Trusting in Lore

The Legend of Tharnwood

Centuries ago, some bards and sages learned in the Art (magic) insist that the meddling wizard Elminster, he who stands among the Chosen of Mystra and now dwells in Shadowdale, briefly ruled a shining realm of female sorcerers hight Tharnwood.

Some say Tharnwood is lost and fallen -- and certainly it appears on no map today -- and others whisper that it's now hidden, cloaked from seeking eyes in a misty "otherwhere" through titanic spells spun by its folk, the Tharanna, female humans and half-elves who scheme to become the most powerful "hurlers of the Art" of all.

Some tales insist the Tharanna plot the founding of a new elven realm, and that Alustriel of Silverymoon works with them -- or even intends to reveal them, in time, as her loyal army to remake the League of the Silver Marches into a realm that kneels to her as Queen, much as distant Aglarond bends the knee to her sister the Simbul.

At MageFairs and late at night in secluded bowers during nobles' revels in fair Waterdeep, wizards -- and those bright-eyed with the hope or promise of becoming wizards -- trade muttered tales of lost or hidden Tharnwood.

And this is some of what they say . . .

A thousand years ago (or six hundred), somewhere in the wilderlands of the Sword Coast North, Elminster gathered to him (or seduced, or kidnapped and held captive until he commanded their love by spell laid upon spell) many beautiful young women.

These he reared and trained in magic, awakening their inherent mastery of sorcery (or gave them sorcerous powers by taking them as his wives and so infusing their bodies with the Sacred Fire of Mystra). Elminster did this for his own pleasure (or to forge a conquering mage-army, with which he struck down archmage after lone wizard, seizing their magic for his own), and when he tired of them (or was done with his conquering, and powerful enough to please Mystra and be accepted as her Chosen), he cast them off (or drained their lives and sorcery in cruel lovemaking, taking their vitality for his own so he still lives today, all these years later).

The place where Elminster dwelt with these (forty, sixty, or seventy) women was a great plateau in the upland forests, cloaked in an ancient tangle of trees in the same manner as the land all about, and the Old Mage -- not so old then, of course -- named it Tharnwood after the elf-prince he slew to seize it (a moon elf by the name of Tharan, who ruled the plateau as his own demesne of elves outcast from Evereska and other realms of the Fair Folk). Elminster slew all the elves with cunning spells and took their tree citadels for his own, girding his realm with many warding and concealing spells to impress Mystra into selecting him as her Chosen (or to keep all eyes from finding him, thus defending him from the reprisals of angry elves or the kin of the women he'd seized).

Tharnwood became no realm of roads, farm-fields, and stone towers, but remained a place of garden-glades, upper-bough gardens and nigh-unbroken trees, easily missed by eyes aloft -- and cloaked by magics so cunning and thickly woven as to confuse even great dragons into not noticing it.

So it was that the spurned Tharanna could readily hide after Elminster abandoned them. (Or after they were all destroyed, being melted entirely away as the cruel Elminster subsumed them. The Old Mage could keep his now-deserted realm hidden, as a place to hide treasure, captives, lorebooks -- and as a hidehold to run to when beset or wounded.)

Those who believe the Tharanna still exist debate their present powers and motives. Some say they shapeshift freely, or steal forth to mate with mortal men by night and so spawn swanmays, babes they abandon in human villages or switch for stillbirths where women give birth alone. Some say Tharanna can become as ghosts or wraiths, passing through locked doors and walking in shadows, and others that they can fly but are otherwise normal elves, half-elves, or humans.

All agree they are mighty in Art and cast arcane spells as sorcerers do, but sharp disagreements arise over whether they are friendly to elves (and support the founding of new elf realms) or to Alustriel and her dreams of a new realm of "Luruar" -- or not. Some even believe they covertly obey Elminster still and are the true secret of his power.

Laeral of Waterdeep recently visited Candlekeep to prevail on an old friend among the Avowed (monks) to reveal what he wouldn't willingly have made plain to any non-Chosen of Mystra.

This monk, Great Reader Elveraun Mysrym ("ELL-vurr-aun MISS-rim"), is a quiet, calm-in-the-face-of-all man of small stature and great lore-learning. Mysrym believes the lurid and ever-deepening legends of Tharnwood, however unfair they may be to Elminster of Shadowdale, are both good entertainment and a useful curb on those who might otherwise act more boldly against Elminster, Alustriel, elves in the Sword Coast North, or the Silver Marches.

What follows is from Elveraun's careful unraveling of the fancies of Tharnwood, under Laeral's guidance.

"Tharnwood" is the name of a tiny lordship in the Sword Coast North, first appearing in records circa 696 DR: a human "hold" in the then-larger High Forest or woods northwest of it. Tharnwood was but three foresters' hamlets ruled and defended by the Marlestur family, who styled themselves "lords."

Such ephemeral "realms" are numbered in the thousands and cause much confusion in local lore across the Heartlands. Most were small, short-lived, and founded with no fanfare of heralds. Mysrym lists no fewer than seventy-two "lordships" that are no more than names: passing references in caravan log-books, trading ledgers, ballads, heraldic records, and lineage claims for which no precise location, or in most cases even date, can with confidence be assigned.

Laeral, however, remembers Tharnwood and the Marlesturs. In her youth (mainly during the 770s DR) she was reared in the forest near Tharnwood -- by her "Uncle" Elminster. She believes the stories of his gathering "sorceresses" have grown from her years in a forest cottage with her sisters Storm and Dove. Three rebellious, magically gifted silver-haired sisters born with Mystra's silver fire in their veins, to be Chosen of Mystra, could easily have been misunderstood and distorted, over the years, into something else.

The Old Mage is guilty of duping folk, sowing wild oats, and elfslayings, but Laeral knows of no wooded plateau ruled by any "Tharan" -- and that Elminster prefers one (at most two) apprentices at a time, not a harem of seventy.

According to Laeral, Chosen of Mystra can "subsume" beings by draining their life-energies, memories, and magical knowledge through a long and complex manipulation of the Weave. However, she very much doubts Elminster ever so served forty to seventy women, for two reasons. Firstly, the goddess the Chosen of Mystra served until the Time of Troubles forbid her Chosen to subsume anyone with a talent for Art. Secondly, subsumption drives most minds insane under the weight of memories not their own. Although many believe Elminster is insane, Laeral insists the extra memories "leak" forth. As someone often in mental contact with Elminster down the centuries, she would certainly have noticed many unfamiliar memories of female sorcerers sharing lives on some wooded plateau.

A wandering Heartlands minstrel, one Alakhan "Lucky" Morlyl, is credited with popularizing a ballad (if not of his creation, certainly of his embroidering) called "Lost Ladies by Night," circa 1220 DR. Its verses tell of beautiful "ladies" so imprisoned by magic as to be little more than mournful shadows, who call out to mortal men to free them by doing this or that. The mens' deeds allow the ladies to sunder their magical prisons with spells of their own, and win free. In some later versions of this ballad these freed "sorceresses of Tharnwood" cruelly betray or slay those who aided them, but in Morlyl's versions they wed or loved their rescuers, leaving some magical sign behind on the man's body or in his eyes.

A chapbook distributed in Waterdeep in 1269 DR, attributed to "Thalaphondas, Archmage Mighty" (no other trace of whom exists in any records of Candlekeep or Waterdeep), relates the tale of "The Dark Dooms Enacted upon Lady Mages by the One Called Elminster." It tells of Tharan's betrayal and murder by his friend Elminster, who learned how to make wardspells of Tharan's forest plateau realm deadly to all elves -- and so exterminated its inhabitants.

According to Thalaphondas, Elminster (an accomplished shapeshifter) then seduced various wealthy women by posing as husbands, lovers, and men for whom they longed. Translocating them to Tharnwood, he spell-imprisoned them there, using "dark rituals" to make them his slaves and "helpless, talentless channels" through which he could cast multiple simultaneous spells at foes. Thalaphondas urged "all of the Art" to "rise up in unison" to slay Elminster before he destroyed them all individually -- and it's this, Mysrym believes, that years of mages' gossip has built into the fanciful Tharnwood lore of today. The diligent monk of Candlekeep warns that much trusted lore of Faerûn may contain as many distortions.