"Compared to all other known nations, Mulhorand is a paradise.  The gods created Mulhorand to show the mortals of other lands what the afterlife could be like."

     -Old Mulhorand saying

The people who inhabit Mulhorand come from three racial stocks.  The rulers of Mulhorand come from tribes of ancient Raurin; they are sallow, tall (almost as tall as western men), and thin.  They do not have much body hair.  They are known as the Mulan.

The original inhabitants of Mulhorand were a mahogany-skinned people similar to those in Turmish.  They are tall and muscular, with dark skin, flat faces, and short hair; they are known as the Turami.  This race occupies positions in the upper hierarchy of several priesthoods and is renowned for its skill in architecture, art, and stonemasonry, which are considered middle-class skills in Mulhorand.

The third racial type is that of Amn, Tethyr, and the western nations of the Inner Sea.  People of this racial type, which the Mulhorandi refer to as Tethens, make up the bulk of Mulhorand's slaves, since they usually come to Mulhorand through the slave markets of Thay.

The Nobility

Bureaucrats are the most mobile of the group; it is possible to advance from a slave to a bureaucrat if one is in a position to get a good education.  Bureaucrats include tax-collectors, scribes, messengers, and even spies.  They take directives from the priesthood and generally carry out the priesthood's dileberate vague orders with great effeciency.  For example, if a priest of Horus-Re wanted to discredit a rival, the priest would mention aloud that it would be fortunate for him if something unpleasant happened to the rival; the bureaucrat is expected to interpret this order and carry it out without implicating his master.

Bureaucrats enable their masters to fulfill their ambitions without getting their hands dirty.

Wizardry is considered to be an honorable profession.  All mages must swear allegiance to the pharaoh and to the temples of Thoth and Horus-Re.  They spend most of their time researching new magical items or examining old artifacts, so they stay out of the majority of the political affairs of Mulhorand.

The priests are the major power brokers in Mulhorand.  They control vast tracts of land and thousands of slaves.

The pharaoh allows them to determine the policies of the land.  By far the most powerful priesthood is that of Horus-Re, but other groups control large areas of land and slaves.  Some of the more ambitious priesthoods, such as the priesthood of Anhur, have engaged in a number of secret enterprises devised to promote their visions of a more aggressive Mulhorand.  (If it seems as though religion is the least important concern of the priesthoods, well, it is.)

The pharaoh sits on the throne in Skuld.  He is more of a figurehead than a ruler.  Theoretically, the priesthood, mages, and bureaucrats must obey every whim of the pharaoh, but he has yet to exert his authority.  One notable quote from the priesthood is this: "The pharaoh wishes to be involved in the important affairs of the land.  Design him a new temple so that he will take his mind off such a foolish notion." The pharaoh is always male.

The priesthoods are herditary; their members are almost always descendants of incarnations of various dieties, which are known as the divine houses.  The houses are usually referred to by their Thayvian names, as listed below:
House of Horus-Re: House of Helicaliant
House of Thoth: House of Tholaunt
House of Osiris: House of Osriant
House of Anhur: House of Ramathant

Descendants of female incarnations are not given a House name, nor are descendants of Set incarnations.

Mulhorand is a thouroughly patriarchal society.  The first two sons of a House are said to be nobles; the eldest is entitled to at least two thirds of the father's land and slaves, while the younger son can have no more than one third.  Other sons, and all daughters, must fend for themselves.

Nobles of all varieties must shave themselves bald, and typically paint one to three blue circles on their foreheads.  These indicate learning, knowledge of magic, and familiarity with the laws, customs, and religious rituals of the land.  (Very roughly, one circle means that the man is an educated freeman, two circles mean he is a mage, and three circles mean he is a priest.)

If a noble wishes to maintain his power in Mulhorand, it is almost necessary to have friends in the priesthood of Horus-Re.  However, as it is possible to strike at a priest through his friends and the power struggles in that priesthood can be extremely treacherous, it is best to avoid having too many close connections.  On the other hand, it is usually a good thing to help a person rise to power.

Priests usually strip or reduce the landholdings of their enemies, and increase those of their friends.

Noble Titles of Mulhorand

Mulhorand does not have a formal hierarchy of titles that are passed on from father to son.  People who are recognized as nobles are referred to as "Lords" while their spouses or chosen concubines are referred to as "Ladies."

Provincial governors and the rulers of cities are referred to as "Precepts."  Incarnations are referred to as "Divine Precepts."  Since the internal politics of Mulhorand can be volatile, these titles are not hereditary.

The major honors given in Mulhorand are bureaucratic positions.  Such titles as "Keeper of the Royal Comb," "Master of the Pharaoh's Horse," etc. are the major honors and sources of pride; without some sort of bureaucratic responsibility, no matter how trivial, a nobleman is said not to matter in Mulhorand.

Wizards are referred to as "Lord Wizards"; wizards that belong to the priesthood of Thoth are referred to as "Lord High Wizards."  Priests are referred to as "Lord Priests" and important priests as "Lord High Priests."

The Middle Class

There is a sizable middle class in Mulhorand.  While the middle class owns only small tracts of land, it includes many skilled craftsmen whose talents are in demand.  Artists, builders, traders, mercenaries, and scribes are the most noted members of this class (with horse groomers, navigators, and military commanders added to this list in times of war).  There are also freeman farmers who lease slaves from the church to serve as their work force.

Because members of this class are often wealthy, they are seen as marriage prospects for the daughters of noble families.

Adventurers, often considered to be members of the middle class elsewhere, are treated with disdain in Mulhorand.  Adventuring is seen as the same thing as grave robbing; no one honors adventurers in Mulhorand, and few consort with known adventurers.  City guards and Preceptual militia keep a watchful eye on all adventurers.

Some craft guilds exist in Mulhorand, of which the Scribes' Guild is the most famous.  Compared to the priesthoods, the guilds are honorable groups that fight to protect the rights and security of their members.  They have a reputation for pushiness and making unreasonable demands in an attempt to get their own way.  Some craftsmen attempt to work independent of the guilds, but they are subject to the whims of Mulhorand politics, since one needs good connections to survive without (and against) the guilds.

Nearly all professional soldiers and guards in Mulhorand are Chessentan mercenaries.  These are paid by the cities and precepts in which they are stationed.  The priesthood of Anhur has purchased many slaves and is training them to be a military force, but this is not approved by the pharaoh.

Slaves

Most of the people of Mulhorand are slaves, the official property of the churches.  Landholders are not permitted to buy slaves (yet) but may rent them from a temple.  Each temple buys its own slaves, which it trains for its own purposes.

Slaves in Mulhorand are reasonably well-treated.  Food is plentiful and no one starves.  Killing a slave is a capital crime, and any slave who is unfairly punished is able to make a complaint to the priests of Osiris, who judge how slaves are treated in Mulhorand.  Punishment for abusing a slave usually involves forfeiture of some lands and possessions.  Work is hard and sometimes dangerous, but few masters are willing to be responsible for the accidental death of a slave.

All slaves must take an oath to obey the gods and whatever master the gods see fit to give them.  It is not uncommon for a master to pay his slaves when they are returned to their priesthood; this often favorably impresses the priests who own the slaves.  Life as a slave in Mulhorand is not easy or particularly pleasant, but it is better than a slave's life in other lands, especially Thay.

Slaves are protected by the laws of Mulhorand and are also a very important part of their economy.  Their importance is associated with their title and position.  They are property of the gods and the god-kings, and are superior to even the highest kings of the other, further kingdoms and empires.

It is illegal for any of the slaves to be owned by anyone other than the pharaoh and the gods.  In practice, this means that slaves are rented from the churches (gods), mostly to the large farmsteads.  Each church trains their own slaves for their own purposes.  Slaves of Anhur are trained in the basics of warfare and given weapons.  Slaves of Hathor are trained in providing care and help for both humans and the plants.

Each slave, to mark themselves from the other Mulhorandi and adventurers, are given specific marks on a separate part of their body for each church.  The mark is magically placed by the priests, and can only be removed by such a priest.  Each church has a specific location of the body, depending on what their basic functions in society may be.  The symbol is immaterial, only the location matters.

The churches of Set and Sebek are not looked favorably upon in the majority of Mulhorand and some of their slaves, especially those used for more covert purposes, may go without such a mark.  Forging slavery marks is a severe crime and is usually met with capital punishment.

Anhur: Forehead
Bast: Lower Back
Geb: Palm of Left Hand
Hathor: Right Cheek
Horus-Re: Back of Neck
Isis: Left Ankle
Nephthys: Right Wrist
Osiris: Mouth
Sebek: Chest
Set: Back
Thoth: Back of Right Hand

The Society of Mulhorand

Mulhorand is a lawful neutral society.  It believes in order and discipline, and despises change.  Each member of society is expected to obey the law without question, respect authority of the priests without question, and honor the gods without question.  Mulhorand represents paradise on earth - stability and security for all eternity.  These concepts, in the eyes of a faithful Mulhorandi, cannot be challenged.

Underlying the society, however, is a great deal of corruption.  The priesthood is an object of political domination rather than religious worship, and each priesthood suffers from infighting, power struggles, and useless bickering.

The unifying forces of the pharaohs, tradition, and isolation from external forces prevents Mulhorand from disintegrating into petty city-states, as happened in Chessenta, or into an impotent has-been, as happened to Unther.  While Mulhorand lacks the will and the manpower to regain its lost empire in the near future, it still is a power to be reckoned with in the eastern section of the Inner Sea.

Mulhorand is a land of arrogance.  The nobles of the realm consider themselves superior to the people of every other nation.  They believe Mulhorand to be more civilized, more prosperous, more creative, and (if they were ever interested in conquest again) more powerful than all of the nations on the outside.  Of all the lands in the Realms, they reason, Mulhorand is ruled by the gods.

They do not hide this arrogance from outsiders; even the slaves are haughty, for they are not property of men, but of gods.  Mulhorand is hidebound in its belief that it will be eternal, that no enemy will ever be able to destroy it.

Customs of Mulhorand

Mulhorand has a number of unique customs, which are generally adhered to by all classes.

First, beyond all other things, Mulhorand is a theocratic state, ruled by the priesthood.  Mulhorandi are supposed to be willing to submit to the authority of the priests in all things, and most of them do so willingly.

Mulhorandi always show great respect whenever a priest walks by, usually by bowing their heads or by turning away so as not to interfere in the priest's journey.  Priests expect these shows of respect.

Mandatory prayers occur four times daily: at waking, at mid-day, at dinner time, and at bed time.  There is one holy day each tenday, when all men, nobles and slaves alike, are expected to congregate under the balconies of temples and listen to the priests.

Priests are the only ones permitted to slay cattle for the consumption of meat.  This must be done while performing holy rights (almost always by acolytes) or the meat is considered to be unclean.

Mulhorandi often seem to have an obsession with death, spending much of their time constructing their tombs and preparing for the afterlife.  This is not as morbid as it sounds.  Mulhorandi believe that the afterlife is a continuation of life, not a journey to paradise or damnation.  Thus, the people of Mulhorand do their best to prepare for the next existance.

Language of Mulhorand

The Mulhorandi language comes from a language family known as Rauric.  Only Mulhorandi and Untheric survive from this linguistic family; Mulhorandi has preserved much of the old tongue, while Untheric has evolved greatly over the course of the millennia.

Mulhorandi is an inflected language with many verb tenses and cases; word order is relatively unimportant. It often sounds thick and slow compared to other languages; some say this is due to the heavy influence of priestly rituals on everyday speech. Basic Mulhorandi writing consists of complicated pictureglyphs, each of which represents a different idea; it has become somewhat more abstracted over the course of the last thousand years and consists of a vocabulary of tens of thousands of pictographs.  Most Mulhorandi know a basic vocabulary of about 3,000 pictographs, while scribes, wizards, and priests learn a more extensive vocabulary.

Current Economy of Mulhorand

"Mulhorand prospers, as it has always prospered, depending not on the unreliable fortunes of other powers."

     -Pharaoh Akonhorus II

Mulhorand is a slave-based agrarian economy.  Foodstuffs are grown on slave farms in the Great Vale.  There are small farms that are owned by landowners, but the costs of slave leasing makes them prohibitively expensive.  The slave farms are not an efficient system, but they provide more than enough food for the country's needs.

Food grown in Mulhorand is used in Mulhorand; food exports are almost nonexistant, though when the north suffers from drought some traders have bought grain from freeholders to sell elsewhere.  While Mulhorand often has a food surplus, it is usually preserved by magic for years of drought, which, thanks to the interference of the Red Wizards of Thay in the weather of the eastern Inner Sea, come more frequently these days.  Mulhorand is content to grow for its needs and does not try to compete economically with Thay; this is in perfect harmony with most of its political policies for the last three centuries.

Each slave farm is controlled by a temple, and temple bureaucrats carefully count and monitor distribution of grain.  Some temples are bribed by freeholders to put them down as having less grain than they possess, thus enabling them to sell the surplus to traders and avoid taxes.

Mulhorand produces papyrus, a reed that can be spun into a variety of products including paper.  Over the course of centuries, Mulhorand has increased the efficiency of this process, and Mulhorand paper is considered to be of extremely high quality, sought after by wizards throughout the Realms.  The slave farms of papyrus harvesters in the delta of the River of Spears are run by the temples of Thoth and Nephthys; both temples have waxed rich from the proceeds.  Flax grows in the north, from which fine linen is made; this has made certain temples of Anhur and Osiris quite rich.

While Mulhorand imports slaves (usually from Thay), it never exports them.  Selling Mulhorand citizens into slavery, or even selling Mulhorand slaves to foreigners in Mulhorand, is a capital offense.  The general belief is that being a slave in Mulhorand is better than being a freeman in other nations.  It is considered an insult to the pharaoh to assume that temple property can be resold to outsiders.  This is yet another example of Mulhorand arrogance.

Mulhorand does export wood to Thay, usually from the edges of Ganathwood.  It is not a major business, and Mulhorand must rely on imports from the south for truly fine woods that are finding increasing popularity in furnishings.

Mulhorand has several major mines.  Gold is plentiful in the rivers, particularly in the Great Vale, and there are several gold mines in the Sword Mountains.  These mines are perhaps the most ancient ones ever devised by humans, using dwarven shaft-mining techniques.  A good number of precious stones are mined in Mulhorand: agate, amethyst, and jasper are the most valuable.  Granite is also plentiful; many foreign sculptors insist on Mulhorand granite for their works.

Mulhorand imports iron, fine timber, silver, incense, spice, and perfume.  These scarce commodities are provided by traders from the south.

Coinage

Coinage in Mulhorand has been around for many years.  Coins are primarily made of gold, dated and engraved with the face of the current pharaoh as a symbol of authenticity; the edges have demarcations to prevent further shaving.  There are two major coins: the precept, a small coin worth four silvers elsewhere, and the pharaoh, worth two gold crowns elsewhere.  The Mulhorand rate of exchange is six precepts to one pharaoh.

Only nobles and the middle class use coins.  Most goods in Mulhorand are bartered, expecially among the lower classes and slaves, who are permitted to own property if given as gifts for good service (the temples are allowed to confiscate this money since technically the slaves are their property and therefore anything that belongs to them belongs to the temple).

Real property in Mulhorand comes from two sources, first being the ownership of cattle and livestock.  Meat is considered to be a valuable commodity, and cattle farmers are among the most honored freemen.  However, diseases plague herds and flocks on frequent occasions, so it is not always a stable source of wealth.

The second source of wealth is ownership of land.  The drawback to this form of wealth is that temples can confiscate land at any time.  Were it not for the priesthood of Osiris, which allows a displaced freeholder to challenge the temples in a just court, the power of the priests of Horus-Re would be virtually absolute.

Current Politics of Mulhorand

"All thy affairs are sound and prosperous; every responsible incumbent has reported to me, saying that all the Pharaoh's affairs are sound and prosperous."

     -Rezim, typical report to Pharaoh Akonhorus

There are two forms of government in Mulhorand - a central government based in Skuld and run by the vizier (who may be overruled by the pharaoh, but usually isn't), and preceptual governments in cities and over wide areas.  There are sixteen precepts in Mulhorand, each of whom is appointed by the vizier, though in areas that are controlled by a priesthood, the vizier appoints precepts recommended by that priesthood.

The vizier is the most important individual in Mulhorand.  He is always the most dominant priest of Horus-Re.  He appoints or approves of the appointments of all high-level bureaucrats and all major officials.  He can strip people of land, titles, and freedom as he wills.  He is virtually a dictator, though sometimes a vizier who is too unpopular is removed by the pharaoh.

Aside from the pharaoh, the only challenge to the absolute authority of the vizier is from the justices, who are chosen from the priests of Osiris.  It is a duty of Osirisian priests to uphold the law, and a complainant may challenge even the vizier in a court of law.  The burden on proof, of course, lies with the complainant.  However, the judges in Mulhorand are honest and honorable men.

Because the leader of each priesthood wields a lot of political powers, fighting for the high priesthood is the source of bitter rivalry in all orders, with the exception of that of Osiris.  Favoritism and political opportunism is rampant in Mulhorand.  The political leadership in Mulhorand is often extremely ruthless; there are few assassination of person, but many of character.

The incarnations are mostly spectators to these power games.  Incarnations are the religious heads of each priesthood, but they consider politics too mundane to be the pursuit of the gods, so mortals are given tacit approval for their political in-fighting.

Each priesthood can be roughly divided into three factions: conservative, mainline, and radical.  There is often fighting for leadership of each of the factions of each priesthood.  The conservative faction wants as little change as possible.  The radical faction believes that change is essential.  The mainline faction wants to preserve the power of its priesthood by avoiding violent disagreements between the conservative and radical elements.

Each faction of each priesthood plays a part in determining the goals and direction of Mulhorand.  It is not uncommon for a faction of a priesthood to have more in common with a faction of another priesthood than the other factions of its own priesthood.  These factions can be lumped together according to their general goals, as follows:

Status Quo

These people want to preserve the current states of Mulhorand and refrain from wars against foreign powers, including Thay.  They believe that Thay will eventually rejoin Mulhorand on its own volition.  Factions in this camp include the conservative and mainline factions of Horus-Re and Isis and the conservative factions of Thoth and Osiris.

Consolidationists

These people believe that a war should be waged against Thay, but that now is not the time to wage it.  This faction wants to build up the Mulhorand nation and make careful preparations, which they believe will ensure that Thay falls quickly.  Factions in support of this include the radical factions of Horus-Re and Isis, the mainline factions of Thoth and Osiris, and the conservative factions of Anhur and Nephthys.

Expansionists

This group believes in restoring Mulhorand to the property boundaries that existed at the height of the Second Empire.  They wish to purge the Realms of all traces of Set, to destroy the Red Wizards, and to reclaim Thay as part of Mulhorand.  They want to restore Mulhorand's army and march on Thay as soon as possible.  Factions in support of this include the radical factions of Thoth and Osiris and the mainline and radical factions of Anhur and Nephthys.

The precepts in Mulhorand often have their own political troubles.  The precepts are listed below and rated major, minor, or no importance in political terms:

Aina (no importance)

Includes the town of Aina and the farms at the mouth of the River of Swords.  Precept is Alakin, priest of Thoth.

Gheldaneth (major importance)

Includes Gheldaneth and the area at the mouth of the River of Spears.  Precept is Derlaunt, priest of Thoth.  Tholaunt, Divine Precept of Thoth, can overrule Derlaunt's decisions.

Surbroar (no importance)

Includes area around Surbroar.  Precept is Kesia, servant of Isis.

Klondor (minor importance)

Includes area around Klondor and east to the Plains of Purple Dust.  There are many monsters in this region, so there is a large garrison of Chessenta mercenary guards.  Precept is Haskrayth, servant of Assuran.

Ulzel (no importance)

Serves area around Ulzel and the immediate south.  Precept is Nessisi, priest of Isis.

Mishtan (major importance)

Serves Mishtan and the Land of the Dead.  Precept is responsible for the tombs of the pharaohs and other important Mulhorandi.  Its precept is Temis, priest of Osiris.

Jhalhoran (minor importance)

Serves Jhalhoran and lands west; responsble for road patrols on the Great Eastern Trade Road.  Precept is Ulara, priest of Nephthys.  Nephita also dwells here.

Skuld (minor importance)

The reason the precept of Skuld is only a minor position is that the vizier has the ability to overrule the precept on any matter and the precept is really only the second-in-command of Skuld.  The current precept is Ceianre, priest of Horus-Re.

Maerlar (no importance)

The main job of this precept is to make sure that crossroads are continually guarded.  Attaining this position is usually considered to be the vizier's way of telling a henchman that the vizier is disappointed in him.  It currently has no precept; one is expected to be appointed within the next six months, though Rezim may keep it open for a while longer in case someone disappoints him.

Rauthil (no importance)

This position is identicle to that of Maerlar, except that this precept has less territory to guard.  Rezim likes to keep either Rauthil or Maerlar without a precept at all times, to have a place to put his enemies.  Its current precept is Ethestus, priest of Horus-Re.

Rauthgor (no importance)

This precept looks at waterfalls all day, lives in a small isolated keep, and if the pirates don't get him, the sahuagin will.  This position is given to an enemy that the vizier wants to eliminate.  The current precept is Bokasin, priest of Anhur.

Ganath (major importance)

This is a major post because it is located in Murghyr, capital of Murghom.  It is mostly a diplomatic post, as the precept of Ganath is also the Mulhorandi ambassador to Murghom.  It is considered a nice place to get away from the infighting of Mulhorandi politics, and is typically given to old, respected priests of Horus-Re.  The current precept is Imthalos, priest of Horus-Re.

Sultim (major importance)

This was once a minor post, but as Sultim is the fastest growing city in Mulhorand, the importance of this post is now equal to that of Gheldaneth.  The precept is responsible for the safety of Mulhorand's largest port and is supposed to try to bring order to the chaos of Outer Sultim.  None have come close to succeeding in the latter responsibility.

This was typically the post held by the high priest of Anhur, but Rezim has stripped the priests of Anhur of that priviledge; the current precept is Koramon, servant of Horus-Re.

Thazarim (minor importance)

This precept has one major responsibility - to ensure the integrity of the northern border, since Thay has invaded twice.  The precept lives in a small citadel just south of the River of the Dawn.

This was traditionally an Anhur post, but they have been stripped of this as well.  The current precept is Mulhortep.  Mulhortep is a competent general and probably the best man for the job.

Sampranasz (minor importance)

This precept is really in the service of Set.  The precept controls the town of Sampanasz and the surrounding area.  The current precept is Sanuet.

One may wonder whether a person can refuse the position of precept, given the lack of honor or the certain danger of various precepts.  The answer is yes, but those who refuse have ruined their political careers.  When a person refuses the vizier, tradition has it that he is expected to leave the bureaucracy forever.

In the case of Rauthgor, where an Anhurite holds the post, Bokasin felt the priesthood needed to hold at least one precepthood to maintain a sense of honor; refusing would have been a serious blow to the integrity of the priests of Anhur.  To protect Bokasin, the Anhurites are spending a lot of flax money on improving the fortifications.

Laws of Mulhorand

"The justice of a god is a lack of partiality.  When you see one whom you know, treat him as though you know him not, and those who are close to your person as those you are distant from you.  Do not avoid the petitioner, but hear his case with eagerness.  Be not angered without justice.  Great is justice when its justices are great; in the eyes of truth, a slave and a pharaoh are as one."

     -The Code of Justice of the priests of Osiris

In Mulhorand, there is no uniform code of justice; each precept has its own laws, which are for the most part similar but sometimes have unusual variations.

There are both good and bad aspects  to Mulhoandi justice.  The bad aspects are that punishments are very severe.  They consist of banishment from Mulhorand with a curse, imprisonment, or execution.  Property and goods are usually confiscated and lost forever.  There are many deaths over what would elsewhere be trivial offenses.

On the other hand, the system of justice is very good.  Justice is handled by the priests of Osiris, who often send priests from town to town to hear cases and render judgements.  The judges are genuinely fair, reasonable, and incorruptible.  On the other hand, the burden of proof is usually on the accused to prove his innocence, not on the accuser.

Capital crimes include murder, killing a slave, damaging church property, theft from a church, using a god's name in vain, grave robbing, teaching Mulhorand magic spells to foreigners, assaulting a priest, building a dam on the River of Spears, and espionage.

Imprisonment or banishment crimes include theft, insulting a priest, assault, selling weapons to foreigners, leading foreigners to grave sites, stating malicious falsehoods about the nobles of the realm, hurting a slave, lying to a priest, cursing a priest, and wearing armor without a permit.  Wizards are never banished.

Civil disputes are handled by a tribunal of the priests of Osiris.  Anyone may request that a tribunal be called to settle disputes of property and marriage.  They charge a rather expensive fee for this service.

The greatest power that a judge of Osiris has is the ability to call an independent inquiry.  If a judge views any political situation as suspicious, he can call up to two other judges and determine if any laws were broken.  The results of this inquiry are given to the vizier, who has the right to ignore them if he feels like it.
This message was last edited by the GM at 22:03, Tue 09 June 2009.

Adventurers in Mulhorand

"Adventure?  Ha!  Excitement?  Bah!  A Mulhorandi craves not these things!"

     -Yeda, high priest of Akonhorus I

Mulhorandi, being residents of paradise, are scornful of the idea that professional adventuring companies can do anything other than create chaos.

Most precepts and officials persecute all treasure hunters and adventurers, with the exception of mercenaries that have been specifically hired to guard or patrol the cities.  The general belief is that adventuring companies do not fit into Mulhorand society, and thus they threaten its traditions.

Religion of Mulhorand

"The gods are content and happy-hearted, and life is spent in glad laughter."
     -Old Mulhorand saying

The ancient kingdom of Mulhorand is one of the last remaining lands in Faerun whose inhabitants do not venerate the dominant Faerunian pantheon.  A family of dieties, known as the Mulhorandi pantheon, rules Mulhorand as an absolute theocracy.  At one point their sphere of influence incorporated the present-day lands of Semphar, Murghom, Thay, and the Raurin desert, corresponding to the height of the Mulhorandi empire, but their fortunes have since fallen considerably.  Today the pantheon receives only token acknowledgement in Thay and Semphar (where the Faerunian pantheon actually holds sway), and their flock of worshipers in Murghom is rapidly dwindling.  In addition to marginal influence in Chessenta, the pantheon has rapidly begun to extend its influence into the land of Unther, its ancient ally and enemy.  A great opportunity for pantheonistic expansion had emerged following the collapse of the Untheric pantheon, but the Mulhorandi powers with a far more vigorous Faerunian pantheon for the hearts and spirits of the people of Unther.

The powers of Mulhorand and the fallen deities of Unther are ancient in origin.  Millenia ago, at the height of the Imaskari empire, the wizards of the land wielded immense powers and in their pride refused to bow down to any divine entity.  When the population of their lands collapsed in a calamitous plague, the godless sorcerers of that empire opened a pair of gates to another world.  In a series of lightning raids, they capture countless slaves and brought them back to Abeir-Toril, and then permanently closed all connections between those lands and the Realms.  These newly arrived people came from two different regions and time periods of that world, but quickly intermarried with each other and the surviving Imaskari citizens to form a race of people known as the Mulan.  Despite harsh repression from the wizards, the Mulan retained their faith in the deities of their home world and offered up countless prayers for their salvation and emancipation.

Ao heard their prayers, and summoned the god Ptah, an ancient diety of Wildspace whose faith had originated in the home world of the Mulan and whose followers had recently discovered Realmspace, the crystal sphere containing Abeir-Toril.  At Ao's request, Ptah returned to his home world and assembled the two relevant pantheon of that sphere.  He explained what had happened to their faithful and conveyed the Mulan's prayers for salvation.  Ptah then relayed Ao's invitation to the two pantheons to extend their sphere of influence into the Realms.  Since the Imaskari sorcerers had created an unbreachable magical barrier between the two worlds that denied the entrance of the gods of the Mulan into Realmspace, the only way the pantheons could enter Abeir-Toril was to send avatars through Wildspace accompanied by Ptah.  Ptah explained that their avatars would be cut off from their divine essences in the Outer Planes for the foreseeable future, and hence needed to be as powerful as possible if they were to battle the Imaskari wizards.  Creating such powerful avatars, known as manifestations, required a great sacrifice of divine power.

Both Ra, the head of the family of deities who would become the Mulhorandi pantheon, and Enlil, the patriarch of what would become the Untheric pantheon, agreed to Ao's offer, as did many of their divine offspring.  Ptah led the gods' manifestations through the darkness of Wildspace with a powerful artifact known as the Beacon of Light.

Re (as the manifestation of Ra was known) rode in a huge war galley known as the Matet.  (At night it changed into a simple barge known as the Semktet.)  The manifestation of Enlil and his children rode in the Galley of Gods, constructed by Enki, god of rivers and oceans, who chose not to accompany them.

The two divine families landed on the highest peaks of a range of mountains of the northeastern edge of the Imaskari empire known today as Teyla Shan (Godswatch Mountains).  There they further divided their remaining divine essences and created lesser, mortal forms of avatars, known as incarnations.  The incarnations descended into the fertile plain below and went among their long-foresaken peoples.  The most talented they made priests, and the truly faithful were transformed into divine minions.  (Ptah created no manfestation, incarnations, or divine minions, and hence was never worshiped by the Mulan.  He is remembered, however, as the founder of the Mulhorandi pantheon by the Mulan.)

Before the overly complacent wizards realized what was occurring, their Mulan slaves rose in open rebellion.  Many of the incarnations and hundreds of their divine minions were destroyed in the subsequent battles with the Imaskari sorcerers, and the rebellion began to founder.  Then the manifestations emerged from the mountains along a path that would become known as the Road to the Gods and unleased the full power of their divine fury.  Having already expended much of their magic, the godless wizards and the Imaskari Empire quickly collapsed in a conflagration that devastated the land and created most of the Raurin Desert.

The manifestations led the shattered remnants of the Mulan westward into more fertile lands occupied by a people known as the Turami.  The Mulan whose ancestors had primarily venerated Ra settled with Re and his children on the eastern shore of the Alamber Sea where they interbred with the Turami and founded the nation of Mulhorand.  Enlil, his family, and their worshipers continued on to the western edges of the Alamber Sea where they founded the nation of Unther, driving the "barbarian" Turami of that region even farther west into present day Turmish.

The manifestations retired soon after to the isolation of their towering palaces to concentrate on breaking through the barrier constructed by the Imaskari wizards, leaving their incarnations and their human to rule as god-kings.  Occasionally, these incarnations would be slain, but the manifestations would always reform them in the physical body of one of their human descendants.  In subsequent centuries, Mulhorand and Unther fought several territorial wars, but, in the spirit of past cooperation, the manifestations roused themselves to declare a permanent truce, with the River of Swords an eternal boundary between the two nations.

Whether the divine essences might have succeeded in reconnecting with their divine essences in the Outer Planes is unanswered due to the dramatic interruption of the Orcgate Wars.  It is believed the Theurgist Adept Thayd, last surviving apprentice of the Imaskari wizards, opened a gate to a third world just prior to his execution in -1081 DR into inciting the wizards of Mulhorand and Unther into rebellion.  Five years later in -1076 DR, a horde formed of a humanoid species previously unknown in Mulhorand and Unther discovered that gate and poured through seeking new lands to plunder.  The manifestations emerged from their towers to lead their armies against these "orcs."  In response, the orc shamans summoned the avatars of their pantheon to defend them.  In a titanic clash known as the Battle of the Gods, Re was slain by the orcish patriarchal deity, Gruumsh, in -1071 DR, and many senior members of the Untheric pantheon were slain, including Inanna, Girru, Ki, Marduk, Nanna-Sin, Nergal, and Utu.  The avatars of the orc deities were severly weakened in the battle, however, and the Mulhorandi and Untheric pantheons rallied to defeat them two years later, subsequently driving the orcs from the region in -1069 DR.  The fallen manifestations and their associated incarnations vanished from the Realms, but left part of their manifestations to be absorbed by the deities left behind.  (Their deaths allowed them to bypass the ancient barrier and their manifestations were reabsorbed by their divine essences in the Outer Planes.)

Following the Orcgate Wars, the Mulhorandi manifestations battled each other to succeed Re as leader of the pantheon.  Set slew his chief rival for the throne, Osiris, in -1050 DR, but Horus, who had absorbed Re's divine power, becoming Horus-Re, drove Set back into the Raurin Desert.  Isis then resurrected Osiris (whose divine essence had not yet left the Realms) in -1048 DR, and the surviving Mulhorandi pantheon, except for Set, united behind Horus-Re.  In Unther, after a few centuries, Enlil (also known as Anu) abdicated in favor of his son, Gilgeam, and vanished from the Realms.  Ishtar gave the power of her manifestation soon after to Isis and vanished as well.  The remaining gods retreated to their temples to continue their ancient work trying to circumvent the divine barrier constructed by the Imaskari wizards.

Little changed in the status of the Muhorandi pantheon until the Time of Troubles.  During this intervening age Muhorand (and Unther) shrank significantly in territory.  The manifestations of the Mulhorandi pantheon emerged only to battle the summoned monsters and minor powers unleashed in the final battle of ancient Narfell and Ruamathar.  Beast cults found favor for a brief period before dying out.  Mask, Faerunian god of thieves, was permitted to cultivate a following in Skuld, and, in exchange, Bast, goddess of pleasure and cats, wandered off into the western Realms where she was venerated as Sharess, though she still has a small following under her original name in Mulhorand.

In Unther, Gilgeam, whose manifestation was involved in the day-to-day details of ruling Unther, changed significantly.  As the centuries passed and Unther declined in prosperity and influence, as taxes and the people's hatred grew, Gilgeam became a cruel and jealous lord.  He managed to drive all the Untheric divine manifestations from Realmspace except for Ramman and Ishtar (Isis).  (Assuran/Hoar has been driven from Unther by Ramman centuries earlier and allowed by Ao to gain worshipers in the sphere of influence of the Faerunian pantheon in exchange for allowing Mystra's worship in Unther.)

When the Time of Troubles came, all the Muhorandi and Untheric manifestations were reduced significantly in power, as were the members of the Faerunian pantheon.  The god-kings attempted to regain some of their power be absorbing the divine fragments held by their incarnations (sending the mortal incarnations into comas), but to no avail.  During the Time of Troubles, Ramman was slain by Assuran (Hoar) in revenge for his having driven that deity from Unther centuries earlier, but Anhur siezed the Untheric war god's portfolio and drove Assuran from Unther again.

At the conclusion of the Time of Troubles, Ao dispersed the magical barrier seperating the surviving gods of the Mulan from the divine essences in the Outer Planes.  The manifestations disappeared from the Realms, having rejoined with their Outer Planes' essences, and their incarnations emerged from their comas as merely mortals - mortals with exceptional abilities and great skills, but mortals nonetheless.  Ao allowed only those gods whose manifestations had maintained a continuous presence in the Realms until the Time of Troubles to maintain a body of worshipers in the Realms.

A three-headed incarnation of Tiamat, an ancient foe of the Untheric pantheon slain long ago by Marduk, reappeared in the Realms prior to the Time of Troubles through the efforts of a cult who venerated its god-king's traditional enemy in a desperate attempt to throw off his tyrannical yoke.  During the Time of Troubles, Gilgeam slew this relatively weak incarnation of the chromatic dragon queen, but her essence dispersed into the three most powerful chromatic dragons of the appropriate colors in the region.

Tchazzar, a red dragon who styled himself the "Father of Chessenta" and who had been seeking godhood for centuries received one fraction of Tiamat's essence.  He felt compelled to seek out Gestaniius, a crippled great blue wyrm who also served as a receptacle of Tiamat's divine power, and then slew her and devoured her corpse.  Tchazzar felt the divine power surge through him and sprouted a blue head.  He then sought out green Skuthosiin, spawn of Chathuulandroth, in his quest to completely absorbed Tiamat's divine essence.  After an abrupt transformation that included sprouting a green head, his mortal form was then totally subsumed by Tiamat, and the chromatic dragon was once more manifest in the Realms.  After the Godswar, Tiamat battled Gilgeam (who found his power much reduced to that of a demipower) across the Outer Planes and in Unther, destroying much of the city of Unthalass.  Gilgeam died, as did one of Tiamat's avatars and Tiamat was greatly weakened to the point where she ceased granting spells to her worshipers for a time.  However, she has quietly and secretly returned and continues to foment trouble in Unther, Chessenta, Vaasa, and, very recently, within the ranks of the Cult of the Dragon.

Currently, the Untheric pantheon is essentially deceased, with only Tiamat remaining, working only covertly, and now operating to such a great extent within the sphere of influence of the Faerunian pantheon and outside of her Untheric persona that it seems inevitable that she join the pantheon by default.  The Mulhorandi pantheon has finally been reconnected with its divine essences in the Outer Planes and no longer maintains manifestations in the Realms, nor the mortal, lesser avatars known as incarnations.  Effectively, the Mulhorandi gods are now governed by the same rules as the Faerunian pantheon.  However, each remaining Mulhorandi deity does maintain a connection with its primary former living incarnation that allows that mortal to easily summon an avatar of the deity to whom the incarnation was formerly connected.  (The relatively youthful pharaoh of Mulhorand, Horustep III, is taxing the patience of Horus-Re by demanding the constant presence of an avatar of Horus-Re near him.)  The remaining god-kings (mortal descendants of incarnations) are simply mortal descendants and his family, albeit with abilities far above the human average.

The gods of the Mulhorandi pantheon are also rapidly becoming aware of their precarious situation given Ao's decree that their power in the Realms is proportional to the number and fervor of their worshipers.  With Thay and Semphar now beyond their sphere of influence and Murghom rapidly slipping from their grasp, it has suddenly become crucial to the Mulhorandi pantheon to convert as many of Unther's citizens as possible to their faith.  Whether the Mulhorandi pantheon grows in power, remains stable in power and influence, or withers in the face of the ever-expanding Faerunian pantheon is a question that will not be answered for many years to come.

Mulhorand is an absolute theocracy.  The priests are the instruments of the government of the pharaoh, who is responsible only to the gods for his action.  All land that is not privately owned belongs to the god-kings.  All slaves are property of the god-kings and must be rented from the churches.  They must be treated well, for they are the property of the gods.  All commands of the god-kings must be obeyed.  This arrangement gives great power to the priesthood.

In spite of this, the deities of Mulhorand are not fanatics devoted to absolute control over the people.  Most of the real power in Mulhorand belongs to the priests.  The gods generally believe that mortals should be in charge of most of their daily affairs.  They do not believe in exporting their worship to other nations: in Mulhorand, one worships gods of Mulhorand, and in other nations, one worships the gods of that nation.  This is seen as a reasonable and tolerant philosophy.  The gods of Mulhorand place their trust in the priests to run the nation, intervening on very rare occasions, which gives the world the impression that the god-kings are "slumbering" and "in their dotage."  It should be noted that Horus-Re and the other members of this pantheon consider Mulhorand to be a paradise that rarely needs the intervention of deities.  It will be noted more than once that the priests do not share their masters' disinterest in the day-to-day affairs of this land.

The goal of a Mulhorand citizen, of any social or economic class, is to have a good life and to make preparations for the afterlife.  It is the belief of those who worship the gods of Mulhorand that life after death is merely a continuation of life; when one expects to die, one must prepare for a journey.  This belief shapes much of Mulhorand culture, art, and architecture.

Mulhorandi worship many gods, but most of these are local cults that spring up and disappear every few generations.  There are eleven major deities, however, who have extensive priesthoods and influences.

Culture of Mulhorand

The Arts

Paintings in Mulhorand tend to be flat and well-detailed, but with very little sense of perspective.  Many paintings deal with religious scenes, depicting the gods and their deeds.  The most impressive aspect of these paintings in recent centuries is their sheer size; the belief is that the gods must be portrayed as fundamentally greater than humans or they will be insulted.

Therefore, the gods are usually much taller, more handsome, more heroically proportioned, than the humans in their paintings.  This tradition does give the gods a rather bland and uniform appearance; the smaller, more varied humans are usually the most interesting figures in these paintings.

Sculpture has been a major art form in Mulhorand, though the last great period of sculpting was hundreds of years ago.

Stories and poetry in Mulhorand have evolved from great epics about the gods at the time of the First Empire, to household fables in the Second Empire, to the present-day hymns and chants of praise to the deities.  These psalms, as they are sometimes known, possess a great deal of literary power.  The latest trend is toward "realism" - mixing the old fables with hymns of praise to produce works of great diversity and beauty.  Many verses are put into song.  Mulhorandi music typically relies on flutes and reed instruments; stringed instruments are considered strange in Mulhorand.

Architecture

Great monuments line the streets of Skuld, support the roofs of major temples, and stare at the pharaoh's graves in the Land of the Dead.  The greatest sculpture is the tomb of the pharaoh Horuseres II, which is carved out of an entire mountain face.  The great dracosphinx of Klondor is also an awesome structure.  Monument building is as constant in Mulhorand as the flooding of the River of Spears.

While the majority of buildings in Mulhorand are made from bricks, there have been a number of monuments made from granite, sandstone, and limestone.

The earliest monuments were steep pyramids, with a central crypt concealed by tiers of granite or limestone.  By the time the First Empire reached its peak, the step pyramid had been replaced by the slope pyramid, of which the 600-foot-tall Tomb of Re in Skuld is the largest.

Pyramid building thrived for hundreds of years, even making its way into Unther.  However, the First Empire was soon to come to an end following the Orcgate Wars, and Mulhorand's vigor for great projects diminished.  The tomb of their god was the last great achievement.

But centuries later, at the beginning of the current age, Mulhorand had reestablished its dominance in the eastern Inner Sea, and the Second Empire was born.

This new empire brought with it a new vitality.  Monuments were again constructed, including the Face of the Gods, the previously mentioned tomb of Horuseres.  The main style of architecture was the Untheric style, which emphasized obelisk building.  Tall towers rose into the air, and soon the gods in Skuld were building vast prayer towers to house their manifestations.

Following the loss of Thay and the end of the Second Empire, the building of prayer towers in Mulhorand ceased.  It was more important to fortify the cities of Mulhorand.  After about one hundred years, the military period was over and Mulhorand once again went back to building monuments, trying to recapture its lost glory.  The new fashion, which remains to the present day, consists of tall, broad buildings of granite for ornate temples.

Tombs are no longer grand, but consist of underground chambers with elaborate  interior decoration.  The temple style of architecture, as it is called, borrows heavily from Unther, with huge stone columns supporting a massive roof.  In typical Mulhorand fashion, the columns are sculpted to resemble the gods, and temples are painted with huge scenes commemorating the deities.

Athletics

Mulhorand is sometimes called the Land of Feasts, and this tradition is one that never stops.  In Floodtime, there is a five-day festival in which eating, drinking, music, and sports are mixed in great celebrations.  People flock to the cities to engage in and watch athletic competitions, typically running, wrestling, and charioteering.

Athletics have always existed in Mulhorand, but have never been as prominant as they are at this time.

Chessentan mercenaries have brought the Great Games from their land, and mercenary companies compete biannually in the Great Arena of Skuld, along with Mulhorandi who have a mind to compete.

The Chessentans usually win, but the Mulhorandi, stung by the challenge, are improving rapidly, especially in wrestling.

Clothing

Most Mulhorandi wear simple unadorned clothing, typically a white tunic, black headdress, a belt, and sandals.  In colder weather more colorful garments may be worn, but the fashion in Mulhorand is for clothing to be plain.

Technology of Mulhorand

Throughout its history, Mulhorand has been a tool-using culture.  The invention of magic has substituted for some of the functions of tools, but magic is rare.

Only the dwarves can call themselves more technically advanced than the ancient Mulhorandi.  Between the First and Second Empires, political stability and a historically secure border with Unther enabled the Mulhorandi to develop new technologies.

At this time, the ancient khopesh became a sturdier, scimitar-like weapon, and a number of swords were developed.  Sages of Thoth, interested in the development of Mulhorandi weaponry examined the ruins of Sekras and discovered that experimentation in weapons thrived between -700 and -200 DR.  By the beginnning of the Second Empire, the sword had become firmly established as the weapon of choice for Mulhorandi armies.

Furthermore, there is evidence to suggest that trading between the dwarves of the Great Rift and Mulhorandi gave the humans the secrets of forging steel.  It was steel weapons that enabled Mulhorand to carve out an empire in the north.  This more or less ended Mulhorandi developments in weaponry.  Meanwhile the gods, who were more conservative than their followers, still used weapons of highly enchanted bronze.

Most of the weapons employed in the west, with the exception of the pike and other polearms, are used by warriors of Mulhorand.  The preferred ranged weapon has always been the composite bow, which came into prominence during the First Empire.  It played a major role in the victory in the Orcgate Wars.

Armor in Mulhorand was typically scale mail, but has since evolved to include chain and plate mail.  Full plate armor is exceedingly rare, possessed only by the greatest fighters.  Armor may be worn only by authorized guards or by soldiers in wartime; if others are caught in armor, they are required to surrender it immediately.  If they resist, they are imprisoned or exiled.  Armor was traditionally made from bronze, but now it is constructed from steel.

A number of other technical innovations occurred between the First and Second Empires, notably the invention of the wheel and the block and tackle.  The wheel led to the invention of the chariot, which gave warriors additional protection in battle and enabled them to maneuver on the battlefield far more quickly.  The block and tackle enabled buildings to be constructed more easily (the great pyramids of the First Empire were all constructed without these tools, relying instead on human strength and teamwork).

The most interesting of the technical innovations, though, was the invention of the pressure engine.  The priests of Thoth devised a way to use dams and engines to harness the power of Mulhorand's rivers, which they used to grind grain and pump water into far reaches of the desert, fertilizing the desert soil.  A period of desert settlement followed.  It ended when the pharaoh disapproved of a plan to build a huge dam on the River of Spears, feeling technological innovation had gone too far.  He ordered all development on river and steam technology ended.

Eventually, the engines fell into disrepair, though a few steam engines, powered by stones of everburning, yet pump water into isolated areas.  There has recently been a rebirth of interest among a small faction of Thoth priests, known as the Technologists.  They are defying the ancient order against working with steam technology and are trying to rediscover the secrets of the ancients, master them, then see what else can be done with this weird form of magic.

The traditional form of magic continued to thrive in Mulhorand.  Even before the founding of the Old Empires, the mages of Raurin had discovered the existence of Great Magic.  Like many others, their descendants in Mulhorand tried for centuries to discover tenth-level spells, but they eventually became convinced that spell effects for mortals and immortals alike cannot go beyond the ninth.

Instead, the mages researched many spells, which eventually became part of their legacy to the Old Empires.  Recently, they have developed numerous new spells, but they have altered the language of their magic to make it extremely difficult to teach these spells to non-Mulhorandi.  Even the mages of Set, who have learned these spells, do not teach them to outsiders (they believe that they are destined to rule Mulhorand, an they have no wish to see these new spells fall into the hands of the Red Wizards, their arch-enemies).

Sayings of Mulhorand

On The Desert

“He who travels in the domain of scorpions cannot look to the horizon.”

“All sandstorms are gifts. But only Set knows the meaning of the present.”

“The Desert is a thirsty land, and it shares its thirst with all who travel in it.”

On Dwarves

“Dwarves are like cousins whom we’re embarrassed to admit belong to our family.”

“Never invite a dwarf and an Untheri to the same meal.”

On Elves

“No other creature on Toril tries harder to act like a Mulhorandi, and yet is unlike one.”

“Not even the elves trust the word of an elf. Why should you?”

“There is no greater riddle in the world than the contemplation of how an elf can so badly waste its immortal years.”

On Family

”A bride should always be a gift, never a bribe.”

“If you marry a rich baboon, you will die with a poor one in your bed.”

“Never embrace your concubine ahead of your wife.”

“Teach your children to smile, or they will never be beautiful.”

“When a son grows to be a man, let him become your brother.”

On The Gods

“He who prays to gods must be clean, or the wind will choke him.”

“Horus shall redeem Set, and Set shall redeem Horus. Though much pain shall happen along the way.”

“Never shut one’s door on the gods, or their priests, or their slaves.”

“To revere the gods is to elevate one’s self.”

On History

“History is a brew of glory and ruin, made tolerable only by the unspoken acts of kindness.”

“Netheril was a braggart, Narfell was a bully, Raumathar was a sneak in the night, the Tanray were the children of Hell. Sometimes it is good for empires to fall.”

“No greater victory has ever been than the day when the Imaskari died in their towers.”

“No nation has ever existed, not even Mulhorand, that was not born from humble stock.”

“We knew Netheril, though it never knew us.”

On Magic

“Magic is everywhere. Everything we do is magic. To live is to practice magic.”

“To master the hekau is to catch a hawk with your bare hands.”

On Mulhorand

“Eternal is Mulhorand, on which sun and magic shines most brightly in all the world.”

“In Mulhorand, one does not whistle on the wind, because the wind whistles for the Mulhorandi.”

“Though even the Gods deny it, all empires eventually become Imaskar. The highest duty of both soldier and Pharaoh is to stave off that terrible eventuality.”

On Philosophy

“A beetle in flight is beautiful. Do not scorn its ugliness.”

“A fool is a man who craves the milk of bulls.”

“All lies are cripples, for they can neither walk nor stand.”

“A ship with two captains shall be embraced by the rocks.”

“A three legged horse cannot stand. A one-legged man, however, can. Never underestimate what a determined man can accomplish.”

“A word on paper is powerful. A word in the mind makes the powerful seem weak.”

“Every joy has its price. And most are worth it.”

“He who does not understand ma’at in his blood is not a man. But he who can describe ma’at with mere words is beyond man.”

“He who knows his innermost self is the friend of gods.”

“It is more effective to hum in another man’s ear than to shout curses in it.”

“It is more important to ask a wise question than to seek a profound answer, for all questions are instruments of truth, and great questions yield unsought rewards.”

“Love is for women, not for swords.”

“Not even the gods can give wisdom to man through speech, wisdom is a callous which only grows on one’s skin through life’s hardship.”

“Only a fool harvests another man’s land and leaves his own unattended.”

“The eye will never be higher than its brow.”

“Truth is not a feast that’s served only on one table. To find the full truth, one must become a scavenger.”

On Slavery

“Blessed is the slave, for his service is the purest of all.”

“He who takes his anger out upon a slave places a millstone about his neck on the day of Judgment.”

“Nothing reflects a man’s heart more accurately than the face of his slave.”

“Whoever touches a slave in lust for one unguarded moment must purify himself for the remainder of days.”

On Thay

“A Thayan is not a man. He is blasphemy that walks, mocking the guise of Men.”

“Poisoners, deceivers, concubines of demons, they who suckle on the breasts of gnolls, that is a Thayan.”

“The desert sand, even when polluted by mud and dragon-filth, is too clean for a Thayan’s grave.”

On Unther

“The lands of the Mulan are a sacred birthright. Only the Mulan should rule in Unther, and if Unther cannot rule itself, better Mulhorand than the traitors to the north.”

“Only Gilgeam could overthrow Gilgeam”

“Poor Unther. And an Unther without the guidance of the Mulan, poorer still.”

“These Untheri seem to think a hard fight is a virtue. It is simply life.”

On The West

“The people of the West are insane, at least more so than most men. But because their madness makes them prone to violence, it is best not to inform them of that fact to their face.”

“Trusting a Chondathan is like catching water in a sieve.”

Recent Years

The Time of Trouble, when the gods walked Faerun, affected Mulhorand and Unther most of all the realms.  The Mulhorandi gods already walked the land with their worshipers, and all of the ruling family and most of the nobles were incarnations of the very gods they worshiped.  During this time, the Mulhorandi gods lost most of their powers, having only the powers of their incarnations, and the pharaoh, along with the other incarnations, lost their divine touch to become mere mortals.  After this troubled time, the Mulhorandi pantheon was forced to leave Faerun, though the former incarnations did not see a return of their power.

Mulhorand did see a benefit of this time, however, and took advantage of it.  With the god-king of Unther, Gilgeam the Tyrant, dead, the border agreement was no longer valid.  the young pharaoh Horustep III, allowed the clergy of Anhur to conquer the lands of Unther.  With the help of the Gold Swords, a skilled mercenary company led by Kendera Steeldice, they went as far north as the city of Shussel.  Most of the military might is now being used to suppress slave revolts as they are incorporated into the churches of Mulhorand.

Back in Skuld, the pharaoh has been enamored with Kendera and heeded her advice as if she were one of his counselors.  With most of the priesthood of Anhur, along with most of the working men, repressing slave revolts in Unther, there has been a deficiency in the number of men actually working.  Under Kendera's guidance, the pharaoh has allowed females to take jobs that were formerly banned to them.

This was the first few signs of a major change.  The pharaoh has changed, against the vizier's better judgment, the inheritance laws of Mulhorand.  The first two children, instead of the first two sons, are considered nobles while the others are left to fend for themselves.  These major changes leave resentment among all classes of the tradition-bound Mulhorandi.  There is also a significantly greater number of assassinations of such female heirs and older male heirs.  Now that the women have a chance of being nobles, they would rather take it than becoming a merchant's wife.

The pharaoh has grown since his time without divine powers, from the child he was when his father was killed by the church of Set.  This child is now a fully grown man with a mind of his own.  He is getting more involved in the politics of Mulhorand than any pharaoh ever recorded in the history of this great country.  He is also of the age to take a wife, and he is eying this mercenary leader as such a prospect.

-Source from Old Empires by Scott Bennie, published by TSR in 1990

-Source from Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting by Ed Greenwood, Sean Reynolds, Skip Williams, and Rob Heinsoo, published by Wizards of the Coast in 2001

-Source from Faiths and Pantheons by Eric Boyd and Erik Mona, published by Wizards of the Coast in 2002

-Source from Lost Empires of Faerun by Richard Baker, Ed Bonny and Travis Stout, published by Wizards of the Coast in 2005
This message was last edited by the GM at 22:27, Sun 07 June 2009.

Anhur
General of the Gods, Champion of Physical Prowess, Supreme Marshall of All Armies, the Falcoln of War
Aliases: Ramathant (Thay), Ramman, Rumathep, Ramatep (Unther)
Alignment: Chaotic Good
Portfolio: War, conflict, physical prowess, thunder, rain, storms
Domains: Chaos, Good, Strength, Storm, War
Worshipers: Druids, fighters, monks, rangers, soldiers, warriors
Allies: Bast, Nephthys
Foes: Set, Sekolah, Assuran
Symbol: Hawk-headed falcion bound with a cord
Favored Weapon: "Warhawk" (falchion)

Anhur embodies both the raw fury and the strategic generalship of war.  He is a fierce god, but one not quick to pass judgement on others.  Unlike other war deities, Anhur is a force for good and fights only against evil.  He is slow to anger, for his wisdom is legendary, but his wrath is unescapable once earned.  Anhur never lets his guard down and is constantly on the alert.  He never stops moving, and his eyes never stop scanning the horizon.  Unlike much of the rest of the Mulhorandi pantheon, Anhur appreciates the humor of mortals and does not necessarily find their presence tiresome.  He has a hearty laugh and an ever-present smile when not engaged in combat.  A shadow of guilt haunts the eyes of the General of the Gods, as he will never forgive himself for earlier failures to defend Mulhorand, particularly against the Red Wizards.

Anhur and Horus-Re do not get along well.  Horus-Re is the god of eternity and perpetual order, while Anhur is an aggressive advocate of change and conflict.  Prior to the Fall of the Gods and during the Time of Troubles, Anhur's church was on the defensive from a campaign of political attacks from the clergy of Horus-Re, but it has since recouped much of its losses, in large part due to the recent aggressive actions of the God of War.

Anhur's portfolio overlaps with Isis somewhat in the domain of weather.  Anhur is seen as the controller of weather in Unther in his alias as Ramman, whereas Isis is the predominant mistress of the weather in Mulhorand, though warriors and fighting sailors in Mulhorand most often ask Anhur for favorable winds and the absence of ill weather before a battle.  Anhur's domain is seen to focus more on storms, lightning, and thunder in either country, while Isis is responsible for all types of weather.

Anhur and Nephthys cooperate together since their outlooks are similar and they both see the forces of Thay as their main foes.  Anhur and Bast have an off-again, on-again that swings from deep love to indifference and involves frequent spats and occasional fits of pique, but both of them would always help each other when it comes to matters of importance.

When the ancient Untheric deity Assuran, known to westerners as Hoar, killed his ancient rival, Ramman, at the end of the Godswar in revenge for his centuries-old banishment, Anhur moved boldly to take Ramman's portfolio under his Untheric name Ramathant (long linked with Ramman anyway), solidifying his status as a lesser power.  Assuran was once again driven from Unther, this time vowing revenge against Anhur.

Anhur also distinguished himself during the Time of Troubles battling the avatar of Sekolah, the great white shark deity of the sahuagin, who prowled the Alamber Sea.  Since their battle, however, sahuagin attacks against the coastline population centers of Mulhorand and Unther have increased dramatically in revenge.

Anhur is served by divine minions and can assume the form of a lion.

Avatars

Anhur always appears as a four-armed Mulhorandi warrior with blood-red skin, dark hair and a short, tightly braided beard.  He wears a tri-plumed headdress and a kalasiris made of scale or lamellar mail.  He holds a mighty lance in his right arms.  His dark eyes are alert and dance with the anticipation of his opponents' next moves.  He initiatates combat only against those of evil alignment, but answers any attack upon himself or his followers with great rage and determination.

Other Manifestations

When an agent of a hostile nation, cult or other group crosses into Mulhorand, Anhur may manifest as a lion on the horizon.  The great cat patiently observes, but does not move or follow.  If approached, it seems to magically recede so that it is always on the horizon.  For particularly dangerous intruders, Anhur may manifest as a dark cloud that unleashes the occasional lightning bolt.  In this form, Anhur's manifestation remains overhead for as long as the interlopers remain in Mulhorand.

When a follower of Anhur is acting in accordance with the god's wishes but is encountering resistance from others, particularly priests of other faiths, Anhur may manifest as an ominous roll of thunder.  If this is not sufficient, he may hurl a bolt of lightning from the heavens.  The lightning strike hits his own follower but causes no damage except to leave scorch marks on the ground.

In times of battle, Anhur sometimes manifests to armies of his followers as a ghostly, upright lance that serves as a standard and a rallying point.  During a forced march, Anhur may manifest to an army of his followers as a steady rumble of thunder that quickens their pace and lightens their fatigue.

Anhur also shows his presence, favor, or disapproval through the actions of einheriar, lions, falcons, warhorses and dogs, hunting cats, battle elephants and camels, and war chariots that seem to guide themselves or suddenly throw a wheel.

The Church

In the days before the Orcgate Wars, at the height of Mulhorand's power, the god Anhur was one of the most respected in Mulhorand.  He had a cult that was second only to Re's in size.  After the death of Re, Anhur retained his title of general of the gods, but he gradually fell from favor.  Horus-Re is the god of eternity and perpetual order, while Anhur is an aggressive advocate of change and conflict; the two gods do not get along well.  Priests of Horus-Re have blamed Anhur and his priesthood for many of the losses suffered by the Mulhorand.  (The priests of Horus-Re have then hired Chessentan mercenaries to replace the "untrustworthy" armies, as most Mulhorandi soldiers worship Anhur.)

Today, the cult of Anhur is small but extremely vigorous.  Priests of Anhur have converted many of the Chessentan mercenaries to his worship, and the priesthood is growing.  The biterness between the priests of Anhur and Horus-Re has created more than its share of conflict, and there is much court intrigue between these two factions, though the priests of Anhur are not yet powerful enough to openly challenge Horus-Re's servants.

Anhur's temples are constucted as impregnable citadels.  Often they resemble the great castles of western Faerun with steep roofs pitched to prevent aerial attacks from landing on them or effectively dive-bombing.  Their walls are made of stone, and the most ancient sites of worship have weathered to a deep ruddy brown in hue.  Each temple contains an extensive armory and huge dungeons stocked with nonperishable supplies.

All priests of Anhur are addressed in public as "Lord Priest" or "Lord High Priest."  Within their ranks, priests of Anhur use such titles as Bloodletter, Warmaker, Honor Brother or Sister, Swordarm, Lionclaw, Defender, and Commander, but church hierarcies and titles vary widely from temple to temple.  The clergy of Anhur is nearly equally divided between clerics and crusaders.

Dogma

Priests of Anhur are obliged to defend the territory of Mulhorand out to its historic boundaries.  They are to smite the enemies of the realm and keep its people, highborn or slave, safe from evil.  They are to obey leaders and behave with honor, conducting themselves as representatives of their fierce protector god.  Since the Time of Troubles, the clergy of Anhur has had added to its responsibilities the countering of the weather magic of the Red Wizards of Thay, particularly in Unther.

Novices of the church are charged as follows: "Protect Mulhorand, for she is your mother.  Fall upon her enemies as you would any who had done ill to your own mother.  Show bravery and valor in combat, and protect your brothers and sisters in arms.  Follow the wise advice of your commander as you would that of your parents, but take not actions that serve an ill cause.  If your commander asks that you do ill, refuse; your actions will be vindicated by a council of at least three of your peers.  Protect the people of Mulhorand and the property of the church of Anhur, for it is your home you defend with the fury of a lioness defending her cubs.  Beware the whiles of Set, for his spies are everywhere, and his actions turn brother against sister and parent against child; his taint poisons the waters of the land of your heart."

Day-to-Day Activities

Priests of Anhur spend their morning hours practicing their martial skills.  Afternoons are spent drilling Mulhorand's legions.  Evenings are spent repairing weapons and armor or studying war strategies.

Anhur expects his clergy to develop and execute unorthodox and daring plans to regain Mulhorand's former glory.  Much of his clergy's time is spent pursuing fantastic plans and countering the machinations of the priests of Horus-Re.  For example, prior to the Time of Troubles, the clergy of Anhur secretly constructed a large fleet in Sultim to assault the Thayan base on the Aldor (an island off the coast).  Much of this fleet was wrecked in the great storms that shook the Alamber, and most of the remaining ships sank defending Mulhorand's shores from the armies of the sahuagin.  Nonetheless, the clergy of Anhur considered the exercise a success since they had defended Mulhorand's borders from an invader as was their duty.

Holy Days and Important Ceremonies

The month of Tarsakh is referred to in Mulhorand as the Time of Storms, and Anhur is said to walk the borders of Mulhorand during this time seeking out interlopers to drive off.  The clergy of Anhur celebrates this time by engaging in a month-long tournament of nonlethal combats.  The winner of the combat is known as the Chosen of Anhur for the following year.  This month-long tournament concludes on Greengrass with a festival known as the Sharpening of the Sword.  On the rare occasions when Mulhorand has gone to war, major campaigns typically begin on or soon after this date.

The Remembrance Ritual is celebrated on Higharvestide.  This somber festival is a day self-reflection and a time to remember fallen comrades.  It concludes on a joyous note with a littany of martial hymns thanking Anhur for military successes in the past year.

Finally, the clergy of Anhur have numerous (practically biweekly) holy days commemorating one major battle or another.  Though these commerative celebrations are largely ignored outside the clergy, the citadels of Anhur are sights good-spirited revelry during these festivals, and they sponser many competitive sporting events on such days.

Major Centers of Worship

The center of Anhur's worship is Sultim, though he has temples across Mulhorand, Unther (in his aspect as Ramman), and in Chessenta, where his worship is growing in popularity.  The Blood fortress in Sultim, his most prominent temple, is a massive, granite castle marked by its seven obelisk towers of a deep red hue.  Most of its internal walls are covered with elaborate frescoes depicting ancient battles and strategic maps of cities in neighboring lands.  Its halls are lined with ancient weapons, armor, and imposing statues, some of which are animated stone guardians.

Affiliated Orders

The Guardians of Skuld is an order of guardians from the priesthoods of Anhur, Osiris, and Isis whose existance has been formalized since the Time of Troubles and whose leadership has reverted back to the temple of Anhur from the clergy of Horus-Re.  The Order of the Watchful Lion is a fellowship made up primarily of crusaders (but counts some clerics as members as well) that serves as the front line in the defense of Mulhorand.  Members often take extended leaves to adventure beyond Mulhorand's borders and report back on developments in neighboring countries.  The clergy of Anhur also includes hundreds of informal fraternities roughly corresponding to companies of troops in Mulhorand's armies.

Priestly Vestments

The clergy of Anhur dress in kalasiris (white, tight-fitting, linen skirts stretching from the waist to the knees), sandals laced to the knee, and a practical headdress.  They typically wear a utilitarian pectoral collar that serves as a lower coif and brestplate and armlets and bracers that collectively serve as the equivalent of a vambrace.

Priests of Anhur shave their heads bald, and paint three blue circles on their forehead indicating that they are a priest. They dye their skin a reddish tint and often tattoo the image of fierce monsters they have slain on their chests.  High-ranking priests wear bejeweled gold pectoral collars shaped in the image of a lion and the skin of a great cat or other predator draped over their shoulders.  The relative affluence of a priest's vestments loosely indicates his relative wealth, power, and prestige.  The standard holy symbol of priests of the faith is a miniature lance.

Adventuring Garb

When girding for battle, priests of Anhur very practically and deck themselves out in the most appropriate form of armor available.  Although the armor typical of western Faerun is available in Mulhorand, most warriors, including the clergy of Anhur, choose some variety of scale mail or lamellar mail.  The latter armor consists of small, overlapping plates of metal sewn together or stitched to a backing of leather or cloth and is equivalent to chain mail in protection.

Bast
The Festhall Madam, the Lustful Mistress, Feline of Felicity, Succubus of Sensation, the Tawny Temptress, the Dancing Lady, Foe of Set, Mother of Cats
Aliases: Bastet, Felidae, Sharess, Zandilar the Dancer
Alignment: Chaotic Good
Portfolio: Hedonism, excessive lust, sensual fulfillment, festhalls, cats, pleasure seekers
Domains: Chaos, Charm, Good, Travel, Trickery
Worshipers: Bards, hedonists, sensualists
Allies: Anhur, Helani Celanil, Lliira, Milil, Nobanion, Selune, Sune
Foes: Set, Shar, Loviatar
Symbol: Feminine lips (Sharess) or a cat's head wearing delicate golden hoop earings (Bast)
Favored Weapon: A great cat's paw (claw bracer)

Sharess is the more commonly recognized name of the deity originally known as Bast.  When the Mulhorandi deities emigrated to Faerun, Bast accompanied them.  At that point she was known mainly as Anhur's Lieutenant in the eternal struggle against Set and as the patroness of cat, revered for their ability to keep rats from the precious grain of the Mulhorandi people and their eternal vigilance against the serpents and scorpions of Set.  At the height of the second empires of Mulhorand and Unther, numerous beast cults gained popularity for a time.  During this time, the Mulan and Turami people began to venerate Felidae, a goddess of felines, sensual pleasures, and nomads revered to the barbarians of the north and west, and in a very short time the more powerful Bast subsumed Felidae's portfolio and position into her own.  However, the taste of foreign ways and foreign places tantalized Bast and like many felines, she was struck with wanderlust.  When Ao allowed Mask to expand his geographic sphere of influence to include the thieves of the Old Empires (since they had no native deity who served that function and an innate prejudice against such), he required that the Faerunian pantheon accept a Mulhorandi power into their geographic sphere of influence in exchange.

Bast immediately set out to explore Faerun.  She maintained a few followers in the Mulhorandi sphere, however, and continued to answer their prayers (if sporadically), so her name and powers were never lost to the people of the Old Empires.  She soon became known as the Patroness of Festhalls as she wandered throughout the rest of the Realms.  Numerous short-lived cults were created in the wake of her passing, but most quickly vanished when the goddess lost interest in her current flock and moved on to new pleasures.  The veneration of cats in Cormyr and Mulhorand is the main remaining legacy of these ancient, wild revels.  The connection of Bast of the Old Empires and Sharess of western Faerun is supported by the tendency for most images of the goddess to be depicted stroking a resplendent black cat.

Some time later, Bast acquired the portfolio and aspect of an elven demipower worshiped by the elves of the Yuirwood.  Zandilar the Dancer was an elven goddess of love whose portfolio, unlike that of the more romance- and beauty-oriented Hanali Celanil, was directed toward passionate, physical love which burned hot and quickly but eventually died out.  Zandilar was a joyful and tragic demipower who is said to have used her feminine wiles to gain vital information from deities of other pantheons and to persuade human chieftains and kings to leave the Yuir in peace.  When the Yuir elves began to falter in a series of battles with drow armies, Zandilar attempted to seduce the dark elven deity Vhaeraun either to gain information or to elicit his assistance in battling the forces of Lolth.  However, the dark elven lord betrayed Zandilar and imprisoned her avatar, and her self-sacrifice went for naught.  Vhaeraun intended to seize Zandilar's divine essence for himself, but failed when Bast distracted him long enough for the elven demipower to escape.  In gratitude and out of necessity, the severely weakened Zandilar voluntarily merged her essence with that of Bast.  A reinvigorated Bast/Zandilar was then strong enough to help the Yuir elves drive off the drow forces for a time.  As a result of this union, Bast became more focused on the pursuit of pleasure and acquired the nickname "the Dancing Lady."

Some time after the fall of Myth Drannor, Bast began to experiment with the darker side of pleasure and fell under the influence of Shar, Mistress of the Night.  Known as the Maidens of the Forbidden Fruit, the two goddesses were strongly linked in the liturgy of the church of Shar until Bast was simply seen as an aspect of Shar known as Sharess.  The ranks of the Lustful Mistress's clergy slowly dwindled throughout the Realms as the nightbringers spoke of her being a precursor to the despair and loss that all beings will eventually embrace.  Those who encountered the goddess of pleasure during this time found her beauty slowly fading and the joy of life leaving her eyes.

Sharess was never fully absorbed by Shar, however, and during the Time of Troubles she was released by the dark link by Sune.  Sharess had assumed the form of the favorite concubine of the Pasha of Calimport as her avatar and was engaged in a wild life of decadence within that ruler's harem when the avatar of Shar arrived to slay Sharess once and for all, as she had already done to Ibrandul.  However, before Shar could destroy Sharess and seize her portfolio, the avatar of Sune arrived with a chalice filled of the sacred waters of Evergold and doused Sharess in its liquid essence.  Sharess immediately gained her faded beauty and rebelled against the Dark Dancer's bitter influence.

In the wake of the Godswar, Sharess has removed herself from the Realms to Arvandor where she joins Sune and the elven goddess Hanali Celanil in frolicking in and around the pool of Evergold.  Some tales claim Sharess is the younger, more decadent sister of Sune, although this is not strictly true.  Sharess puts even Sune and Lliira to shame with her excesses.

Sharess fiercely clings to her newfound independence and remains infatuated with the pursuit of pleasure of all forms despite the council of Sune and the dark entreaties of Shar.  Her revitalized clergy is spreading through the festhalls of the Realms, regaling worshipers with (wholly unsubstantiated) of Sharess's bawdy exploits in league with her friends Milil and Lliira and with other Faerunian deities.  Sharess is aware of the fine - dark - line of her portfolio and that of Loviatar and jealously guards her domain from the Maiden of Pain.  She is morbidly fascinated with Ilmater and frequently attempts to seduce him - so far without success.  Sharess and Nobanion get along well because of their mutual feline natures, but Sharess cannot resist teasing him occasionally (and thus getting him irked at her) because she likes to fray the edges of his straight-laced nature to see what will happen.  Bast and Anhur have an off-again, on-again relationship that swings from deep love to indifference and involves frequent spats and occasional fits of pique (especially on Bast's part), but both of them would always help each other when it comes to matters of importance.  Sharess maintains an active hatred for Set and his activities as the core of her nature and can always be relied on to oppose him and aid those who fight to root out his influence.

Sharess only rarely appears in avatar form in the Realms, but when she does it is often as the Dancing Lady at Godswalk Keep in the Barony of Great Oak in the Border Kingdoms.  Her clergy claim she appears to taunt Garagos and Jergal who contested for her affections long ago and whose avatars also appear in a confluence known as the Meeting of the Three.  She is also said to be working in some fashion again in her alias as Zandilar the Dancer in the Yuirwood.

Sharess is a strange and radiant demipower whose beauty is rivaled only by Sune among the Faerunian pantheon, but whose aura is tinged with faded promise.  Her voice is said to be a throaty purr and to give the listener the feeling of being brushed by the softest fur or velvet when she speaks.  She is a fickle, flighty deity, who prevents anyone from getting too close to her true spirit.  She has the willful independence and pleasure-seeking nature common to felines and is constantly preening and grooming to maintain her appearance.  She is often depicted as a voluptuous human female with the head of a cat.  Sharess enjoys toying with beautiful mortals - male and female - and she cannot resist casually flirting with anyone she encounters.  However, when her ardor cools and her passion is sated, Sharess is easily distracted and quick to move on to new pleasures.  She dislikes snakes intensely.

Bast is served by divine minions that can assume the form of a lion, a leopard, or a small wild cat (a feral domestic cat).

Avatars

Bast favors two forms when she manifests in the Realms.  As the Lady of the Golden Heart, she appears as a voluptuous, bronze-skinned human female with long wavy raven hair and the slitted green eyes of a cat.  She dresses in provocative clothing ranging from that of a tawdry tart to that of a pampered concubine.  This is also the form she appears in Mulhorand, though she wears Mulhorandi garb.  As the Feline Huntress, she appears as a huge tawny house cat with razor-sharp claws, wickedly gleaming emerald eyes, and a sensuous aspect.  Sharess has not, to anyone's knowledge, assumed the form of Zandilar the Dancer for centuries.  When she does, she appears as a beautiful and seductive blue-skinned elven woman who wears layered gauzy outfits.

Other Manifestations

Bast's favorite manifestation is that of an unseen caress whose contact brings uncontrolled shuddering rapture and intensifies all pleasurable sensation.  Sharess is also known to manifest as a pair of disembodied, floating female lips (as big across as a human's head) whose touch bestows a kiss of Sharess.

Sharess also shows her favor through the presence of cats, dopplegangers in pleasing shapes, dryads (or satyrs), good and neutral sirines, elven cats, tressyms, and a few (very rare) nonevil alu-fiends who act in accordance to her philosophy of life.  She often lingers for days as a perfumed scent that creates and excessive indulgence effect in any who breathe its essence.  She enjoys sumptuous jewelry, gourmet foods, and things of beauty and may grant a boon to anyone who sacrifices such things to her.

The Church

Bast is worshiped in large urban areas.  She is revered by male and female professional escorts who take pride in their professions, the decadent rich, and those who only seek endless pleasure in life.  In Mulhorand, she is also revered by those who combat Set and rewards those who work long and hard against him with occasional nights of wild pleasure to inspire them to further efforts.  Bast's faith is still very young and its ceremonies very loose and fluid, with long worship services that resemble nothing so much as extended feasts and revels, heavy on the pleasures of the flesh and light on the teachings of the spirit.

The few temples of Bast are typically located in large cities, but small shrines to the goddess of pleasure may be found in almost every festhall in the Realms.  Her temples are typically constructed to resemble elaborate festhalls, with graceful, fluting pillars, octagonal domes, great halls to resemble forest glades, secluded nooks, bathing areas in natural mineral springs, great banquet halls, and richly scented massage parlors.  Most are guarded by staunch fighters and even exotic sentient monsters who are sworn to protect all revelers who partake in the name of Bast.

Both males and females may be found in the ranks of the clergy of Bast, but charismatic and beautifully female humans comprise the great majority of them.

Alignment restrictions for Bast's clergy are weak and a gentle slide toward evil is still often tolerated.  Those priests who remain evil and seem unwilling or unable to drift back toward neutrality in their behavior are secretly entreated by agents of Shar to shift their worship to the Dark Maiden while maintaining their position within the clergy of Bast.  The Feline of Felicity seems unwilling or unable to prevent such defections at this time, rare though they may be.

Dogma

Bast's priests are expected to live their lives in the decadent sensual fulfillment of themselves and others.  Pleasure is to be sought out at every opportunity and life is to be lived as one endless revel.  Initiates to the faith are taught that: "Life is to be lived to its fullest.  That which is good is pleasurable and that which is pleasurable is good.  Spread the bounty of the goddess so that all may join in the Endless Revel of Life and bring joy to all those in pain.  Infinite experiences await those who explore, so try the new as well as savoring the old."

Day-to-Day Activities

Many priests and priestesses of Bast run pleasure houses in large cities or directly serve decadent rulers.  These pleasure houses cater to all the senses and include fantastic feasts, heavenly baths and massages, unique experiences, such as flight, and every other pleasure imaginable.  Wealthy festhalls usually employ one or two mid-level priests, and some wander the countryside, with Bast's blessing, seeking new pleasing sensations to add to their repertoire.

Holy Days and Important Ceremonies

The clergy of Bast celebrate more festivals than possibly any other faith in the Realms.  They are known collectively as the Endless Revel of Life.  The daily rising and setting of the sun, the yearly passage of the seasons, the appearance of a full moon, or nearly any other event is cause for a celebration and wild revel to which the general populace is always invited.  Each such festival has several outlandish titles and new festivals are added all the time as old ones are forgotten.  Without comparison, however, Midsummer's Eve is the time of greatest rejoicing among Bast's faithful and an occasion for the most extreme pursuits of boundless pleasure.

Affiliated Orders

Bast is served by no military or knightly orders.  Most professional escorts in major cities join formal or informal guilds led by her clergy, however.  Bast is served by a secretive sisterhood of female werecats known as the Eyes of Evening who also pay tribute to Selune.  The aims and goals of this mysterious fellowship are unknown, though they are rumored to hunt cultists of Shar and Loviatar during nights of the full moon.

A number of adventuring bands who work against Set and his agents, including the Desert Fire and the Daggers of Truth, count Bast as a patroness and also receive support from other Mulhorandi faiths, including those of Anhur and Horus-Re.

Priestly Vestments

The priests and priestesses of Bast who remain in Mulhorand favor tight-fitting kalasiris (tight-fitting white linen knee-length skirts) and ornate pectoral collars draped suggestively over the chest or breasts.  The holy symbol of Bast is a cat's head wearing golden hoop earrings.

Adventuring Garb

When adventuring, the clergy of Bast endeavor to preserve the gifts of the goddess as best as they can and hence typically wear the best armor they can afford.  There is no point to living life without pleasure, however, so they always decorate such armor as provacatively as possible.

Geb
Lord of Earth, King of the Riches Under the Earth, Father Under the Skies and Sands
Aliases: Gebthant (Thay), Gebakotep (Unther)
Alignment: Neutral
Portfolio: The earth, miners, mines, mineral resources
Domains: Cavern, Craft, Earth, Protection
Worshipers: Elemental archons (earth), fighters, miners and smiths
Allies: Isis, Osiris, Nephythys, Flandal Steelskin, Moradin
Foes: None
Symbol: A mountain
Favored Weapon: "Stonemantle" (quarterstaff)

Geb, god of the earth, is one of the oldest deities of Mulhorand.  Following their creation by Ra, Shu and Tefnut produced numerous offspring.  The first of these was Geb, who became the earth.  Geb was so enraptured by his sister, Nut (the sky), that they instantly embraced.  After they had produced four children of their own (Isis, Set, Osiris, and Nephthys), Ra instructed Shu to break up the embrace of Geb and Nut.  When the Mulhorandi pantheon left for Abeir-Toril, Ra commanded Geb to send a manifestation and for Nut to remain behind with Shu and Tefnut in order to further separate the prolific pair.

Geb was once a curious and quick-tempered god, but he has mellowed since his birth and now takes a more even-tempered, safe, and cautious approach to life.  He speaks with a deep bass voice and emphasizes his words by striking the ground with the base of his staff, creating minor tremors with each stroke.  He is jovial and appreciates humor both subtle and broad.  He rarely engages in emotional displays, although his eyes burn hotter when he discovers a precious gem or rich vein of ore or when he is angry.

Geb is served by divine minions that can assume the form of a cave bear.

Avatars

Geb appears as a huge, regal Mulhorandi man of defined but craggy physique.  He has dark brown skin, smoldering, dull red eyes, and a short, tightly braided beard the color of his skin.  He wears a kalasiris in flowing earth tones, a golden Mulhorandi crown, and beaten gold bracers around his upper arms.

Other Manifestations

Geb often manifests as cracks forming in walls when his faithful risk mining into an unsafe section of earth.  When pleased with a follower, he may manifest in the form of gems found at opportune moments.  When displeased, Geb may manifest as an earthquake; its magnitude indicating the source of his displeasure.  Oftentimes, Geb manifests in the form of earth elemental sightings when he wishes to lead his clergy or faithful to a particular spot of earth.  He may manifest as a dead canary when miners are about to uncover a pocket of lethal gas or as a giant brown rat fleeing a mine immediately prior to a collapse.  All gemstones and metal ores are sacred to him, but he is especially fond of gold, silver, and electrum, the naturally occurring alloy of the two.  He sometimes shows his favor, presence, or disapproval by the actions or appearances of xorn, rust monsters, stone golems (of greater or lesser sort), bears, cave bears, moles, badgers, and odd-looking dwarves who appear to be Mulhorandi.

The Church

The priesthood is largely hereditary, and almost all of Geb's clerics are members of the house of Gebthaunt, composed of human descendants of divine incarnations of Geb.  A few dwarves and gnomes worship Geb, and, since the Time of Troubles, a handful of gold dwarves have been admitted to his clergy.

Geb's worship reached the height of its apex at the height of the First Empire, when he was considered an intermediate power, but Geb's priesthood never involved in politics and hence were slowly marginalized by other priesthoods.  Today Geb is treated with condescending respect, both by the members of the Mulhorandi pantheon and by the people of Mulhorand.  "Yes," the priests of Horus-Re say, "Geb is a powerful deity and his wrath is frightening.  But he is old, and it is probably for the best that he does not involve himself very much in the affairs of the Mulhorandi."

Temples to Geb are always constructed underground, preferably in large, natural caverns greatly expanded by miners.  Such sites exhibit great natural beauty (or deliberate imitations thereof) and include many of the cave formations found in living caverns, such as stalactites, stalagmites, columns, draperies, flowstones, and gypsum flowers, as well as underground pools, springs, and streams.

All priests are to be addressed as "Lord Priest" or "Lord High Priest," but haughty priests of other faiths often drop the honorific "Lord."  Within their ranks, priests of Geb use titles such as Miner, Majer, Deepdigger, Earthclaw, and Earthheart, but titles vary from temple to temple.

Dogma

Priests of Geb are friends of the earth.  They have much in common with dwarves in that they love deep caverns and the splendors of mighty mountain ranges.  Geb's clergy are commanded to seek out new veins of ore and gems, to fund and construct new mines that reveal Geb's beautiful creations, and to assist miners at the safe recovery of minerals and gems from the depths of the earth.

Novices of the church are charges as follows: "Know the earth.  Explore its beauties and reveal its hidden secrets, but do so in such a way as to highlight their fundamental mysteries, not merely to exploit their monetary value.  Protect those who work in the earth with respect and punish those who ravish it of its treasures without regard.  Become one with the earth, and you will know Geb, who abides in it.  Geb will lead you to inner peace through steadfast knowledge and will lend you the strength of the living rock to defend and protect in your time of need."

Day-to-Day Activities

The clergy of Geb spend their days side by side with miners digging tunnels, with prospectors panning for gold, and with blacksmiths forging weapons and armor.  At least once per year, priests much search out a new vein of ore or precious stones or lose their priestly abilities until they do so.  Senior priests often go to the cities and seek funding from the clergy of Nephthys to excavate new mines and quarries.

Holy Days and Important Ceremonies

Each evening, a priest of Geb must locate one precious stone or mineral and bury it in the dirt while speaking evening prayers.  The following morning, the priest must excavate the gem and offer it up to Geb while repeating morning prayers.  These twin ceremonies, known collectively as the Hidden Gift and the Bountiful Joy, celebrate Geb's bequest to the world and discovery of the earth's precious secrets.

The first of Mirtul, a month known to those who visit Mulhorand's mountains as the Time of Melting, is celebrated in a festival known as the Unwrapping.  Mountains streams fill with the runoff of alpine snow around this time, often exposing new caves and veins to mine.  The last day of Nightal, known as the Day of Drawing Down, is a solemn ceremony marking the death of those died in the depths of the earth and mountains during the year.  The entrance of at least one abandoned mine shaft is collapsed each year to commemorate the occasion.

Major Centers of Worship

Geb is worshiped mostly by miners, who set up crude shrines to him.  His image adorns the openings of mine shafts.  Each mountain range within the geographic sphere of influence of the Mulhorandi pantheon includes at least one major temple to Geb.

During the Time of Troubles, Geb regained some of his activist nature, and he led an army of his most faithful followers to construct a secret temple known as the Golden Forge in the depths of the volcano on the island known as the Ship of the Gods.  The clergy of this temple spend most of their waking hours struggling to prevent the volcano from exploding as it has been threatening to do so since before the Fall of the Gods.  Only their diligent efforts have prevented the coast of Unther from Shussel to Messemprar from being buried in 10 feet of volcanic ash, although this fact is known only to a handful of outsiders.

Affiliated Orders

While the church of Geb sponsors no military or knightly orders, most adventuring priests of Geb are members of the Fellowship of the Mithral Mountain.  The members of the society are united in their search for a near-mythical mountain laden with countless veins of mithral.  The Brotherhood of the Pick is a society whose membership includes most miners in Mulhorand, and serves as a union of sorts for negotiations with the nobles of the land.

Priestly Vestments

The clergy of Geb garb themselves in simple blacksmith's aprons over a kalasiris and iron-shod boots.  They typically sport plain, burnished steel pectorals inlaid with gems and precious stones and bracers and armlets of gold, silver, or electrum.

Priests of Geb shave their heads bald, but male priests grow small beards on their chins that are kept tightly braided.  They paint three blue circles on their foreheads indicating they are priests and tint their skin deep brown.  The relative use of the metal used and gems inlaid in a priest's ceremonial garb indicates his or her relative affluence.  The standard holy symbol of the faith is a miniature pick.

Adventuring Garb

When adventuring, priests of Geb dress practically for the mission and the danger they anticipate.  They usually wear some form of metal armor, typically of heavier construction than is normal for Mulhorand.
This message was last edited by the GM at 04:19, Fri 14 Aug 2009.

Hathor
The Nurturing Mother, the Quiet One, the Dancer of Fortune, She Who is There for Those in Need
Aliases: Hatharia (Thay), Hathelya (Unther)
Alignment: Neutral Good
Portfolio: Childbirth, motherhood, folk music, dance, poetry, the moon, fate
Domains: Family, Fate, Good, Moon
Worshipers: Bards, dancers, mothers
Allies: Isis, Nephthys, Osiris
Foes: Set, Sebek
Symbol: A horned cow's head wearing a lunar disk
Favored Weapon: Long cow horns (short sword)

Hathor shows none of the arrogance normally associated with the Mulhorandi pantheon, and she is as compassionate with foreigners as she is to her worshipers, who include women of all walks of life and races and street and folk performers.  Her relationship with the other members of the Mulhorandi pantheon is a servile one, except for Set, whom she loathes, and Sebek, who she dislikes.  Most of the other Mulhorandi deities look down on her, or ignore her, except for Osiris, Isis, and Nephthys, who appreciate her kindness.  Hathor's role as a nurturer and mother overlaps somewhat with Isis, but Hathor is seen more as a mother, while Isis is seen more as a wife and symbol of the family.

Hathor's speech is soft; listening to her speak is like receiving comforting words following a raging argument, words that seem more gentle because they dispel anger and sadness.  Her laughter is like the joy of an infant, and all babes are precious to her.  Hathor's very presence brightens her surroundings and brings peace and contentment to those in the shadow of her presence.  Hathor never utters a harsh word, shows impatience, or loses her smile.  She speaks earnestly and humbly except when performing one of her dances or a song, when she is widely exuberant.

Hathor is served by divine minions that can assume the form of a horned cow.

Avatars

Hathor appears as a tall, graceful woman of Mulhorand with the head of a cow with long, gracefully curved horns.  Her presence radiates peace, contentment, and security.  She wears a tight-fitting, fine linen sheath from her midriff to her ankles that is attached to thin shoulder straps.  Around her neck she wears an elaborate pectoral collar pictorially depicting the cycle of life.  On her head she wears a diadem with the symbol of a moon disk surrounded by a cow's horns or simply wears a moon disk between her own two horns, held there by magic.

Other Manifestations

Hathor may manifest as the sound of an infant crying when there is none present, something she does to alert her faithful to imminent danger to themselves or their loved ones.  She sometimes manifests as a shaft of moonlight to lead the those who are lost (particularly children and pregnant females) back home.

Hathor signals her attention to a village or region through a sharp increase in the number of hippopotamus sightings.  Such sightings are often followed by an inexplicable compulsion for groups of people to begin dancing.

Hathor communicates cryptic words of wisdom to her clergy through wise sayings through the mouths of newborn infants.  She indicates her approval or disapproval of their actions by causing fresh or curdled milk, respectively, to seep from nearby stones.  White and cloudy gemstones, such as opals and moonstones, are sacred to her, and she shows her approval, presence, favor, or disfavor through the actions of hollyphants, t'uen-rin, and long-horned cows, and the uncanny actions of baby animals and infants of all species.

The Church

Hathor is a favored deity of the poor and needy of Mulhorand.  She is venerated by mothers and protects children and women during childbirth.  She is also the goddess of folk music, dance, and poetry, and hence is worshiped by bards and other artists.  She is worshiped in the farmlands by serfs and slaves, whereas Nephthys is worshiped in the cities and by rulers.  Although Hathor is largely ignored by priests of other faiths, even they plead for her intercession when fate deals them an unfavorable card.

The clergy of Hathor do not build temples; moneys they raise are spent on Mulhorand's most vulnerable and needy.  The Sisters of the Nurturing Mother, as they are sometimes called, instead build small shrines in village centers or along the roadside.  These shrines are typically fountains adorned with dancing winged children or infants and an image of a pregnant woman with the head of a cow.  In times of need, these fountains are known to spontaneously flow with water or milk.

Priestesses of Hathor eschew the use of titles "Lady Priestess" and "Lady High Priestess" as is technically their due in Mulhorandi society, preferring to be known to the populace simply as Sister or Mother.  Hathor's clergy use such titles as Novice, Daughter, Sister, Midwife, Mother, Favored Sister, Favored Midwife, Favored Mother, and Nurturing Sister, although some temples have their own unique hierarchy of titles.

Dogma



Day-to-Day Activities



Holy Days and Important Ceremonies



Major Centers of Worship



Affiliated Orders



Priestly Vestments



Adventuring Garb
This message was last edited by the GM at 00:09, Fri 11 Sept 2009.

Hathor
The Nurturing Mother
Symbol: Horned cow's head wearing a lunar disk
Alignment: Neutral Good
Portfolio: Motherhood, folk music, dance, the moon, fate
Worshipers: Bards, dancers, mothers
Domains: Family, Fate, Good, Moon
Favored Weapon: Long cow horns (short sword)

Hathor is known for her soft speech, which is like receiving comforting words following a raging argument, words that seem gentler because they dispel anger and sadness.  Her laughter is like the joy of an infant, and all babies are precious to her.  Hathor's very presence brightens her surroundings and brings peace and contentment to those in the shadow of her presence.  Hathor never utters a sharp word, shows impatience, or loses her smile.  She speaks earnestly and humbly except when performing one of her dances or a song, when she is widely exuberant.

The church of Hathor is loosely organized, eschewing the trappings of theocratic power common to Mulhorand's other temples.  Hathor has no interest in politics, and few of her clerics seek temporal power - a rarity in Mulhorand.  Instead, her servants seek to nurse the sick, aid the poor, and protect all children.  Clerics of Hathor wander Mulhorand dispensing aid to the poor and downtrodden.  They donate much of their money directly to those who need it most and many live solely on the charity of those they aid.  Almost all her clerics are female.

Clerics of Hathor pray for their spells at whenever the moon is highest in the sky during the day or night.  Clerics of Hathor follow a lunar calender of 30-day months that does not include the standard special days on the Calendar of Harptos.  They have a cycle of prayers corresponding to each day in a month that repeats with each full moon.  On the day of the first full moon after Greengrass, the clergy of Hathor celebrates a holy day known as the Birthing.  Clerics try to time their pregnancies so they may give birth near this holy day.  All clerics of Hathor are required to unveil a new song, dance, or poem at this time, if they are not in the final stages of pregnancy or the mother of a newborn.  Midsummer's Eve is known as the Celebration of the Moon to clerics of the faith, who spend the day in Joyous revelry and uplifting hymns.  Her clerics sometimes multiclass as bards.

Histories/Relationships:

Hathor's relationship with the other deities of the Mulhorand is a servile one, with the exception of Set and Sebek, whom she dislikes.  Many of the Mulhorandi deities look down on her, with the exception of Isis, Osiris, and Nephthys, who appreciate her kindness.  Hathor's role overlaps that of Isis in some respects, but Hathor is seen as a mother and Isis as a wife.  She misses the rest of her celestial family and, like lonely Geb, may abandon her power in Faerun to return to them.

Dogma:

Help all who turn to you for aid, be they slave or free, high born or low born, for all Mulhorand's children are equal in Hathor's eyes.  Provide sustenance for the hungry, healing for the hurt, health for the diseased, and protection for the endangered.  Act humbly, for pride and haughty words come not from the heart of the Nurturing Mother.  Treat those in your care as royalty for so shall you be cared for in the peaceful garden of the Quiet One in the afterlife.  Be joyful and spread happiness with your words and deeds.  Dance and let your heart be light, for goodness and mercy shall be yours in this life and the next.

Horus-Re
Lord of the Sun, Master of Vengence, Pharaoh of the Gods
Symbol: Hawk's head in pharaoh's crown surrounded by a solar circle
Alignment: Lawful Good
Portfolio: The sun, vengence, rulership, kings, life
Worshipers: Administrators, judges, nobles, paladins
Domains: Good, Law, Nobility, Retribution, Sun
Favored Weapon: An ankh (khopesh)

Horus-Re is a confident deity who believes strongly in the Mulhorandi concept of maat (justice, honor, order, and riteousness).  More than a code of chivalry, maat is the natural state of the universe and all things are expected to conform to it.  Only by doing so can the citizens of Mulhorand be at peace with the gods and live a happy life.  Horus-Re believes that Mulhorand is eternal, and to promote eternity, one must deny change, so Horus-Re tries to discourage change.

The church of Horus-Re is strictly organized, and the church hierarchy is tightly intertwined with Mulhorand's governing institutions.  Clerics of Horus-Re are precepts (provincial governors and rulers of cities) and administrator; they control vast tracts of land annd thousands of slaves.  Mulhorand's most powerful government position after the pharaoh is the vizier, a position traditionally held by the highest-ranking cleric of Horus-Re.  Before the Time of Troubles, the clergy of Horus-Re was so busy governing and engaging in political infighting that they had little time for actual religion.  Since the Time of Troubles, the pharaoh of Mulhorand has tried to reorient this highly politicized culture toward greater religious fervor in order to spread the faith and increase the number of Horus-Re's worshipers in Faerun.  His efforts are meeting with some success, but are somewhat confusing to many Mulhorandi who are, after all, used to living with centuries of little change.  These efforts are directed hand-in-hand with efforts to expand Mulhorand's sphere of influence into Unther and lands that have drifted away since the height of the last empire.

Clerics of Horus-Re pray for their spells at highsun, the most important ceremony of the day, when Horus-Re shines brightly over all Mulhorand.  Immediately prior to noon, most of the inhabitants of Mulhorand gather in front of numerous balconies protruding from the Sun Lord's temples.  The clerics of Horus-Re then deliver a daily sermon known as the Zenith Aspirant.  In addition, each sunrise they greet the return of their lord with a set of welcoming prayers known as the Greeting of the Lord.  In the evening the clergy of Horus-Re pledge to guard Mulhorand through the nighttime hours in a private ceremony known as the Girding of the Guard involving the girding of ceremonial weapons.  The most important annual holiday is Midsummer's Day when all clerics of Horus-Re gather in his temples to sing his praises.  Unlike most of the rest of the year, this is truly a day of religious devotion and to celebrate it almost the entire government of Mulhorand shuts down.  Solar eclipses are considered a reaffirmation of Horus-Re's eternal rulership.  Many clerics multicalss as divine champions, divine disciples or paladins.

History/Relationships:

Horus-Re was once Horus, a hot-headed deity who frequently clashed with Set.  After the death of Ra during the Orcgate Wars, Horus became Horus-Re, chief deity of the Mulhorand pantheon.  In so doing, Horus-Re has become not unlike Rain personality, and little remains of the original personality of Horus.  Although all the Mulhorandi deities in principle answer ro Horus-Re, only Isis, Osiris, and Thoth could truly be considered his allies.  Ironically, Horus-Re is troubled by the actions of his cousin, Anhur, an aggressive advocate of change and conflict, and usually contradicts or opposes the postions Anhur takes, often ordering his clergy to take countering measures.  Horus-Re's greatest foe is Set.  Lathander, another sun-related deity, has a sympathetic interest in Horus-Re, for he remembers Horus-Re's old personality, which was much like his own.

Dogma:

Goodness, honor, and order are the natural state, and that which leads to evil, treachery, and chaos is by rights unnatural and the enemy.  Lead Mulhorand by example, and let your deeds speak you intentions.  Goodness and harmony come from living within maat rather than fighting it.  Laws sxist to bring prosperity to those under them.  The pharaoh and the church of Horus-Re rule with Horus-Re's guidance and set laws as guidelines for honorable action within Mulhorand's tradition.  Make no hasty changes or decisions, as their consequences are always suspect and may undermine the steadfast rule of eternity.  Protect the weak and avenge all wrongs.  Smite traitors with righteous vengeance.

Isis
Bountiful Lady, Lady of Rivers, Mistress of Enchantment
Symbol: Ankh and star on a lunar disk
Alignment: Neutral Good
Portfolio: Weather, rivers, agriculture, love, marriage, good magic
Worshipers: Arcane spellcasters, druids, lovers, mothers
Domains: Family, Good, Magic, Storm, Water
Favored Weapon: An ankh and star (punching dagger)

Isis is a woman of even temper and great dedication.  She is a regal and noble deity who is eager to share the knowledge of the gods and humanity and often goes to great lengths to introduce her worshipers to new concepts and ideas.  In many cases, these new ideas take the form of magical spells.Isis often finds the antics of mortals amusing, but she is a kind, understanding goddess who cares greatly for her worshipers and the people of Unther and Mulhorand.

The church of Isis is hierarchically organized so as to ensure orderly planting and reaping of the harvest.  Clerics of Isis spend their days overseeing the agricultural production of the nation's farms, particularly during planting time.  Isis's high clerics weather control spells to ensure a bountiful harvest.  Members of her clergy also administer most marriage ceremonies in Mulhorand and Unther, work as matchmakers for those in search of a mate, serve as go-betweens for lovers, and consel young mothers on raising their children.  They often fashion small charms for those whose deeds have won the goddess's favor and magic items to serve good causes or lighten the burden of the common people.

Clerics and druids of Isis pray for their spells at just before the first morning meal.  The two most sacred days for the clergy of Isis are Greengrass and Highharvestide.  During the first festival, the clergy of Isis give thanks to the goddess for her aid in the planting, and during the secons they give thanks to both Isis and Osiris for their help with the harvest.  Both days are occasions for joyous celebration and wild revels, and all who participate in farming join in them along with the clergy.  Clerics and druids of Isis have numerous daily rituals as well.  The celebrate the Shift in the Winds each time the weather changes for the better and utter quiet thanks to the goddess.  Every time they cross a river, they must drink deeply and give thanks for the goddess's bounty.  Finally, they must bless each meal given by the goddess's bounty before partaking of a singla bite.  Most clerics of Isis eventually multiclass as wizards, while her druids sometimes multiclass as sorcerers.

History/Relationships:

Isis is the daughter of Geb, the wife of Osiris, the sister of Thoth, and the mother of Horus, making her one of the most influential deities of the Mulhorandi pantheon.  She is allied with Bast, and the nonevil Mulhorandi deities.  She is still saddened by the long-ago change in Horus that occurred thousands of years ago, and sometimes shares her grief with Chantea, her agricultural counterpart in the Faerunian pantheon.

Dogma:

Encourage love, affection, and marriage in the citizens of Mulhorand.  Sow the seeds of happiness, family, and food wherever you go and provide wise counsel for those in need.  Use your magic to benefit of the people of Mulhorand and never to harm them, particularly by shaping the weather to serve the populace and creating magic items for the benefit of all.  Protect the heroes of Mulhorand and those who are in love.

Nephthys
Guardian of Wealth and Commerce, Protector of the Dead, the Avenging Mother
Symbol: A golden offering bowl topped by an Ankh
Alignment: Chaotic Good
Portfolio: Wealth, trade, protector of children and the dead
Worshipers: Merchants, money-changers, tax collectors, rogues
Domains: Chaos, Good, Protection, Trade
Favored Weapon: An ankh trailing a golden mist (whip)

The church of Nephthys is run like a powerful, profitable, merchant consortium.  Clerics of Nephthys spend their days managing the economy of Mulhorand.  They are engaged in countless political squabbles with the clerics of Horus-Re, Anhur, and Isis over the others, and the management of human resources (slaves) so as to best serve the economic interests of Mulhorand.  They serve in some instances as tax collectors and as money-changers.  They provide advice to the noble class about investments and bless children brought to them (for which the expect a donation).  Any child whom they bless is under the protection of the church until she reaches adulthood, and her injury is avenged by the church.  The church of Nephthys is involved in the burial rights of every noble or member of the middle class.  The clergy are primarily responsible for for the safeguarding of goods the deceased wish to bring to the afterlife.  They also serve as executioners of the will and testament of the deceased, if any.

Clerics of Nephthys pray for their spells at noon, when the golden orb of the sun is high in the sky.  The clergy of Nephthys celebrate few holy days in their calendar.  The Feast of the Moon is known as the Feast of the Silver Coin to the faithful of Nephthys.  In a somber, but elaborate, day-long rite, they give thanks to Nephthys for her beneficience and tithe to the church.  The greater the wealth they contribute to the church during this ceremony, the higher the personal status they accrue within the church.  Nephthys's clerics are also responsible for conveying the prepared body to the burial chamber, setting the defensive wards, and sealing the crypt to prevent tomb robbers from gaining entrance in a grand ceremony known as the Passage Onward.  Clerics of Nephthys rarely multiclass, but those that do are usually rogues.

History/Relationships:

Daughter of Geb and long-forgotten Nut, Nephthys was once married to Set.  She left him over the murder of Osiris and helped her sister Isis to resurrect the dead deity.  She has few friends even among her own pantheon.  Waukeen guards against er encroachment upon the portfolio of wealth now that Mulhorand is expanding again, while Mask is interested in her riches.

Dogma:

Accumulate great volumes of wealth, but do not hold money above your devotion to the goddess.  Protect the tombs and the remains of the dead, and smite those who would rob those who have gone to the afterlife or desecrate their tombs.  Avenge the deaths of those Mulhorandi killed by the Red Wizards of Thay.  Be faithful to your husband and encourage faithfulness in others.  Protect worshipers of the goddess, and diligently root out and destroy evil, especially the actions of Set.

Osiris
Lord of Nature, Judge of the Dead, Reaper of the Harvest
Symbol: White crown of Mulhorand over a crossed crook and flail
Alignment: Lawful Good
Portfolio: Vegetation, death, the dead, justice, harvest
Worshipers: Attorneys, druids, embalmers, judges, paladins, rangers, seekers of rightful vengence
Domains: Good, Law, Plant, Repose, Retribution
Favored Weapon: "Just Reward" (light flail or heavy flail)

Osiris has a powerful and commanding presence, yet those whose hearts are pure and true are very comfortable in his company.  His stern demeanor is cracked only by the antics of playful children, who have been known to make him smile and laugh in delight, and his wife, Isis, whom he loves passionately.  However, when confronted by those who violate the principles of maat (justice, honor, order, and righteousness), particularly by despoiling the resting places of the dead, his anger is terrible and his wrath unstoppable.

Clerics and druids of Osiris pray for their spells at dusk, when the day's activities are judged.  The two most important holy days in the church of Osiris are Highharvetide and Midwinter.  The former is a (relatively) joyous celebration of Osiris's bounty in which all the citizens of Mulhorand are invited to join.  The latter is a solemn, private day during which the sanctity of every burial crypt in Mulhorand is renewed or reinforced so that the dead may continue to rest easy.  The Passing to Eternal Contentment and Justice is a sacred ceremony performed during the preparation and burial of the dead.  There are three versions of the ceremony - High, Middle, and Low Passing - that are employed during funerals are for the royal family, the nobles, and the commoners, respectively.  Many clerics multiclass as paladins, and both clerics and druids sometimes multiclass as rangers.

History/Relationships:

Osiris is the son of Geb and long-forgotten Nut.  He was slain by Set during a power struggle to suceed Ra in the aftermath of the Orcgatea Wars.  He was brought back to life by his wife Isis and Nephthys when they mummified his body, giving him eternal life and making him the deity of death.  Osiris and Set are now bitter enemies, but Osiris gladly acceded to the leadership of Horus-Re when Ra chose Horus to succeed him.  Osiris also despises and works against Mask.  He is friendly with Kelemvor, for they have similar ideas about death and the undead.

Dogma:

Goodness, honor, and order are the natural state, and that which leads to evil, treachery, and chaos is by rights unnatural and unlwaful.  Goodness and harmony come from living within maat rather than fighting it.  An organized approach brings the most good for all.  Laws exist to bring prosperity to those under them.  The pharaoh and his representatives set laws as guidelines for honorable action within Mulhorand's tradition.  Those guidelines must be applied with honor; when honor is lacking in this application, the fair judgement of Osiris is the law.  The justice of Osiris is a lack of partiality.  Be not angered without justice.  Great is justice when it is even-handed; in the eyes of truth, a slave and the pharaoh are as one.

Sebek
Lord of Crocodiles, the Smiling Death
Symbol: Crocodile head wearing a horned and plumed headdress
Alignment: Neutral Evil
Portfolio: River hazards, crocodiles, werecrocodiles, wetlands
Worshipers: Druids, inhabitants of crocodile-infested areas, rangers, werecrocodiles
Domains: Animal, Evil, Scalykind, Water
Favored Weapon: "The Sorrowful Spear" (longspear, shortspear, or halfspear)

Sebek is second only to Set in evil in the pantheon of Mulhorand.  He is strong, but also cruel and capricious.  He enjoys eating people, but can be swayed by piteous begging (if it is accompanied by the promise of bigger meals).  He enjoys cruel humor and mean-spirited pranks.  He loathes genuine displays of heartfelt emotion and is said to have a heart of ice.  The Lord of Crocodiles has a strong streak of insecurity toward his status in the Mulhorandi pantheon, a fact that has been exploited by daring mortals in the past.

The church of Sebek is loosely organized, its heirarchy little more than a constantly changing pecking order.  Werecrocodile clerics spend their days bullying their fellows, hunting, luring humans to their doom, and designing fantastic schemes to seize power in Mulhorand, Unther, and Chessenta.

Clerics and druids of Sebek pray for their spells at dusk, when the hot sun fades and the time for hunting draws nigh.  Villagers seeking to ward off the attack of crocodiles hope to appease Sebek by the monthly sacrifice of animals (and occasionally setient creatures) outside shrines located deep in the swamp.  The remains of the sacrifice are left within the shrine for the crocodiles.  Many a worshiper has failed to leave quickly enough after making a sacrifice and fallen prey to the jaws of crocodiles attracted to the site.  Many clerics and druids multiclass as fighters, and most attempt to become werecrocodiles.

History/Relationships:

Sebek is the poor relation of the Mulhorandi pantheon, effectively an outcast.  Although he is not formally banished, he is simply ignores.  Most of the Mulhorandi deities view Sebek with condescending scorn, and the Lord of Crocodiles returns their antipathy.  Sebek has worked with Set in the past, but the Brother of Serpents treats Sebek with contempt and uses him only as a temporary ally of convenience.  Even Malar harrasses Sebek, angry at this foreign deity holding even a tiny part of the portfolio of lycanthropes.

Dogma:

Hunt or be hunted.  Kill intruders in the swamps, weed out the week, terrify human commoners and weaklings into propitiating Sebek, dominate your fellows, and eventually turn the world into one vast swamp.  Seek recognition for your acts in the name of the deity, for he is a powerful deity to be feared.  You will be amply rewarded with choice prey, wealth, and territory when Sebek finally assumes the role within the pantheon that he deserves.

Set
Defiler of the Dead, Lord of Carrion, Father of Jackals
Symbol: Coiled Cobra
Alignment: Lawful Evil
Portfolio: The desert, destruction, drought, night, rot, snakes, hate, betrayal, evil magic, ambition, poison, murder
Worshipers: Assassins, blackguards, brigands, criminals, rogues, thieves, tomb robbers, wizards
Domains: Air, Darkness, Evil, Hatred, Law, Magic, Scalykind
Favored Weapon: "The Spear of Darkness" (longspear, halfspear, or shortspear)

Set is the jealous personification of evil.  A cold and calculating deity, he always acts against the interests of the Mulan and the Mulhorandi pantheon.  The Father of Jackals is always looking for ways to recruit new followers and disrupt the churches of the other Mulhorandi deities.  Despite his loathsome nature, Set takes good care of his followers and does not willingly betray or abandon his people, as he finds it practical to maintain their loyalty.  Set can be quite gracious and charming when first encountered, but he reveals his true colors very quickly.  He reevels in his evilness and makes no excuses for his cruelty or his evil actions.  He never laughs except when relishing another creature's pain, and the sound of his laughter is said to be that of creature's final death scream.  Mortals are simple useful tools that can be destroyed or cared for, as appropriate, in Set's view.

The church of Set is ordered by a strict heirarchy answering directly to the deity.  Clerics of Set are charged to undermine and overthrow the theocracy of Mulhorand, and spend their days executing ruthless and subtle plans to achieve their goals.  Only the eternal vigilance of the other deities and their faithful keeps the majority of these plans from succeeding.  Clerics of Set often oversee activities of thieves, assassins, and other evil beings, even if they venerate Mask.  Many brigands and tomb raiders worship Set and use these activities to finance their plans as well as mock and denigrate the deities and beliefs of othe rfaiths and deities.  The clergy of set heads several orders of assassins.  Such clerics are not allowed to betray members of the order and must always work to promote the "brotherhood of evil."

Clerics of Set pray for their spells at night, whenever the land is darkest.  They have no formal holy days.  Rather, they perform their important ceremonies and sacrifices every time they achieve a major victory in the name of Set.  When a supplicant seeks to join the brotherhood of evil as a full-fledged member, he must undergo the Test of Venom.  The ceremony involves the supplicant walking through a pit of poisonous snakes or scorpions.  Aspiring clerics who survive the ceremony are admitted into the clergy.  Particularly infuriating to the clergy of Osiris and Nephthys is the reconsecration ceremony performed by grave robbers who serve in Set's clergy.  This ceremony includes the complete defilement of the burial chamber, the creation of an unholy altar to Set, the looting of the crypt's treasure, and the animation of the bodies as undead.  Many clerics and druids multiclass as assaassins, blackguards, divine disciples, divine seekers, rogues, or wizards.

History/Relationships:

Set, brother of Osiris, is the most evil deity worshiped in Mulhorand.  The son of Geb and long-forgotten Nut, his birth was horrific, for he tore himself free from his mother's womb and sprang upon the world as a foul and hideous thing.  He challenged the authority of Osiris for the leadership of the gods upon the death of Ra during the Orcgate Wars, slew Osiris (who was later brought back to life by Isis) through trickery, who was then defeated by Horus-Re and cast him out.  Now Set schemes against all the Mulhorandi, with the exception of Sebek, whom he exploits.  His only ally is Tiamat, for both gods have found common cause in undermining the power of the other deities of the Old Empires.  His recent excursions outside Mulhorand have attracted the attention of Bane, Cyric, and Talos, all wanting to steal his power.

Dogma:

The end justifies the means, and life is a struggle to be won by the powerful and the ruthless.  Loyalty to one's comrades is admirable as long as it advances the cause of Set, and in the end, when Set acceeds to his rightful throne, those that have served him well will be justly rewarded.  Destroy the clergies of Horus-Re and Osiris, thus accelerating Set's establishment at his rightful place as god-king of Mulhorand, and spread the cult of Set throughout the world.  Sacrifice both wealth and sentients to Set.

Thoth
Lord of Magic, Scribe of the Gods, the Keeper of Knowledge
Symbol: Ankh above an ibis head
Alignment: Neutral
Portfolio: Neutral magic, scribes, knowledge, invention, secrets
Worshipers: Loremasters, scribes, those who craft magic items, wizards
Domains: Crafts, Knowledge, Magic, Rune, Spell
Favored Weapon: "Knowledge Keeper" (quarterstaff)

Thoth is one of the oldest deities of the Mulhorandi pantheon, and he is also one of the most vigorous and creative.  He is very intellectual and rarely displays great shows of emotion except when engaged in heated academic debate.  He speaks in clipped, efficient phrases, and is an elitist toward those he considers "uncultured barbarians" (a category that includes most foreigners).  He has been given credit for the creation of many of Mulhorand's unique magic items and its experiments with technology, which have caused significant, but gradual cultural changes over the centuries.

The church of Thoth is organized in a strict heirarchy, although individuals are free to pursue almost any course of inquiry.  Thothians spend several hours each morning studying.  They spend most afternoons researching magic, serving as scribes, clerks, or librarians for the church or the state, or teaching the young.  Particularly pious young clerics often spend their evenings assisting the poor and unschooled as scribes and tutors.  Traditionally, the contents of any message written by a scribe of Thoth is held in strictest confidence as a religious trust between the scribe and the person who dictated the message.  Scribes do not typically deliver messages; that is a job for messengers.

Clerics of Thoth pray for their spells at dawn, prior to a new day of invention and discovery.  The clergy of Thoth inscribe their deity's symbol at the top of each page of papyrus before writing anything else on that page.  Prior to undertaking any major task requiring engineering, writing, or magical skill, Thoth's faithful draw the symbol of Thoth on the backs of their hands and over their hearts.  In general, the clergy of Thoth put less emphasis on excessive pageantry and ceremony than most other clergy of Mulhorand; they regard most of it as a waste of valuable time.  During the winter and summer solstices, clerics of Thoth are required to fast for an entire day and then immerse in an icy bath.  The Ceremony of Introspection, as this is known, symbolizes their desire for true understanding and their reemergence into the world with a clear head and invigorated heart.  Many clerics multiclass as arcae devotees, loremasters, or wizards.  They turn rather than rebuke undead.

History/Relationships:

Thoth is one of the oldest deities of the Mulhorandi pantheon, second only to Ra (now dead) and Geb.  He is allied with Horus-Re, Isis, and Osiris, and worsk to oppose Set.  In recent years, he has forged contacts with likeminded gods of the Faerunian panthon as well, including Azuth, Deneir, Gond, Oghma, Mystra, and Savras.

Dogma:

Learn all you can and help to spread wisdom throughout the world.  Research magic, protect the secrets of Thoth, and spread magic throughout Mulhorand.  Explore new invention and better wats of doing things, pusing the limits of engineering, architecture, and magic item construction.  Protect Mulhorand from the traitorous Red Wizards of Thay and undermine their efforts at every possible turn.  Use weaponry as little as possible, for magic is your weapon.
This message was last edited by the GM at 04:19, Fri 14 Aug 2009.

"Mulhorand is the gift of its rivers.  No other force of nature, not even the gods, is responsible for its greatness."
-Old Mulhorand saying

Present-day Mulhorand is only a fraction of the size it was when its empire was at its peak, but it is still a large and powerful kingdom.  Its northern border is the River of the Dawn, though it claims Priador and all of Thay as its rightful domain, and Mulhorand could march into Thazalhar unopposed if it so chose.  Its eastern border is not established, but Mulhorand is thought to have mastery of lands as far east as the Sunrise Mountains and the River Murghol, though Mulhorand has no towns or outposts east of Ganathwood or the Fields of Ganath.  The eastern border extends southward to the Sword Mountains, at the eastern edge of the Great Vale, as far south as Azulduth, the lake of salt.  The western border extends from Azulduth along the River of Swords.

Within this expanse are desert, ruins, mountains, fertile fields, and cities that were great 2,000 years before the first stone was place on Waterdeep, before the Zhentarim ever unleashed an evil scheme, before Bane was even aware the Realms existed, a time when the world was young, even to the elves.  The words Mulhorand and "eternity" are the same in the language of Mulhorandi.

Mulhorand lies within a series of plains, plateaus, lowlands and valleys.  There are four distinct geographic divisions:

The Menesankh, or Plain of Life, extends in a crescent around the southern tip of the Alamber Sea as far north as Skuld; this is a mainly dry area of flat plains, irrigated by rivers, with occasional marshland.

The Asanibis is the Mulhorand name for the Great Vale, which is a land of hills and plains that lies between the Sword Mountains and the Menesankh.

The mountainous areas, which include the Sword Mountains in the south and the Sunrise Mountains in the north, are called Furitep.  These rugged peaks are said to be impassable, though this is not quite true; one can get through them in the summer, with the help of a donkey.

The fourth distinct region, the Taranoth, is a series of high plains that rises from the sea between Skuld and Sultim; this area is known for its gloomy climate and spectacular cliffs and falls.

Despite its arid climate, there is a great deal of culticated lands in Mulhorand along the edges of the rivers and in the Great Vale.  Farmland is either owned privately by a noble or run by the church.  Laborers on church farms are slaves owned by the temples.

Mulhorand usually saves its excess produce for times of famine, so it exports very few crops.  Crops grown include wheat, hay, and barley, with figs, dates, grapes, oranges, and other fruits grown in the Great Vale.  Cattle and pigs are the typical herd animals.

There are trees that are felled along the edge of the Sword Mountains, typically cedars and beech.  One major forest, Ganathwood, lies along the border of the Murghom-Mulhorand border in the gap between the Sword and Sunrise mountains.

The River of Swords

This long river forms the border between Mulhorand and Unther.  It is divided into two portions: The Lower Sword, which flow in two parts from their sources to their junction by the ruins of Sekras, and the Upper Sword, which flows from Sekras to the Alamber Sea.

The Lower Swords are named the Blue Sword and the Green Sword.  The Blue Sword River lies entirely in Unther and has as its source a fresh water spring in the southeastern portion of that country.  The Green Sword River flows from its source in Azulduth, the Great Salt Lake, and carries a considerable amount of salt with it.  The Green Sword is undrinkable.

From the junction at Sekras, the river flows northward to the Alamber.  This water is bitter but drinkable, and it carries a lot of sediments.  A machine that pumps the river and filters the salt still operates at Sekras, though none but a handful of priests of Thoth know its workings.  The river floods in, summer time, though it is somewhat less predictable in its floods than the River of Spears, which lies to the east.  Large, flat-bottomed boats carry cargo between between Unther and Mulhorand settlements on either side of the river, and a canal bypasses the pumps and allows access to the upper river.

Sekras is a small city.  It was once the center of the cult of Sebek, but now it is infested with werecrocodiles.  Paladins in the service of Osiris, with the tacit approval of the priests of Horus-Re, destroyed the city and scattered the inhabitants.

Algonside the upper river are many small farms.  The lower river is mostly uninhabited, except for hermits and wizards who choose to sequester themselves from the control of the priests of Thoth.  This area is known to be the home of a number of sphinxes.

The River of Swords was given that name because it was here long ago that the god-kings of Unther and Mulhorand laid down their swords and swore an oath of eternal peace between the two kingdoms.

The Great Vale

The Great Vale, or Asanibis, is the breadbasket of Mulhorand.  Here on great farms slavers and freeholders labor to produce food to feed the cities of Mulhorand.  The Great Vale begins in the shadow of the Sword Mountains, where the god-kings and their servants are buried in elaborate tombs on the vale floor and on the mountainside.  Ancient step pyramids mix with obelisks as 3,000 years of the honored dead find housing to continue their existance in the afterlife.

Ancient pumps provide continued irrigation for these farms, and the flooding of the River of Spears provides these farms with much-needed sediment.

Priests of Osiris and priestesses of Isis travel into the Great Vale and use their magic to enhance the fertility of this land.  Slave farms are owned by the churches, with individual faiths allowed to build their own farms and compete in the selling of goods, though the majority of these farms belong to Horus-Re and are sublet to the priests of Osiris (which gives the priests of Horus-Re the threat of revoking the leases on the farms if the priests of Osiris should turn against them).

Crops grown here include wheat (ember) and barley (this is also the center of Mulhorand's ale, beer, and winemaking); sheep, goats, pigs, and cows are the principle animals herded in this region.

The Great Vale is primarily a dwelling place of humans.  There are four towns, Surbroar, Klondor, Ulzel, and Mishtan, each of which have between 2,000 and 5,000 people.  Towns serve as a place of gathering during celebrations and trading; there are some slave farms with more people than the towns.

Near Mishtan is the Land of the Dead, to which thousands of slaves and freemen are brought at flood time to help with the construction of new tombs.  Transportation in this region is by horse (for nobles), by river, or by foot (poorly tended roads lie some ditance from the river in a parallel course and a road connects Mishtan and Klondor).  At the present time, Klondor is threatened by an attack of the dreaded Skriaxit.

Sword Mountains

This chain of high, allegedly impassable mountains (no one in Mulhorand climbs these mountains - "because they're there" has never occurred to them) separates Mulhorand from the Plains of Purple Dust; when the wind is very active on the Plains, it blows red dust over the mountaintops and onto the western slopes.  Within these mountains are a number of fierce monsters that plague southern Mulhorand, most notably Gestaniius, a great wyrm blue dragon that has fed on the slaves working in the LAnd of the Dead for well over 600 years, the descendants of the wizard Nezram, and dracosphinxes.

On the edge of the Sword Mountains, in the Great Vale, are some of the tombs of the dead god-kings.  The greatest tomb, that of Horuseres II, was carved out of the very mountainside and is said to lead into a treacherous series of natural caverns where the pharaoh and his riches were entombed.  None have ever sacked his tomb, but several minions of Horus-Re guard it at all times.

River of Spears

This fast-flowing river has its source in the Sword Mountains and its mouth at Gheldaneth.  It has two tributaries, the Mishtan and Klondor, named for the two towns nearest their sources.  The river provides water for the Great Vale and its many farms.  For large craft, this river is only easily navigable near Gheldaneth, though small vessels regularly race along the water near Ulzel and Surbroar, carrying small cargoes and passengers.  It is considered a risky ride.  The River of Spears floods regularly in the summer, providing new soil for the farmlands and moisture that lasts most of the year; these lands are irrigable ten months of the year.

River of Shadows

This long, winding river has its source at a spring near the Sword Mountains.  It does not flow as fast as the River of Spears, but its waters are rocky and treacherous.  It is also less predictable in its floods.  At the delta, near Skuld, are large slave farms that raise flax and papyrus and herd sheep.  The major cities along this river are Jhalhoran, which is connected to Maerlar and Surbroar by the Great East Road, and Skuld (Cty of Shadows), the capital of Mulhorand.  It is from Skuld that the River gets its name.

The Cliffs of Leaping Horses

This is the horse land of Mulhorand, where great brown and white steeds run along the plains; some are captured and used as draft animals; since the decline of the priesthood of Anhur they are no longer taken for charioteering.  This is a large area of high plains, several hundred feet above sea level.  These plains are arid, but hardy pants thrive here.  A number of less welcome beasts - hippogriffs and griffons - also use this area as hunting grounds.  There are no major human settlements here, though some Mulhorandi have small outposts where they capture horses.

This coastline is also dotted with a number of sea caves that serve as bases for some of the pirates that roam the Alamber Sea.

River Rauthenflow

North of the Cliff of Leaping Horses is the great river Rauthenflow.  It begins at Brightstar Lake in eastern Murghomm flows swiftly to its union with the River Murghol, and then rushes into the Alamber Sea at Ruathgor.  These rainbow falls are considered to be one of the most spectacular sights in all the Realms, and the area is known to be a haven for mermaids.  The Rauthenflow is an extremely swift river, noted for its cataracts, rapids, and whirlpools.  Few boats attempt to ride the rapids of Rauthenflow; the river cannot be forded and the only bridge is at Rauthil, on the great Eastern Trading Road.  Most of the countryside around the Rauthenflow is quite arid, inhabited only by the most nast of monsters.

The river is considered to be part of the highland plain region called the Taranoth.

River of the Dawn

The River of the Dawn is the northern border of Mulhorand, though Mulhorand still claims to rule the Priador (Thay).  This river separates Mulhorand from Thazalhar, the region of Thay that was devastated when Thay broke free of Mulhorand 400 years ago.  Thay has a small settlement in this region where the Tharch and his bodyguard enforce Thay's claim on this land, though Mulhorand regularly sends troops here to enforce its own claim.  There are occasional clashes, but Thay does not wish to prod Mulhorand into a full-scale war; so conflicts are carefully limited.

Theriver is an extremely swift one, even faster than the Rauthenflow.  There is but one bridge, which is part of the Great Eastern trading road; merchants use this to bring their goods into and out of Thay.  Though both nation's rulers disapprove, there is active trade between Thay and Mulhorand.

The Alamber Sea

This body of water is the easternmost part of the Inner Sea.  It serves as a border between Mulhorand and Unther and is the home of a major sahuagin kingdom, the Aleaxtis, which is at best an undependable ally of Thay.  Many trading vessels use the Alamber Sea on the profitable trade route between the ports of Sultim and Bezantur.  Unther and Mulhorand recognize this sea as open water, free for either nation to use, but neither country controls it.

The northernmost island in this sea is the Aldor, which is the Thayvian naval base.  Currently, the dominant naval and merchant power in this area is Thay; both Unther and Mulhorand find it more convenient to ship their goods in Thayvian hulls and accept Thayvian goods than build their own ships and find their own markets.

There are also many pirates that live in small remote coves hidden along desolate stretches of the coast of both Mulhorand and Unther, and on the islands south of the Aldor.  They prey on the smaller coastal trading vessels and occasionally surprise the crews of larger vessels who bring their ships into shore or make emergency repairs.  Thayvian navy crews regularly raid these pirate base; sometimes the pirates disguise themselves as fishermen and try to avoid their notice, though Thayvian marines are not noted for caring who they kill, capture, or throw into slavery.  This has resulted in a considerable number of Mulhorand fishermen being kidnapped by Thay.

Recently, the priests of Anhur have secretly built a large fleet, moored near Sultim.  They have brought many slaves and have trained them in seacraft; they intend to sail against the Aldor and break Thayvian naval domination in the Alamber Sea.  The priests of Anhur hope to persuade the new pharaoh to support this enterprise, as they believe Thay is now weak with internal strife and the Alamber is ripe for the taking.  The result of this battle is yet to be seen.

The priests of Horus-Re are alarmed.  The priests of Anhur are determined to sail in the spring; Thayvian spies have warned the ruler of Aldor of the attack, but the administrators do not believe that Mulhorand, "the senile giant," has the will to fight.

Ship of the Gods

This small island in the Alamber Sea is an active volcano.  Its last eruption was 400 years ago, killing thousands (the island was settled by Unther at the time).  Now, it is used as a haven for pirates.  The volcano has begun to come to life again, and the diviners in Skuld predict that it will issue a cloud of darkness within the next three years that will cover the city in ash.

Major Cities

Skuld

Skuld, City of Shadows, City of Eternity, is the oldest surviving in the Forgotten Realms, with the possible exception of Underhome, the dwarven city in the Great Rift.  Nine years ago, the city celebrated its 3500th anniversary.  It boasts that in that time, no invading army has ever breached its walls, and that no invading army ever will, for Mulhorand is eternal.

While it is generally agreed that Waterdeep is the most splendid city in the Realms, an inhabitant of Skuld would argue heatedly with that statement.  The Skuldians say that no place in the Realms can match the grandeur of the City of the Gods, the great towers in which the manifestations of the gods are housed.  This may be true, but the rest of Skuld is squalid and decrepit, especially by comparison to the inner city.  Ancient homes with patchwork repairs line the city streets.  The markets are small and cluttered in comparison with those of the northern cities; even the palaces of the city officials are rundown.  And, probably most damning of all, Skuld is not a cosmopolitan city.

Elves, halflings, and gnomes are forbidden in its streets, unless they have a letter of entry issued by city bureaucrats or one of the temples.

Half-elves and dwarves may enter, but they may not bear weapons or armor unless a special (and expensive) permit is issued by the city authorities.  As most half-elves and dwarves who do enter Skuld come as part of mercenary companies, this is a good revenue-generating rule.

Visitors to the city are confined to either of the two merchant's wards or the shipyards, and they may not enter the rest of the city.  All wards are surrounded by high walls and heavy, well-gearded gates.

Trade comes in by sea or by the road to Maerlar.  A low seawall serves as a break against tidal waves, natural or otherwise, and protects the city at a distance of three miles from shore.  On the eastern side of the city, there is a large cluster of tenements that have built up around the walls.  This is the slave section; though it's outside the main wall, it is considered to be part of the main city.

Entering through the sea gate, there are two shipyards: the naval yard, which contains Skuld's fleet of 20 old and rotting ships, and the merchant yard.  Seagoing traffic docks at the merchant yard.  Visiting crews are housed in inns located near the docks; this is a rough-and-tumble place.

Licesned merchants may operate businesses and store cargo in the adjacent warehouse district.  The warehouse district was once accessible by drawbridges over the River of Shadows, but that gate has long been closed.

The merchant district contains shops, inns, moneychangers, and stores that supply adventurers, except for weapons and arms; only priests of Horus-Re or Osiris are allowed to sell weaponry.

The eastern gate leads to the road to Maerlar.  This is the most heavily guarded of the gates.  A garrison of 500 mercenaries from Chessenta are housed between an outer and inner gate as a precaution.  The greatest threat to Skuld, in the opinion of its leaders, comes from adventuring parties, not armies.  Adventuring parties can find some inns and stables, but at inflated prices.  This opens into the palace district, where the wealthy of Skuld live, and the palace itself, from which the vizier of Mulhorand and his bureaucrats rule the city and advise the pharaoh.  To the south of the palace district is the crafts district, where goods are manufactured (often by licensed foreigners), and the eastern merchant ward, where more goods are bought and sold.

The central ward is the people's ward.  Here more than 40,000 people are housed - 20,000 slaves (mostly slaves to the priviledged) and 20,000 freemen.  The dwellings can only be described as a sprawling slum, with a few dwellings preserving the distinctive decorative style of Old Mulhorand.  THere are temples and shops intermixed with the dwellings in this area.

The temple of Osiris, on the southern wall adjacent to the merchant and warehouse districts, is the gateway to the catacombs, where the dead of the city are buried.  A number of monsters are known to live in the catacombs and, most notably several families of waere-crocodiles and rakshasas.  The most impressive building is the twin temples of Horus-Re, whose huge pillars rise well above the surrounding houses.  Between the temples is the gate to the City of the Gods, shaped in the symbol of Horus, and a large prayer tower from which the god-kings make pronouncements, usually once every century.

The god-kings dwell in huge towering palaces in the city where only priests may go.  Each palace is an architectural marvel, built thousands of years ago by long-dead slaves.  The tallest tower is that of fallen Re, where the corpse of his manifestation is entombed.  A secret passage connects the palace of the pharaoh with that of his manifestation, and here the pharaoh comes for counsel.  There are reputed to be arsenals of magic within this inner city.

Goods coming into the city are heavily taxed, unless the merchant is chartered by the god-king of Mulhorand, in which case his goods are exempt from taxes.  The priests of Horus-Re control the charters and line their pockets with the moneys gained from them.  Guards in the city are all mercenaries from Chessenta.  They may not possess weapons or armor unless they have a permit from the bureaucrats; they may not cast spells without permission from the temple of Thoth, which charges heavily to grant this right.

There are no establishments that cater to adventurers, though one can usually find work at taverns in the merchant district as a bodyguard or armed escort for caravans.  It is possible to join the city guard, though one must swear total fealty to the god-king and his priests.

The punishment for crimes is often death by decapitation, performed publicly in front of the temple of Horus-Re.  Capital crimes include murder, blasphemy, entering a forbidden area, lying to a priest of Horus-Re, assault against a priest, theft from a priest, cursing a priest, killing a slave without due cause, theft of a lord's property, entry onto a lord's estate without permission, and assault against a guard.

There are trials, and sometimes the defendant can get off with a forced expulsion from Skuld and a bane spell.

The city is supposed to be ruled by the vizier, the strong right hand of the pharaoh.  In truth, the vizier is too busy to run the city, so its affairs are handled by a high-level priest of Horus-Re; it is not considered to be a very great honor.

The current chief administrator of the city is Ceianre of the House of Horus.  The captain of the guards is traditionally appointed by the priests of Anhur, but the priests of Horus-Re have usurped this function, giving it to Teldartham, a champion of the Horus-Re priesthood.  The city itself has an unofficial brotherhood of guardians from the priesthoods of Anhur, Osiris, and Isis: its leader is believed to be Halcaunt, a worshiper of Osiris.  This brotherhood believes that the cut of Set has a base somewhere in Skuld, from which it is conspiring to destroy Mulhorand.  The Brotherhood of Skuld has made some contact with famous adventuring parties and personalities, most notably the Simbul.

Skuld has a population of about 95,000.

Gheldaneth

Gheldaneth is the second largest city in Mulhorand.  Where Skuld is a contrast of high towers and ugly sprawl, Gheldaneth is mostly a sprawl.  There is a large port facility, as goods come by ship from Unthalass and foodstuffs come from the Great Vale by water or land.

The city is governed by the priests of Thoth, and the largest building is not the palace but the great university whose towers line the northern wall of the city.  It is compulsory for every citizen of Gheldaneth to learn how to read, write, count, and to be able to answer simple questions about the history of Mulhorand and its deities.

Even slaves are taught to read and write.  The very best students in Gheldaneth may be accepted as apprentices to the Scribes' Guild, which is one of the most prestigious positions in Mulhorand.  Social class is not a barrier to entry.

Adjacent to the university is the wizard's college, which is open only to the initiates of Thoth.  All new candidates for admission to the college are magically screened to ensure that they are not Thayvian spies trying to learn the secrets of Thoth.  All wizards in Mulhorand must travel here or to the temple in Skuld to study wizardry.

Major temples in Gheldaneth are dedicated to Thoth, Nephthys, Horus-Re, and Isis.  The population of this city is about 80,000.

Neldorild

The fourth largest city in Mulhorand is the coastal city of Neldorild.  This is a city of the rich, where noble families who wish to get away from the politics and woes of the realm come to retire.  It is a relatively new city and slaves and masons still work endlessly on new structures.  It is ruled by the priesthood of Nephthys.  There is also a small port, Rasolind, five miles down the coast, which is used as a supply station for the Mulhorand fishing fleet based in Delgora (the docks used to be in Neldorild, but the fleet was forced out of the city once it became a place for the wealthy).  Theft is a capital offense in Neldorild.

Including its slaves, the population of Neldorild is about 40,000.

Mishtan

One of the number of small towns in the Great Vale, Mishtan's major claim to importance is that it is the gateway to the Land of the Dead, and the burial grounds of the Pharaohs and their families.  New constructions are constantly being built, and the tombs of the pharaohs for the next three generations have been planned; at flood time the town teems with masons, artisans, and slaves.

Mishtan is ruled by the temple of Osiris, which oversees the Land of the Dead.  It has a population of 2,000, but it booms to over 30,000 at construction time; these temporary workers are housed in makeshift dwellings that surround the town.

Sampranasz

This small town is important only because it is the real center of the cult of Set.  Sampranasz has been destroyed three times in its history (first during the Orcgate Wars, and twice since then by natural disaster).

There are many hidden ruins within these walls; these are used by the cult as meeting and worship places.  The town ruler is a military governor (Sanuet) who was appointed and trusted by the priests of Horus-Re but is secretly in the service of Set.

The town is a fishing port.  Its coastline has some marshland where papyrus can be found in abundance.  The town has a population of 3,000; those who do not serve Set disappear very quickly.
This message was last edited by the GM at 04:18, Fri 14 Aug 2009.

Pharaoh Horustep III

Horustep was born in the year 1346 D.R., and ascended the throne in 1357 DR. Despite his youth, he proved an energetic pharaoh, immediately dismissing corrupt advisors and replacing them with wiser ones. In 1358, he was shaken by the Time of Troubles, which effectively ended the days of the Incarnations and God-Kings, and brought the Mulhorand pantheon into the mainstream of Faerun divine law. Horustep has been the chief instrument by which the gods have reacted in Mulhorand, creating new orders, ordering new campaigns against Thay and the sahuagin, forging closer ties between Mulhorand and the West, and (upon the death of Gilgeam) finally launching a "rescue" (others call it an invasion) of shattered Unther.

In 1359, still 13, Horustep became engaged to Korethys, a daughter of House Thulhani, who traced its bloodline to the incarnations of Isis and were often used as their vessels. The love between Horustep and Korethys was genuine and deep, but Koresthys was murdered by the vengeful Set priestess Nekaset, and Horustep has not taken a wife since her death. Only recently has Horustep become romantically involved again; he's become enamoured with the foreign mercenary Kendera, and the bureaucrats of Mulhorand are alarmed by their reckless pharoah's closeness with an “outsider”. Although Horustep is closer to the West than any Pharoah has ever been, the West generally fears or mistrusts him, especially because of Mulhorand's invasion of Unther and its continuing practice of slavery.

Horsutep has been given numerous nicknames and accolades: Scion of the Sun, the Rising Khopesh, Staff of the Gods, Paladinmaker, He Who Hunts Serpents, Nemesis of Thay, Last of the God-Kings, and the Warrior Prince. The latter is no mere boast; unlike other pharaohs in the last millenium, Horustep has gone directly into battle on numerous occasions. He has been credited with several victories against Thay, and he has also joined in the Unther campaign. Horustep stood at the head of Mulhorand's army when Unthalass fell (primarily to make certain that the capital, once the most magnificent city in the world, was treated with respect by the invading Mulhorandi).

Horustep's role in the rousing of Mulhorand has made him the most beloved pharaoh in centuries, but the most hated by the bureaucracy. Nonetheless, he's proven as skillful a politician as his mentor, the now deceased vizier Rezim, and no faction in Mulhorand would dare to openly challenge his authority (though many try to circumvent it).

Derlaunt

Derlaunt, cousin to Tholaunt, is the ruler of the city of Gheldaneth.  He is a wisened old man, having attained the power he sought after many years of struggle, and now finds himself too old to enjoy it in the way he desired.

Derlaunt has found himself bored of late, and turned to alleviate his boredom through archeology.  Hundreds of Statues-That-Walk dot the landscape in Mulhorand; Derlaunt thought he found a way to animate one of them and put it under his control.  If he had been successful, it would have given him a lot of prestige; unfortunately the ritual backfired and all of the statues were animated at once.  And Derlaunt controls none of them.

Derlaunt is an easily irritated old man.  He is extremely snobbish toward all but Mulhorand nobles.  Any attempt to accuse him of wrongdoing will likely cause him to order the town guard to throw the accusers in prison.

Derlaunt is a wrinkled old mulan who wears wizard's robes adorned with a scarab of life.

Halcaunt

Halcaunt is the most tireless fighter against the cult of Set in all of Mulhorand.  He continually warned pharaoh Akonhorus and his servants of the threat of Set; he is something of a pariah among the bureaucracy after his prediction came true.  Nonetheless, Halcaunt continues to urge for Mulhorand to be purged once and for all of the influence of Set.  He has formed the Brotherhood of Skuld, a group of adventurers, to assist in this purpose.

Halcaunt is known to be a grim, overly serious individual.  In many ways, he's more like a Westerner than a Mulhorandi.

He is fanatically driven in his quest to purge Mulhorand of all traces of the cult of Set.

There are other members of the Brotherhood of Skuld, including Urius - a mage based in Gheldaneth - and a number of priests of Osiris who see Halcaunt as a leader.  The main priesthood of Osiris treats Halcaunt as a fanatic, a source of embarassment.

Halcaunt is a tall muscular mulan.  He wears armor that has been painted blue and a helm shaped like the hawk-symbol of Osiris.

Hethhab

Hethhab is the former incarnation of Anhur.  He has disguised himself as a warrior of Anhur and has distinguished himself as a slayer of monsters.  To prevent a personality cult from forming around him, Rezim, vizier of Mulhorand, has appointed Hethhab Defender of the Eastern Way.  This post confers the responsibiltiy to protect the eastern sections of Mulhorand from bandits and monsters.  It is a job with a very high turnover rate due to death, as the monsters in the region are quite deadly.

Hethhab rides with a company of six disguised divin minions of Anhur, wandering the east to protect Mulhorand from monsters.

That Hethhab is still alive is a source of considerable annoyance to Rezim, who does not suspect his true identity.

Knesha

Knesha was a scribe for the bureaucrats in Skuld when she made a mistake in calculating the taxes.  This mistake cost the treasury thousands of pharaohs.

Knesha was imprisoned for her error, but she escaped and fled to the north.  She is considered an outlaw, but as no law exists in Outer Sultim, no one bothers her.

Knesha's chief talent is satirical poems.  Knesha's most frequent choice is Rezim.  She is rather bored with her life as a bard; she would rather go on great adventures.  Knesha's favorite pastime is studying the places where magical items were lost in battle long ago.  There is no greater authority (save for the incarnation of Thoth) on the lost relics and artifacts of the south in the entire Realms.

Knesha is a beautiful turami female known for high-pitched laughter (which has earned her the nickname "Hyena").

Knesha is willing to show parties of adventurers where these items are located, but her price is steep.

Shutep

There are many people who have tried to rob the graves of the god-kings.  Some have tried to use brute force, others have employed stealth.  Few of these thieves have been as resourceful as Shutep of Jhalhoran.

Shutep is a confidence man.  He likes to manipulate parties of non-Mulhorandi, especially greedy adventuring companies.

Typically he joins up with such a party, earns their trust, tells them a wild story that involves them breaking into a major tomb in the Land of the Dead, then he grabs a major treasure and leaves the company stuck with the consequences.  He's not malevolent, just greedy and somewhat cowardly.

Shutep is a well-built mulan male with curly hair and a scar on his chest.  He typically passes himself off as a merchant, and is skilled at disguise.

Shutep wears a ring of dishonesty on one of his toes; it enables him to tell lies that seem like the truth to detect lie spells.

The Fangs of Set

The current incarnation of Set is Seti, who lives in disguised form in Skuld; he is a merchant who travels the coast of the Alamber Sea, corrupting those he contacts.  His will is primarily carried out by four noted henchmen: Hodkamset, Nekiset, Hamsetis, and Suliyar, together referred to as the Fangs of Set.

The Fangs of Set are a team of adventurers in the service of Set, Lord of Night, Plague of the Wastes, the Striking Serpent of Hate, He Who Has Eyes In The Shadows of Vultures, etc. Around 1330 DR, Set became dissatisfied with his outcast state, which led to the cultivation of four souls, powerful enough to do his bidding, and cunning enough to destroy the most powerful champions of the land of Eternity. The Fangs first struck in CY 1351, assassinating the Pharoah’s champion, Valest-re. Five years later, they murdered Pharoah Akonhorus, which led to the ascension of the current Pharoah Horustep. Since their plan to dethrone Horustep was foiled in CY 1366 by the Paladins of the Risen Scepter, they’ve remained quiet, but now that the Mulhorandi are spreading themselves into Unther, the Fangs are seeing new opportunities and are becoming active again.

The Fangs of Set have major bases in Skuld, Sampranasz, and in the tower of Set within Raurin, and minor bases scattered throughout the Old Empires and Southern Thay. The chief members of the Fangs are extremely powerful and dangerous men, augmented by Set’s magicks with abilities that place them well beyond human ken.

Hodkamset

Hadkamset is the most powerful wizard in the service of Set.

Originally his name was Setostris; he was one of the most powerful wizards in the service of Osiris - a powerful necromancer in the service of the Lord of the Dead.  He made enemies in the priesthood of Horus-Re, who feared his power and attempted to discredit him.

Setostris's reputation was ruined, and since he recieved no help from his own priesthood, he faked his own death, changed his appearance and turned to the cult of Set.  Since then he has become the right hand of Seti, the current incarnation of Set.

Hodkamset is an ambitious man.  He has many contacts in Sampranasz, and he has spies throughout Mulhorand.  He has an alliance with Zhentil Keep.  He sends followers of Set throughout the Realms in search of items of power.  Hodkamset has quite a few of his own, including a Staff of the Necromancer and a Jewel of Karathoth.

Hodkamset's major schemes are twofold.

First, he intends to kidnap the pharaoh and replace him with an evil shapechanger, a rakshasa in the service of Set.  This rakshasa would create chaos in the priesthood of Horus-Re, and allow Seti to take the throne and lead Mulhorand to its rightful place as the sole power in the Realms.

Second, Hodkamset has put together a team of resourceful and powerful servants of Set.  This group travels the Realms in search of lost magic; he hopes to have enough powerful artifacts at his command that he could wage war against the manifestations of the gods themselves.

As one might guess, Hodkamset is something of a megalomaniac.  He is determined to lead Set to glory, destroy the priests of Horus-Re, and bring down the gods themselves.

Hodkamset is also extremely devious; he should never be underestimated.  He always travels in disguise and always makes his contacts under an assumed name, so that no one knows that Hodkamset really exists.  He has magical items that prevent scrying, detection of alignment, and true seeing.  Hodkamset uses spells to disguise his appearance; typically he travels as a little old lady, is middle aged, with long silvery hair that suggests age, but he has a young face.  He is of mulan racial stock.

Nekiset

Nekiset is a turami female of great beauty and evil.  She is the leader of the Fangs of Set, an adventuring party in Set's servive, which she controls by sheer ruthlessness.  She is very close to Hodkamset; the few people who know the both well have speculated that they are lovers.

Nekiset was raised in Sampranasz and spent her early days as a slave.  She terrorized the other children and became the leader of the slave group when she was very young, a fact that impressed her master.  While passing through Sampranasz she came to the attention of Seti, incarnation of Set, who was impressed by her devotion and her capacity for evil.  Nekiset was ordered freed from her life as a slave so that she could join Set's priesthood.  Nekiset proved to be extremely gifted; she rose in a remarkably short time to be one of the most powerful priests in Mulhorand.

Nekiset's goal is the same as Hodkamset's; to overthrow the pharaoh and the priests of Horus-Re.  She was responsible for organizing the assassination of Pharaoh Akonhorus II, through careful use of charm magic on the pharaoh's bodyguards while the pharaoh slept.  There are times when she wonders about Hodkamset's sanity, but she admires his brilliance and his cruelty.  Eventually, she realizes she will have to destroy Hodkamset to take her rightful place at Set's right hand, but she is willing to work with him until they achieve domination over Mulhorand.

She is subordinate to Hodkamset, whom (despite a partnership that has lasted for over fifteen years) she greatly despises. Kayris, a half-devil who's also in Set's service, is now her consort and enthusiastic partner in her schemes.

Nekiset is a tall, dark-skinned turami female with a shaven head.  She wears dark robes with the insignia of Set.

Kayris

The son of a captured paladin of Horus-Re and an erinyes, Kayris was brought from Hell to Set's Raurin stronghold to be the consort of Nekiset and learn from her the cruel arts. This bat-winged half-fiend has become Nekiset's bodyguard and consort. He is also Nekiset's puppet, but he's starting to learn how to assert his independence - and enjoy it. He employs a two weapon fighting style with a spiked gauntlet as his secondary weapon, and loves to target paladins as the special object of his ire.

Hamsetis

Named even before the greatest Osirian paladins and Anhurite champions, Hamsetis the Lion-Devil is the greatest fighter in Mulhorand, rivaled in the other Old Empires only by King Hippartes of Akanax and Shurrupak of Unther. Hamsetis is an escaped Untheric gladiator slave who had been tortured by the Red Wizards during a long career in Thayan arenas, and who was fashioned by Set into his perfect champion of death. Despite being the most honorable and goodly of the Fangs, Hamsetis is Set's favorite, gifted with many unique magic items and a special steed. In a parley, Hamsetis is the most reasonable of the Fangs, and by far the most likely to keep his word, but in battle he's merciless, cunning, powerful, cruel, and resourceful.

Recently, Set has encouraged him to follow an assassin’s path, and while he’s proven extraordinarily capable at it, Hamsetis never uses his assassin abilities unless he's been ordered by Set, or he's fighting the Red Wizards; and even then, his assassin strike doesn’t resemble a sneak attack as much it does an inspired quick-kill. For a time, it looked as though he had tired of the petty infighting within the Fangs and turned away from Set, but the recent war in Unther and the destruction of his Untheric homeland has hardened him against the lords of Mulhorand, and lately he has fought with a fury that even the Osirians fear.

Suliyar

Suliyar is a rakshasa rajah, outcast from its homeland east of Raurin.  He was ruler of a great tribe of rakshasas, but he was deposed and sent to wandering.  He was found by Nekiset, who recruited him into the worship of Set.

Suliyar is a proud, savage creature; he believes that serving Set will bring him the power and the prestige that he is due.  He believes that Set has influences that extend beyond the Realms, and that one day he will conquer a large dominion and rule as a maharajah.  Suliyar enjoys hunting and playing with humans, and regularly stalks the streets of Skuld.

He especially enjoys killing initiates of Horus-Re.  He doesn't particularly care for the other members of the Fangs, but sometimes finds their deviousness amusing.

In 1367 DR, Suliyar again attempted to seize the throne of Mulhorand. All of his exiled rakshasa companions died in the attempt, (except for his son Bindjahal), and the paladin Halcaunt the Risen Judge cut off his left arm. Suliyar has slowly licked his wounds since, but his remaining claw has been enchanted by Set to become an even greater weapon than his two claws had been, and Suliyar is once again ready to walk the streets of Skuld, thirsting for revenge and the taste of human meat.

Bindjahal

Bindjahal is the son of Suliyar and a rakshasi companion. Still young by rakshasa standards, Bindjahal has been nursed by his father and by Set into a fine instrument of evil. He is secretly the ally of Hodkamset, and has been ordered to kill his father should Suliyar ever become a thorn in the Setite's plans, however, young Bindjahal is beginning to wonder if he can't twist the machinations in ways Hodkamset doesn't suspect. Bindjahal is aided by Koort, a scheming fiendish monkey who loves petty acts of mischief (particularly fouling food or backpacks with urine and/or feces).

The Sunken Fangs

There is much work for Set to do in Mulhorand and Unther, and while the Fangs of Set are capable lieutenants and enforcers, they can’t be everywhere at once. The Sunken Fangs were gathered between 1367 and the present day to serve as Set’s adventuring arm – when he hears about a valuable item in a lost tomb, the Sunken Fangs are the ones he sends to retrieve it. The Sunken Fangs are the closest thing to a traditional adventuring party in the Church of Set; they typically number six members, with four members being reasonably constant.

Khoramun

One of the more recent additions to the Fangs, this Genasi served in the Mulhorand army in Unther, where he converted to the air deity Shaundackal. Because of his natural thieving tendencies, he could not stay faithful long: he attempted to steal some major magicks from that priesthood, and was forced to flee both the militia and the service. Hunted by his former priesthood, he lived the life of an independent thief in Sultim, where his competence drew him to the attention of Set. Khoramun serves as both a spy, and a leader of the “Sunken Fangs”, a party of treasure hunters who raid Mulhorand’s tombs to steal objects for Set.

Khoramun is a tall Genasi woman, well above six feet in height, with white hair and pale skin. She typically wears gowns of black silk and spun gold.

Aldrososet

Aldrososet is the “Paladin of Storms”, a protégé of Hamsetis, He was originally a failed cleric of Osiris who was expelled from that priesthood for permitting corruption. A capable and agile fighter, he’s acquired a gruesome reputation for torturing and disfiguring the paladins of Osiris, and burning down several libraries of Thoth. He’s a tall, bald, good looking young Mulan male who is unswervingly polite even to his most hated foes, always keeps his word, and is genuinely respectful toward those who show courage and strength in the face of pain. Aldrososet has joined the Sunken Fang for practical reasons; he’s obsessed with finding legendary lost relics of Osiris that will permit him to escape his judgment at the time of death.

Hethkepera

Hethkepera was the daughter of a family of Set worshippers, cultivated at an early age by the Cult for her natural magical talents. After several years as a succcessful adventurer, Hethkepra gave herself the name “The Ambitious” and openly declared that she wants to replace Nekiset on the Fangs. After a few attempts to indirectly kill her failed, the two women reached a secret accommodation failed, and now Hethkepera is a confidante of Set’s priestess, though the two women have kept the alliance a secret. Hethkepera’s current goal is to augment her supply of magic items, and find a big, dumb warrior to become her husband so she can bear offspring for Set.

Hethkepera is a short, muscular Mulan woman, who’s given to wearing black robes covered with hieroglyphs and snake sigils.

Hadro

Hadro, Singer of Dark Praises, is the most accomplished bard in the service of the Lord of Night. An exile from Arrabar, Hadro joined several Chessentan cults before falling in with a serpent cult that worshipped Mulhorandi vipers, which led him to Set worship. Hadro turned to evil out of “artistic choice”; he believes that darker emotions produce richer forms of art. He and Aldrososet have become good friends, and he often provides musical accompaniment for Aldrososet’s torture sessions just so he can sit in on them and observe them (he believes they’re inspirational). Hadro also sees murder as an artform, though he’s not a casual killer. Hadro likes to collect obscure machines and musical instruments, and lately has developed an odd obsession about finding lost devices of the Imaskari.
This message was last edited by the GM at 04:18, Fri 14 Aug 2009.

Oasis of the Sphinxlets

Created: Unknown

Ages ago, Sphinxlets, tiny faerie-like androsphinxes, began to gather at a strange oasis in the Raurin desert near the Eastern Border of Mulhorand. Alas, in 428 DR, the Oasis was attacked by a most dreaded creature, the Imaskaraloth, who (like the less powerful skriaxit) were a plague from Lost Imaskar on those who had caused its destruction. A great sphinx defended the oasis and was slain, but he cast a spell with his dying breath that took the oasis out of time so it would not be destroyed. Only those who can find a way to open the timegate and defeat the Imaskaraloth will be able to free the sphinxlets, return the oasis back to Mulhorand (and gain its not inconsequential treasures).

The Timegate requires a special key (possessed by a descendent of the great sphinx who doesn’t want to give it to you) that has to be placed at the right spot at the right time to open the gate. Once the gate is opened, the Imaskaraloth comes…

When the oasis is restored, Mulhorandi wizards will be able to call upon sphinxlets as special familiars. They look like housecat-sized androsphinxes.

The Shrine of Nekhtet

Created: –1067 DR

This is not a dungeon at all, but a place of pilgrimage. Located on the side of one of the Sunrise Mountains, just north of the Ganathwood, it is a holy place where Mulhorandi warriors go to endure trials.

Nekhtet was the troubled queen of Mulhorand who lost her husband and sons in the Orcgate Wars. After seeing their defiled bodies, she chose to commit suicide by locking herself inside a shrine, away from the tombs of the Great Vale. She also decided that she could not bear the sight of her family, even after they were healed in the afterlife, because of the memory of those wounds would renew her grief, so she bargained with Osiris not to take her ka. Though he knew this was madness, Osiris decided that her service to the gods had entitled her to a boon, and thus he granted her prayer. Thus Nekhtet damned herself to long torment in this world.

To ease her suffering, the gods granted Nekhtet great powers within in her domain. Nekhtet tests and tries Mulhorandi warriors who enter the tomb, using the magicks of the gods. Nekhtet hopes to create warriors worthy of defending the realm. Those who fail die, though the sight of Nekhtet’s beauty has tormented some of them, and they too have forsaken death to serve them in her tomb, living mummies.

The guardianship of the Shrine is the traditional duty of the Priests of Anhur, but it was stripped from them twenty years ago by the Vizier Rezim and given to the Priests of Horus-Re, who neglected it. In 1370, a force of gnolls and Red Wizards attempted to sack the tomb, but all of them were destroyed. The priests of Anhur have been lobbying for greater protection for the shrine, but the war in Unther has proven a distraction.

The shrine has six levels, each of which were devoted to a theme: Childhood, Innocence, Passion, Experience, Hardship, and Death. The theme is mostly expressed in art on the sides of the shrine, but one Magick Tests related to each theme is present on each level of the shrine.

There are twelve eternal cats of Isis who prowl throughout the shrine. The cats will harm no one, but if one speaks with them, they will gift you with a word of wisdom or madness. Those who put together the cat’s speech in the correct order will grow wiser

Whoever makes it to the bottom of the shrine will receive a treasure. It will not be a great treasure, but it will save the person’s life.

Osiris did not intend for Nekhtet’s torment to be eternal; one day, a warrior will come to the Queen and give her three seeds: the seed of life, love, and joy. When the Queen has eaten from flowers grown from these three seeds, her life will be restored and she will be taken back to her palace in Skuld.

The Thiefkiller

Created: 345 DR

Twenty miles southeast of Maerlar, visible from the Road to the Dawn, is a great tower whose base is four connected giant limestone androsphinxes, The basalt tower is one of the tallest free standing structures in Mulhorand, an octagonal monolith that rises four hundred feet above the plain to a sharp point at its peak.

The tower has many names; Mulhorand’s priests call it the Sword-Tower of Khopatunme, or the Severing Point, but most locals call it the Thiefkiller. In 340 DR, there were several years of famine in the Mulhorand, and people suddenly took to thieving and graverobbing to survive. The officials of the Empire were not particularly understanding, and a clever Thothian mage named Khopatunme, decided to challenge the thieves by building a tower that was filled with traps, a place designed to trap and kill thieves like vermin. He commissioned a combination of Mulhorandi and dwarven engineers to build it (the only time they’re known to have collaborated on a major engineering project). A force of slaves laid the foundation and built the upper levels of the dungeon, but the rest of its dungeons and the tower were constructed by summoned Earth elementals, with stone quarried from the Earth Plane. Even with magical help, the tower took three years to complete.

After the tower was completed, Khopatunme and four archmages of Thoth laid enchantments to secure its defenses, and high priestesses of Nephtys enchanted the glyphs. Khopatunme placed three great treasures within the tower: a sword made from silver (then a much rarer metal than gold in Mulhorand), an enchanted golden chariot, and a giant ruby. Thieves have managed to retrieve the sword and the chariot, but the ruby has never been touched. Furthermore, Mulhorandi priests ritually “feed” treasure to the giant sphinxes at the base of the dungeon every decade; the treasure is magically placed, and traps are magically set around them.

The Thiefkiller is the one dungeon in Mulhorand that’s open to anyone to enter. Its door is open, and there are no traps at the entrance.

The dungeon has its guardians: dust devils and elementals that are summoned by traps. (The dungeon is sometimes called the Dungeon of Dust by those who’ve survived it, as there are more than a few choking traps). In 1256 DR, Set “fed” the dungeon several enchanted scrolls that “wrote” glyphs of summoning undead into the structure, so there are undead in the lower levels, including some unique mummies that are not to be found elsewhere in Mulhorand.

The dungeon contains the tower, a base level, and seven underground levels. The tower, the base, and the first three levels have been mapped, though the maps are not widely distributed.

The Dragon Mortuary of Mot-nefer-mose

Created: 627 DR

Mulhorand, Empire of Eternity, is a land of remarkable sights and ancient magicks, most of which are still only unconfirmed rumors or unspoken mysteries in the West, and there are tombs to hundreds of men and creatures who buried themselves deep in stone vaults to await the judgment of the gods. One of the most unusual (and spectacular) is the dragon mortuary known as the Jaws of the Dead. It is located near the town of Pe-rethor, which is located about thirty miles east of Klondor and connected by the brown road that follows the course of the River of Spears.

This avenue, known as the Mourning Road, leads into the Sword Mountains. The road is ten miles in length its flagstones, quarried from nearby mountains, are limestone paved with bitumen mined from desert mires. Life-sized brown dragon sculptures, also carved from the mountain stone, line the road at quarter mile intervals.

At the end of the road, a gigantic brown dragon statue, the size of an elder wyrm, juts out of the mountain side. Its jaws are the entrance into a large underground complex. The jaws open of their own accord only twice every year, about a month before and after midsummer, when the sun, setting low between two hills on the western horizon, shines directly on a spot between the dragon's eyes.

The brown dragon is a creature to be feared, but is also curiously revered by the nomads and villages of eastern Mulhorand. Of all brown dragons, the most legendary is Mot (some say it is short for "Motnefer- mose", though the names of a great brown wyrm grow over time, and it's unlikely that's its full name). He had long preyed upon all travelers who ventured in the Wastes of the Northwest Sword, and had amassed a vast treasury, which he kept in a great cavern beneath Mount Midalheh, a tall peak which is often reflected in the waters of the Lonely Lake. One day, Mot was visited by three men, a wizard, a warrior, and a scholar. The wizard tried to magically ensnare him and was eaten; the warrior tried to slay him with a gleaming khopesh and was consumed, and finally the scholar approached him. Mot expected the scholar to try to steal something from his hoard, but as he had a belly full of warrior and wizard, the dragon did not feel a need to eat him right away, so he tried to ensnare him in conversation and determine his purpose. The scholar said that he came to the dragon with a riddle, and then he asked:

"What dreams false, but remains true to itself; what darts like a sparrow in a fickle wind, yet is steady as earth; what bends like dragon wings, though neither hand nor claw touches it."

The dragon could not answer the riddle. He finally ate the scholar, but the riddle gnawed at him as though he were the one who had been devoured. So he traveled west into Mulhorand, and he came to the gates of Skuld in the time of the god-king Akerhorus the Falcon, and he bowed before him, and begged him for an answer to the riddle.

"I shall not answer this," Akerhorus proclaimed. "That is your punishment for the death of the scholar." Then the dragon offered him his hoard and the hoard of three other dragons, but the Pharaoh would not relent. The tearful dragon begged the Pharaoh to name any deed he might accomplish to gain the answer to the riddle, and the pharaoh finally smiled. "Surrender your life to Mulhorand, and when you die, I shall build you a great tomb. The legend of your riddle will spread throughout the lands of the Mulan, and one day a scholar shall come to your tomb and answer it, and then you will know peace." And the dragon, seeing no other way to achieve his goal, agreed.

Mot became the most feared weapon of Mulhorand, for he was a wyrm of great antiquity and cunning. Twice he fought back the servants of the Tanray to the south (half-demon descendents of the Imaskari who were a continual peril in those days) and twice he drove demons and sorcerers from the northern border. Eventually, he was transformed into a creature of matchless honor, and even the noblest heroes of Mulhorand were proud to call him "their brother". But even the midsummer sun must set, and so in the end, in the Year of the Eagle and the Falcon, time finally took its toll on the aged Mot, and when he closed his eyes to rest and did not open them again. A host of slaves bore his body to the mortuaries of Klondor, where the embalmers and a half-dragon sem-priest labored for thirteen months to ready his body for the test of Ma'at, while the Pharaoh Atumhotep completed the tomb. Finally, he and his hoard were placed in the tomb, and the doors were closed but not permanently sealed, for as Akerhorus promised nearly two centuries earlier, one day a scholar would come to his tomb, a sarcophagus of unmatched size and splendor, and proclaim the answer. So far, none have answered the riddle correctly, and anyone who has entered the tomb has either been disappointed, or devoured.

The tomb of Mot is six levels in depth, each composed of grand chambers (which were needed to bear a dragon's body), exquisitely painted, and lit with magical lamps. Treasure is plentiful. The tomb is patrolled by the undead guardians of Mot (half-dragon mummies!) who know when any object has been disturbed and will attack them - if people enter the tomb but do not touch the treasures, they're left unmolested.

An old map of the first four levels has passed between various adventuring companies over the centuries - it's currently a forgotten item in the records of a retired adventurer in the Vast. Several false maps exist as well. The scholar's riddle is well known, and no one answer is universally agreed upon; two adventurers are known to have descended into the tomb itself, offered the answers "hope" and "wind" and were subsequently devoured by the mummified dragon.

It is known that the third level of the tomb requires a singer of exceptional skill to befriend some angry spirits, the fourth level of the tomb requires someone to win a game of skill and chance, and the fifth level of the tomb is called the Teeth of Ma'at, which includes a door that can only be opened by a person of exceptional purity who is willing to make a terrible sacrifice. But if someone were to descend to the dragon's tomb and answer it correctly, huge wealth would be his, for the location of the dragon's hoard has remained a mystery for centuries.

Halls of The Imprisoned Faithful

Created: 1303 DR

Along the shore of the Lonely Lake east of Mulhorand, the wizard Khoresvent secretly gathered engines and other artifacts of Mulhorand’s days of technological supremacy. Khoresvent built a tunnel into a large underwater cavern, drained the cavern, ad built an immense complex, full of clocks, pumps, and other mechanical marvels.

Unfortunately, his efforts attracted the notice of the priesthood of Thoth, who had forbade the use of the old lore. Even more unfortunate, Khoresvent was experimenting in stealing people’s life forces and trapping their ka in mechanical beetles, which would burrow into his constructs and bring them to life. The greatest heroes of their day were sent to defeat Khoresvent to punish him for his blasphemies. The final battle brought down the cavern on them all. But to their horror, the Mulhorandi learned that Khoresvent had constructed magical wards to keep souls from flying to the afterlife, so the heroes did not receive their proper judgment. They were trapped in death. Furthermore, the entrance to the Halls is protected by maze spells and other wards, and no one has found them since the Holocaust (Ceveraunt son of Halcaunt spent three years in vain trying to locate them); but they’ve been thoroughly proofed against divine protection. (Khoresvent had no love of the Mulhorandi priests or their gods).

The Halls of the Imprisoned Faithful are a large underwater complex with about six areas of dungeons and workshops, containing trapped objects that appear benign (such as mechanical scarabs), or wooden dolls that come to life with the abilities of assassins.

The Door of A Thousand Selves

Created: 1351 DR

Not so much a dungeon as a very unusual trading spot, anonymity in this underground bazaar in Outer Sultim is guaranteed by one very unusual protection – everyone sees everyone else who enters the bazaar as versions of themselves, so that if twenty people are in the bazaar with you, all twenty of them look and sound just like you. People with largely different physical characteristics may appear to be distorted versions of you: an obese man will appear to be a slightly pudgy version of yourself, a very feminine woman will appear to be a slightly feminine version of a male character, etc.

Non-human creatures appear to be close to normal size, but even they have one disorienting feature – their faces appear to be yours, so that if seven cats walk into the bazaar, all seven cats have their face and meow or catarwaul in your voice.

Goods found at the bazaar are usually excellent in quality and often highly illegal. It’s also a favorite place for people to pass information in secrecy, though both the Thayans and the Church of Anhur station agents here.

Below the Door is a dungeon complex called the House of Ten Thousand Lies, where (in addition to the same magic as on the surface, illusory versions of people’s selves appear and attempt to persuade people to confess their past misdeeds and question the direction of their lives (how they’ve lived, where they’re going, etc.). The illusions also discourage people from seeking the house’s treasure vault (which lie well underground) and try to lead people into traps if they travel too deep within the complex. The surroundings will also shift form so that everyone recognizes them as a place that’s familiar to them at some time in their lifetime

True seeing will not function within the Door and the House, nor will dispel magic or greater dispel. A limited wish will clear up the illusions for one round. A wish or a miracle will allow people to see their true form for up to an hour.

The source of the magic of the Door of a Thousand Selves is a complete mystery, but many suspect an illusolich who’s a member of the cult of Mask (which is quite prevalent in the area).
This message was last edited by the GM at 04:18, Fri 14 Aug 2009.

Sages and bards throughout Faerun tell fantastic stories of the first human empires, which arose in the far eastern lands uncounted years ago.  Between the dusty plains of the Raurin Desert and the icy northern reaches of the Great Glacier, five different human empires grew mighty under the direction of their godlike rulers.  The people of these empires practiced slavery on a scale unknown to any race except the yuan-ti, committed arcane atrocities of great magnitude, and waged catastrophic wars in which great armies clashed and untold thousands died.  Centuries of conflict, destruction, and imperial decline eventually wiped these empries from the face of Faerun, leaving innumerable ruins across the eastern portion of the continent.  A wealth of fabulous riches and forgotten loreis hidden within some of these shattered remnants od the past, awaiting discovery by the bold and adventurous.

The eastern empires of old were ruled by absolute tyrants with limitless ambition.  The first of them was the human realm of Imaskar - a mysterious kingdom of power-mad artificers determined to achieve arcane supremacy.  They used their magic to dominate others and even reached into other worlds to enslave the people there.  Emboldened by their successes, the Imaskari wizards grew so arrogant and audacious that they dared to defy the gods - an act that led to their downfall.  With the aid of their own deities, the slaves threw off the chains of their Imaskari masters and founded the twin dynasties of Mulhorand and Unther.

The northern empires of Narfell and Raumathar had far humbler beginnings.  Warrior bands from both nations had once served as mercenaries in the armies of Unther and Mulhorand, and this association with the two southern empires sparked imperial desires in the Nar and Raumathari rulers.  Numerous kingdoms in northern Faerun were soon united under an evil emperor beholden to fiendish lords, and the new empire, which was called Narfell, became a twisted land haunted by sinister demon-worshipers.  Raumvirans turned to arcane warfare, and its strength came from its warrior wizards and their fell battle-magic.  Raumathari mages created armies of constructs armed with weapons that were a fearsome blend of sword and sorcery and used them to conquer the surrounding territory.  Throughout the ensuing centuries, Narfell and Raumathar warred ceaselessly over land and resources.  The two empires remained bitter enemies and eventually began a war so utterly consuming that it resulted in their mutual annihilation.

-8350 DR

Imaskari tribes settle a vast, fertile plain in the area that will later become the Raurin Desert.

-8123 DR

Imaskari artifcers create the first permanent extradimensional space.  Their fascination with such magic soon transforms Imaskari city design.

-7975 DR

Inupras, the Imperial City of Imaskar, is founded.  The first Imaskari emperor, Umyatin, assumes the title of lord artifcer.

-6422 DR

The Imaskari city of Solon is founded.

-4370 DR

A suspicious plague decimates Imaskari cities.

-4366 DR

Imaskari artificers open twin portals to another world and magically abduct thousands of humans to serve as slaves.  The artificers then erect a planar barrier to prevent contact between the slaves and their deities.  Over time, the slaves intermarry with the Imaskari, and their descendants become a race in their own right that is later called the Mulan.

-3891 DR

Under orders from Lord Artificer Omanond, Imaskari artificers create the Imaskarcana - seven items in which the empire's immense magical lore is recorded for all eternity.

-3234 DR

The Imaskari outpost known as Metos is founded in Methwood.

-2489 DR

The deities of the Imaskari slaves bypass the planar barrier by sending physical manifestations and incarnations of themselves to Toril via the Astral Planes.  Their first divine minions are anointed, and the Imaskari slaves revolt against their masters.

-2488 DR

Horus slays Lord Artificer Yuvaraj, Emperor of Imaskar.  Inupras falls, marking the end of the Imaskar Empire.  The devastation wrought in the empire's fall turns the site into the Raurin Desert.

-2487 DR

The Imaskari's former slaves migrate westward to the shores of the Alamber Sea.  Imaskari refugees flee to the Underdark, taking the Third Imaskarcana with them.

-2481 DR

Ilphemon, an Imaskari lord, founds the hidden city of Deep Imaskar in the Earthroot area of the Underdark.

-2135 DR

Some of the Imaskari's former slaves found the city of Skuld, which soon becomes the capital of a new nation called Mulhorand.

-2087 DR

Other former slaves of Imaskar build a city called Unthalass, which becomes the capital of a new nation called Unther.

-1967 DR

The first Mulhorand-Unther war begins.

-1961 DR

The leaders of Mulhorand and Unther agree on a common border - the River of Swords.

-1500 DR

Mulhorandi expansion results in the settlement of the Priador and annexation of Murghom, the Plains of Purple Dust, and the Raurin Desert.  Untheric expansion results in the settlement of the Wizard's Reach and much of the Eastern Shaar.

-1482 DR

Mulhorand conquers the eastern realm of Semphar.

-1250 DR

Untheric expansion north from the Wizard's Reach meets with resistance from the star elves of Yuirwood.  Similar expansion near the Great Rift generates conflict with gold dwarves.

-1124 DR

The Mulhorandi outpost of Semkhrun is founded in Semphar.

-1081 DR

The Mulhorandi wizard Thayd and his coconspirators rebel against the empire and are defeated.  Thayd is executed.

-1075 DR

The Orcgate Wars begin in the region that is now Thay.  Renegade Mulhorandi wizards employ Imaskari poral magic to open planar gates to an orc world.  Mulhorand hires Nar, Raumathari, Rashemi, and Sossrim mercenaries to fight the orc invaders.

-1071 DR

The orc god Gruumsh kills the Mulhorandi deity Ra in the first known deicide.  The Untheric gods Inanna, Girru, Ki, Marduk, Nanna-Sin, Nergal, and Utu are also slain by orc deities.

-1069 DR

The Orcgate is destroyed, and the invading orcs are defeated in the Priador.

-1050 DR

Set murders Osiris.

-1048 DR

Isis resurrects Osiris.  Horus-Re battles Set and becomes chief of the Mulhorandi pantheon.  The First Mulhorand Empire ends.

-970 DR

The Nentyarch of Tharos builds his capital at Dun-Tharos and forges the Crown of Narfell.  He begins conquering the surrounding Nar kingdoms and uniting them under his rule.

-946 DR

The nentyarch's armies destroy Shandaular, the capital of Ashanath.  All the Nar kingdoms are united into an empire called Narfell.

-900 DR

The Nar and Raumathari Empires rise to prominence.  The Raumvirans establish Winterkeep.

-734 DR

Gilgeam becomes god-king of Unther.  The First Untheric Empire comes to an end.

-623 DR: Year of the Clipped Wings

Narfell's attempt to invade Mulhorand and Unther by sea fails.

-425 DR: Year of Ancestral Voices

Paladins of Osiris destroy the Mulhorandi city of Sekras.

-160 DR: Year of the Stone Giant

Narfell and Raumathar begin their final war - a decade-long cataclysm that involves the summoning of demon lords and an avatar of Kossuth.  A secret Raumathari sisterhood is formed to preserve Raumathar's lore.

-135 DR: Year of Old Beginnings

The Mulhorandi found Kensten (modern Bezantur) on the coast of Wizard's Reach.

-82 DR: Year of Witches

A cladestine order of masked witches emerges near Lake Tirulag and makes itself known to the folk of Rasheman.

-75 DR: Year of the Leather Shield

An alliance of witches and barbarians overthrows the demon lord Eltab and forms the nation of Rasheman.

108 DR: Year of the Flood

The Alamber River floods, devastating Unthalass.

202 DR: Year of the Fanged Gauntlet

Arkaiuns from Eltabranar invade Mulhorand and Unther and continue to raid cities and towns in both realms for the next two years.

482 DR: Year of the Blighted Vine

The northern cities of Delthuntle and Laothkund declare independence from Unther.

504 DR: Year of the Eclipsed Heart

Teth and Nethra declare independence from Unther.  Unther begins a military campaign to recleim its rebel cities.

625 DR: Year of the Torrents

The city of Escalant secedes from Unther.

643 DR: Year of the Nesting Harpy

The Mulhorandi wizard Nezram leaves his tower by the shores of Lake Azulduth to explore other worlds.

677 DR: Year of the Resonant Silence

Gilgeam sends a naval armada to Aglarond to crush the rebellious cities of the Wizards' Reach.  Terrible storms force the Untheric fleet to turn back.

679 DR: Year of the Scarlet Sash

Unther recognizes the sovereignty of the Wizards' Reach cities, and the Second Untheric Empire ends.

722 DR: Year of the Last Hunt

The Great Druid of Leth claims the ancient title of nentyarch and raises a tree-fortress over the tainted ruins of Dun-Tharos.

731 DR: Year of Visions

A second flood devastates Unthalass.  Gilgeam claims the mountain stronghold of the slain brown dragon Vulpomyscan and renames it the Citadel of Black Ash.

823 DR: Year of the Floating Petals

Mourktar secedes from Unther.

922 DR: Year of the Spouting Fish

Red Wizards wrest the Priador from Mulhorand at the battle of Thazalhar and found the nation of Thay.  Delhumide, the Mulhorandi imperial city, is razed by Red Wizards.  The Second Mulhorandi Empire ends.

929 DR: Year of Flashing Eyes

Several Chessentan cities form an alliance under the leadership of the warlord Tchazzar and secede from Unther.

976 DR: Year of Slaying Spells

A Mulhorandi invasion of Thay s repelled.

1018 DR: Year of the Dracorage

King Tchazzar of Chessenta dies in battle against sahuagin.  His body is never found, so his people assume he has ascended to godhood.

1030 DR: Year of the Warlords

The Zulkirs are established as the ruling body of Thay.

1098 DR: Year of the Rose

A Thayan invasion of Mulhorand fails.

1117 DR: Year of the Twelverule

Chessenta breaks up into squabbling city-states.

1183 DR: Year of the Grisly Ghosts

Paladins of Osiris level the city of Sekras and clear Sebek's followers from the River of Swords.

1248 DR: Year of the Cockatrice

Rehorusteb II becomes Pharaoh of Mulhorand.

1280 DR: Year of the Manticore

Thay launches an invasion of Mulhorand and nearly overruns Sultim.

1301 DR: Year of the Trumpet

A cult of Tiamat becomes active in Unther.

1317 DR: Year of the Wandering Wyrm

The Dragon Plague of the Inner Sea takes a huge toll in Unther.

1320 DR: Year of the Watching Cold

Akonhorus II becomes Pharaoh of Mulhorand.

1322 DR: Year of Lurking Death

Alasklerbanbastos, the Great Bone Wyrm, emerges from the Riders to the Sky and begins a summer-long reign of terror in Chessenta.

1324 DR: Year of the Grimoire

The Dragon Plague ends in Unther.

1357 DR: Year of the Prince

Horustep III takes the throne of Mulhorand at age 11.

1358 DR: Year of Shadows

The Time of Troubles. The incarnations of the gods become dormant; the manifestation of Horus-Re is forced to directly intervene in the affairs of Mulhorand for the first time in two millenia. Horus-Re quickly uncovers evidence of Rezim's corruption and dismisses him. Mardikan becomes high priest of Horus-Re and the new vizier. There is a movement to remove some of the more corrupt practices of the church of Horus-Re, but it doesn't get very far before the time of troubles ends. Horustep III resumes his rule of Mulhorand. There are large areas of wild magic in Sultim and the eastern provinces.

A fleet constructed by the followers of the Mulhorand war deity Anhur sails against Thay; they are attacked and decimated by the sahuagin, and never reach Thay. The Anhurites vow revenge, and fortify their coastal holdings, while the followers of Horus-Re attempt to confiscate their ships.

A sleeping skriaxit (a monstrous elemental sandstorm) is awakened by Wild Magic and devastates eastern Mulhorand.

The renegade Halruaan mage Random uncovers the secret of Southern magic; this is uncovered by the priesthood of Thoth, who send assassins to kill him; their efforts are unsuccessful. A large bounty is placed on Random's head by the incarnation of Thoth.

1359 DR: Year of the Serpent

The Fangs of Set attempt to replace pharaoh Horustep with a shapechanger. They fail. In retaliation, the cult assassinates Brathes, the pharaoh’s bodyguard, and most powerful supporter of the god Anhur. Hodkamset frames the priesthood of Horus-Re for the deed. There is bloodshed between the priests of Anhur and Horus-Re in Skuld, and the temple of Anhur in Sultim, that priesthood's largest, is completely destroyed.

The high priests of Gilgeam flee with Unther's military elite to the Citadel of Black Ash.  Tuigan forces raze Citadel Rashemar.

1360 DR: Year of the Turret

Halcaunt, the greatest paladin of Osiris, uncovers the involvement of the fangs of Set in the assassination of Brathes. The bloodshed between the priesthoods diminishes, but the hatred between the priests of Horus-Re and Anhur is too deep to be easily subdued.

Angered by their dealings with Thay, a company of Mulhorandi soldiers is sent by Anhur, Osiris, and Nephthys to aid in the crusade against the Tuigan; Halcaunt and his sons perform noteworthy deeds, which are mostly ignored in the west. Halcaunt is no longer shunned by the priesthood of Osiris, and is viewed by Mulhorand as the nation's greatest protector (much to the chagrin of the jealous priests of Horus-Re); Halcaunt gains the pharaoh’s favor.

A volcanic eruption created by magic buries the Semphari city of Solon under magma.

1361 DR

Plague in Skuld. Thousands die. Some of the Osirians claim that it was caused by the cult of Set, and is an omen of things to come.

Prompted by Halcaunt and the priests of Osiris, Pharaoh Horustep makes his first public pronouncement, the first by a Mulhorand pharaoh in over two hundred years. He proclaims that the cult of Set is a legitimate threat to Mulhorand, and must be hunted down. The priesthood of Horus-Re is alarmed at the increased power of the Osirians, but the Anhurites are delighted.

Priests of Anhur attempt to reconcile with Mardikan and the priests of Horus-Re, saying that they should unite against Set. The priests of Horus-Re are not receptive to the offer.

1362 DR

Anhurites defeat a large Sahuagin raiding party that was attempting to destroy the Mulhorand citadel of Rauthgor.

Plague in Outer Sultim.

Spies in the service of the priests of Anhur report that the nation of Thay is becoming increasingly united under Szass Tam. Alarmed, the Anhurites (in collaboration with the priesthoods of Nephthys and Osiris) begin training an elite army, the Bronze Legion, stationed in Neldorild. Housant of the house of Osiris, is made its captain.

1363 DR

Dernaunt, an archmage in the service of Thoth, is assassinated by an agent of the Karanoks of Luthcheq.

Beratheth becomes high priest of Thoth. He commands that a new cycle of Mulhorand magical research begins, to counter the theft of previous magicks by Random, and to compete against the magical researches of Thay. The pharaoh is asked to rescind the ban on technology. He agrees to allow a few technological experiments, provided that they are approved by the incarnation of Thoth himself. Mulhorandi mages begin work to duplicate Thay's magical powder.

1364 DR

Pharoah Horustep, age 18, weds Nethra, a daughter of the incarnation of Nephthys.

A party of treasure hunters attempts to loot the tomb of the pharoahs in the Vale of the gods. They are stopped by the priests of Osiris (assisted secretly by members of the Harpers who were worried about Mulhorand magic falling into the hands of the Zhentarim) and executed.

1365 DR: Year of the Sword

Rezim dies. Some say he was poisoned by Mardikan, many others sarcastically attribute his death to frustration stemming from a lack of involvement in any political corruption. His old rival Mardikan forbids any funeral or public mourning, and confiscates his holdings. All statues of Rezim are destroyed. The pharaoh, Rezim's nephew, is said to be displeased by this, but does nothing.

The Simbul is said to have been seen in Sultim.

Alasklerbanbastos and the young chromatic wyrms who follow him seize control of Threskel, Thamor, Mordulkin, Mount Thulbane, and Watcher's Cape.

1366 DR

Some of the secret priesthood of Set is discovered in Skuld. They are tried and executed before the gate of the gods.

Birth of Rehotep, son of Horustep, precisely 3,500 years after the founding of Mulhorand -- a date which even the Mulhorandi believe to be an omen. At the proclamation of his birth, the manifestation of Set appears before the gate of the gods in Skuld, and publicly curses the infant prince. Halcaunt is the only one who dares attack Set and is slain, but the manifestation of Osiris resurrects him.

Halcaunt's well-regarded youngest son, Hardaunt, is appointed as the prince's bodyguard (to the dismay of the priests of Horus-Re). This sudden burst of divine activity in Mulhorand is the talk of wizards throughout Faerûn, at least for a few weeks.

Onmont Tesirth, a powerful wizard in the service of Thoth, returns to Mulhorand after many years of secretly wandering the Realms. Onmont brings many new spells and items to the attention of the Thothians.

A second, and much larger invasion of the sahuagin takes place in Rauthgor. It is said that Thothian magical powder is used in the defense. The sahuagin kingdom is dealt a major defeat. The battle readiness of the Anhurites does not go unnoticed by the sahuagin, nor by the priests of Horus-Re, nor by Set, nor by the Red Wizards of Thay.

1367 DR

The incarnation of Anhur, incensed by the murder of an Anhurite priest in Unther, travels to Unthalass and confronts the god-king Gilgeam. It is said that they did not come to blows, but that they argued for many hours. Afterwards, Gilgeam boasted that he did not apologize, while Anhur stated that this was the first time in centuries that Gilgeam was confronted by the extent of his own personal corruption, and that the god-king did not like it.

The priests of Osiris, in a private audience with the pharaoh, reveals the existence of the Bronze Legion, and offer it to him as a fighting force directly under his command.

Chernaunt, Halcaunt's eldest son and one of the finest warriors in Mulhorand, is murdered by the Fangs of Set and replaced with the rakshasa rajah Suliyar. The disguised Chernaunt ambushes and almost kills Halcaunt, but he is saved by old Cormyrean comrades from the Tuigan War; the enraged paladin cuts off the rakshasa's left arm and forces it to flee for its life. Suliyar vows to kill Halcaunt. The incarnation of Osiris is present for Chernaunt's funeral, and his body is placed in the antechamber of the tomb that is being built for the pharoah Horustep III, an extremely rare honor for one not of divine blood.

Foreign adventurers are suddenly more welcome in Mulhorand, as long as they are vouched for by the priests of Osiris or their champions.

1369 DR: Year of the Gauntlet

The island known as the Ship of the Gods explodes.  Tidal waves swamp the Alaor and Bezantur, causing much destruction.  Mulhorand briefly siezes the Alaor.

1370 DR: Year of the Tankard

Thay retakes the Alaor and rebuilds its shipyards and settlements with the aid of epic magic.

1371 DR: Year of the Unstrung Harp

Mulhorand invades Unther, beginning the Third Mulhorand Empire.  The Rotting Man's army overruns Dun-Tharos, driving the nentyarch into exile at Yeshalmaar.

1372 DR: Year of Wild Magic

Deep Imaskari ends millennia  of isolation by sending explorers into the outside world.  Volcanic eruptions in the Smoking Mountains bury the Citadel of Black Ash under lava.