or, more likely, Dragons of Faerun and places her lair “correctly” in Icepeak.

But whoever wrote the section on the Sea of Moving Ice (p. 106) was probably sourcing strictly from Tyranny of Dragons and so writes, “Each dragon [Arauthator and Arveiaturace] makes it lair inside a hollowed-out iceberg.”

In Rime of the Frostmaiden, the author of Arveiaturace’s section (p. 105) once again is sourcing strictly from Tyranny of Dragons, is unaware of either reference in Storm King’s Thunder, and decides to place the “unknown” location of her lair atop the Reghed Glacier.

I love this kind of thing because it’s a simple exemplar of something that happens all the time in actual history texts describing the real world. For example, check out CGP Grey’s “The Race to Win Staten Island,” which brilliantly tears apart a historical legend which has perniciously crept its way into historical “fact.”

Another fun fact here is that, in her original appearance, Arveiaturace is a straight-up draconic whore:

Arauthator regards the white dragon Arveiaturace as an acceptable mate when he feels inclined. He employs a sending spell to call her to his lair for dalliance, giving her gems from his hoard after each mating but firmly escorting her out of his domain to rear any hatchlings that may result on her own.

(No shame intended, to be clear. Everyone’s a consenting Adult age category here.)

Where are their kids, by the way? That could be a really interesting thread to pull on in your Tyranny of Dragons, Storm King’s Thunder, or Rime of the Frostmaiden campaigns. Or, if your players have already run through those campaigns, to drop into a future storyline.

My favorite anecdote from Dragon #231, though, is that Laeral Silverhand of Waterdeep heard that Arveiaturace had besieged Candlekeep in response to someone writing a disparaging remark about Melathorand, her dead wizard-rider. So Laeral immediately commissioned The High History of the Mighty Mage Melathorand (he’s the dreamiest!) and hand-delivered a copy to Arveiaturace, cementing a long-term alliance with the tempestuous wyrm (which apparently lasts unto the present day).

It’s also worth noting that Melathorand’s corpse has been strapped to her back for over a hundred years now. I’m guessing it’s not in great shape.

Or perhaps Arveiaturace periodically seeks out preservation spells to maintain the corpse in good condition. Although if she’s aware of that need, it raises the question of why she has not resurrected the mage. Does the mage not wish to return to life? (Why not?) Or is his soul trapped somewhere? That could be a fascinating adventure seed!

Alternatively, perhaps Arveiaturace is utterly mad and someone (likely Arauthator?) is the one who periodically arranges for the corpse to be magically preserved or restored.

Long story short, if you want to add a lot of lore to your presentation of Arveiaturace, track down Dragon #231 for “Wyrms of the North: Arveiaturace, the White Wyrm” (which, again, you can currently read here). Pretty much everything else is just a cliff’s note version of Greenwood’s original work.

Go to Icewind Dale Index

So here’s a thing about the Forgotten Realms that’s bugged me off-and-on for thirty years: You see that gap in the Trade Way?

It shouldn’t exist.

According to traditional Faerunian lore, the Trade Way runs from Luskan in the north all the way to (depending on time period/edition) Amn or Tethyr or Calimport in the south. There shouldn’t be a gap in it.

It turns out that the origin of this gap is from this map in the 1st Edition Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting boxed set:

For a long time I assumed that this passage from the campaign setting was responsible for the gap:

In recent years, some evil agent allied with he orcs, trolls, and bugbears of the High Moor succeeded in opening a gate to the Nine Hells within [Dragonspear Castle]. Strengthened by a growing army of devilkind, the combined forces of the High Moors tribes devastated the area from The Way Inn to Boarskyr Bridge, such that today that part of the Trade Way is not considered safe territory.

Given the absence of the road from the map, I thought “not considered safe” and “devastated” might mean that the Trade Way had actually been destroyed here, severing the easiest trade route between the northern and southern reaches of the Sword Coast.

This was not actually the case. In fact, an army had marched against the devils of Dragonspear Castle, sacked it, and established regular armed patrols out of the Way Inn.

Before we move on, however, let’s talk about what happens between Scornubel and Baldur’s Gate:

For an even longer time (based on the map), I assumed that the Trade Way actually was interrupted here: Trade would come down the road to Scornubel and then take the Chionthar River to Baldur’s Gate before continuing south.

This also turns out not to be the case: The Trade Way has always entered Baldur’s Gate via the city’s north gate, which would imply that there must be a road which runs from Scornubel to Baldur’s Gate (and various snippets of text support this).

But here’s the odd thing: Elturel is never described as being on the Trade Way, despite the fact that logically a road from Scornubel to Baldur’s Gate would pass right through the city. In fact, Elturel is explicitly NOT on the Trade Way; instead a road heads northeast from the city and “meets the Trade Way” at the village of Triel.

Now, more detailed maps DID exist:

(Thanks to @roboros for pointing this one out to me.)

You can see from this map that the “gap” is actually a section of less-developed road along the Trade Way. There’s still no road between Elturel and Scornubel, however, so we still don’t know how the Trade Way gets from Scornubel to Baldur’s Gate.

The next map was, as far as I can tell, produced for the Forgotten Realms Atlas (1990):

The big difference here is that the road leading directly from Dragonspear Castle to Baldur’s Gate has been upgraded to a major road. Which also prompts a new question: Why isn’t THIS road used as the Trade Way?

We do have another source here: Ed Greenwood’s original map.

These were apparently displayed at Gamehole Con in 2019 and you can find photos of them here.

The details are a little hard to see, but we can generally make out that the maps we’ve seen so far largely echo Greenwood’s original cartography. (The only quibble I’d have is that I’m fairly certain the intention is for two roads to leave Boareskyr Bridge to the south; not for one road to run several dozen miles south before splitting.) The big thing to note here is that the lack of a road between Elturel and Scornubel is NOT a production error; Greenwood didn’t have it on his original map.

This brings us to 2^nd Edition, which largely follows what we’ve seen so far but notably labels the road to Baldur’s Gate as the “Coast Way”:

(We’ll come back to this.)

The Realms map was then completely redone for 3^rd Edition:

It turns out this map is very controversial among Realms experts. While adding considerable detail, it notably introduces a number of errors. (For example, in this section you can see how the road which is supposed to cross the Winding Water at the Troll Claw Ford is depicted here as missing the Troll Claws entirely.)

As far as the Trade Way is concerned, it’s a mixed bag. The decision has been made to upgrade its entire length to a major road, and it’s also added the road between Scornubel and Elturel that we’ve hypothesized must exist. But the route still isn’t particularly clear: West of Elturel, the road now cuts far to the northwest (almost all the way to the Troll Claws), and this section hasn’t been upgraded to a major road like the rest of the Trade Way.

Let’s move onto 4^th Edition:

This map is… interesting. It’s obviously a regression in terms of detail, but there are also a number of glaring inaccuracies. (The road crossing the river far to the east of Baldur’s Gate instead of passing through Baldur’s Gate is probably the most notable for our purposes.)

The other notable thing here, however, is that the writers of 4^th Edition also clearly wondered why the Trade Way would go all the way easy to Scornubel if there was a road heading straight to Baldur’s Gate.

Their solution was simple: It doesn’t. In 4^th Edition, the Trade Way no longer goes to Scornubel. The write-up of Scornubel never mentions the Trade Way and the description of the Trade Way itself makes it fairly explicit:

Over the centuries, numerous separate caravan paths coalesced into a well-traveled route along the western edge of Faerun called the Trade Way. Regular traffic once extended from Luskan to Calimport, but has been truncated since the Spellplague. It now runs from Waterdeep to the southern edges of Tethyr. Parallel to but usually some distance from the coast, the route moves farthest east just north of Baldur’s Gate, where Elturgard paladins guard the crossing at the Winding Water River. Few, if any, of the lands through which the Trade Way passes are completely safe, and caravan guards are in constant demand.

(Somewhat incoherently, however, the same campaign guide still asserts that the Trade Way crosses Boareskyr Bridge. Which, of course, it wouldn’t do if it’s following the road to Baldur’s Gate.)

This brings us back to 5^th Edition’s version of the Realms, with the original version of the gap we looked at to begin with. My understanding is that 5^th Edition’s cartography went back to the original 1^st Edition maps in order to sort of “get back to basics.” Unfortunately, the result was to also reintroduce a lot of errors and shortcomings from those original maps (including the gap in the Trade Way).

THE TRUTH OF THE TRADE WAYS

When I started this write-up, my original intention was to basically just say, “Hey! Look at the gap!”

But it turns out there’s a deep lore here.

If you do a close reading of the 1^st Edition boxed set (which I, in fact, just did while fact-checking all this), you’ll discover that the entire idea of there being a single “Trade Way” is an illusion.

There was a Trade Way from Amn to Waterdeep. For example, Baldur’s Gate was “situated on the northern shore of the river, astride the Trade Way from Amn to Waterdeep.”

But there was another Trade Way, from Waterdeep to Iriaebor:

And it is this second Trade Way that goes to Scornubel!

The reason there’s no road from Scornubel to Baldur’s Gate (and why Elturel is explicitly not on the Trade Way) is because there ISN’T a Trade Way between Baldur’s Gate and Scornubel.

They’re two different Trade Ways. (In fact, my suspicion would be that there were originally many more Trade Ways. These were just the ones that got particular mention in the first boxed set.)

In the 2^nd Edition boxed set, the addition of the “Coast Way” was actually an attempt to make the difference between the two different routes clear. In fact, this boxed set never refers to Baldur’s Gate as being on the Trade Way. Instead, “it is situated on the northern shore of the river, astride the Coast Way from Amn to Waterdeep.”

But I suspect that due to all the prominent references to Baldur’s Gate “being on the Trade Way” and “the Trade Way follows the coast” that already existed, this distinction became confused. In short order, the Coast Way was effectively just another name for the Trade Way, and shortly thereafter it would be explicitly stated as being such, reintroducing the confusion.

Of course, this means that there’s actually ANOTHER gap in the Trade Way, this one between Scornubel and Iriaebor:

Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be any clear solution to this. No maps of the Realms appear to depict roads heading south from Scornubel.

Nevertheless, the original intention is fairly clear: The Trade Way from Waterdeep split north of the Winding Water, heading to Amn (gateway to the South) and Iriaebor (gateway to the Inner Sea).

LOST IRIAEBOR

I think the real victim here is Iriaebor.

If the cartography accurately depicted the Trade Way running all the way through to the City of a Thousand Spires, Iriaebor wouldn’t just be one of a number of cities crammed in around the Far Hills. Instead, it would very clearly be the Constantinople-like lynchpin between the Sword Coast and the Dalelands.

Let me show you what I mean by sketching in the “missing” roads on the 1^st Edition map (imagining the Trade Way punching through the Reaching Wood southeast of Scornubel for lack of a better option):

(click for larger image)

The importance of Iriaebor immediately leaps out. It’s obvious at a glance that it’s the only game in town for east-west travel for hundreds or thousands of miles in either direction. Every campaign in the Dalelands that wanted to go to Waterdeep would have gone through Iriaebor, sitting almost directly in the middle of the map with every road north of Amn leading straight to it.

I find it quite plausible to imagine that more DMs, designers, and novelists would have been drawn to the city. In the Cyclopedia of the Realms, page 54 might have become well-thumbed:

The Ruler of Iriaebor is Bron, who was an adventurer catapulted into the position in the heat of a shooting war between merchant families. Bron feels Iriaebor has the resources to become another Waterdeep…

Let’s spend a little moment dreaming of Bron’s dream together.