#calimport

[ritelli-main]

Featuring @princefleabitten's halfling ranger Sasira :)

[hydrangea-bunny]

Next, I drew Zahira, a tiefling entertainer who specialises in summoning snakes by playing the flute. She’s also part of our D&D group, which is starting in Calimshan. This character belongs to blackhoneymilktea over on instagram

[princefleabitten]

Artemis Entreri 🤌 in Calimport👀 becoming a pasha⁉️ it’s more likely than you think! 🤨 You could check Legend of Drizzt: The Silent Blade😏🫴

[alovelydayforit]

"I spent many a H-Happy Hour at the Jet Jambiya. Wonderful Ale." -Khalid to Rasaad, SoD

Jet Jambiya Tavern is located in the Taorahl drudach. That makes it a good guess to which neighborhood Khalid was stationed as an amlak in. It's even a bit of a straight shot from the Amlakkhan(2) to the Jet Jambiya(27)🤭🍻

Taorahl is described as having embassies to promote foreign alliances in commerce and politics. Not a bad beat for a Harper, I think!

Text Provided below the cut:

Taorahl Drudach

Taorahl Drudach nestles in amongst the outer walls of the sabban, comfortably wedged against Wizard Ward and the shipyard walls of Hook Ward. Taorahl Drudach is the easternmost drudach of the three, and its wide streets lead from the edge of the Ajvent Sabban (shipyards) and the docks to the walls of Tarshaj Sabban in adjoining Wizard Ward. This drudach is commonly called the Twelvetors Dru-dach, as 12 minarets dominate the skyline. Three are am-lakkhan minaret posts, six attach to rich villas, and the three remaining towers belong to temples in this neighborhood. Of all the Hook Ward drudachs, this one is the safest at night due to more guards, clean streets, and an incorruptible sultan.

The syl-pasha recently selected this drudach to become an area for embassies specifically set up to gain foreign alliances in commerce and politics. Many of the pashas both like and dislike this, for it automatically "places outsiders at an undeserved social status above so many of our own" but it also opens up new opportunities for them to do business with prospects once too far from their reach. The most strident complaints come from those who wished to claim the housing that the embassies now fill.

Tavern: The Jet Jambiya

TD27, 2-story Class C building

Eraré Sabban; Taorahl Drudach. There are two internal taprooms for use during inclement weather, but most folk referring to the Jet Jambiya are talking either of the open-air courtyard that the G-shaped building encloses or the magical blade that hovers in the air above the courtyard. The place is clean, prices are moderate to expensive (but only if nonguild affiliated drinks are ordered on the sly, and only after the staff knows you or gains at least 50 gp in bribes), and the food is good.

A meeting place from sundown to sunup, it is famous for its safety and usefulness as neutral territory for all.

Should any weapons (beyond the clubs of the staff) flash free of scabbards or sheathes, the magical jambiya that hovers 40 feet above the court's central fountain flashes toward that weapon and magically absorbs it without fail. The jambiya then just as quickly returns to its normal position. Legend has it that the jambiya has no substance and is a portable hole with some modicum of in-telligence, and it has swallowed some mighty weapons such as the Beljureled Blade of Nazir Rabir, Samark the Staff of Screams, the Four Daggers of Delvenahr, and even Giisan the White Sash of Sorcerers.

City Building: Amlakkhan Taorahl

TD2, 3-story Class C building

Eraré Sabban; Taorahl Drudach. The luzas Tasyn el Fadaffed (CE hm dual F3/M5) gained this post early this year due to political maneuvers with the Nine Pashas trading coster and the sultan's vizar. A vicious and petty man whose military career ended in an ugly tavern brawl 11 years ago, Tasyn turned to learning magic and now revels in being a bully with far more power. About a third of his men follow his example and abuse their influence and power, while the others wait. Loyal soldiers all, they look forward to the day the attention of the sultan comes to bear on the corrupt yuzas.

[gracielikegrapes]

Just some limited palette doodles of ladies in faerun

[vault-of-lore]

So here’s a thing about the Forgotten Realms that’s bugged me off-and-on for thirty years: You see that gap in the Trade Way?It shouldn’t ex

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

It shouldn’t exist.

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

[roibindallbhride]

I Can Imagine This Actually Happening To Him In A Game....

I'm currently re-reading The Halfling's Gem from The Icewind's Dale Trilogy by R.A.Salvatore, I'm at the part where the Companions of the Hall are traversing through the desert towards Calimport, and Wulfgar ends up having some problems with the camel he's trying to ride and ends up fighting it off in the end.

I can’t help butthink that Salvatore actually played that scene out in a game long before he wrote it in his book. Maybe I'm wrong about that but it just feels like  that when I'm reading the scene in the book. I can just imagine Salvatore failing some kind of skill check involving Animal Handling while trying to get Wulfgar to lead his camel, causing him to be thrown off by said camel, and thus having to fight his mount in the end.

That kind of mental image made me giggle myself silly for a little while.

[artemis-entreri]

[[ If you’ve been following me for a while, you can probably imagine my surprise and sense of de ja vu when this picture popped up on my social media feed, posted by Todd Lockwood. This was a shock to me because earlier this year, I’d found the final iteration of this concept, but it wasn’t done by Lockwood. I’d never seen any hint of this from Lockwood before or heard anything about his involvement in this distinctly familiar piece.

Despite the striking similarities, to the point where it seems obvious that WotC gave Clyde Caldwell Lockwood’s concept art to finalize, Lockwood had never seen Caldwell’s finished piece. It is unclear whether Lockwood was even aware of its existence until recently. According to James Fallone, former Director of Sales & Marketing at Wizards of the Coast and TSR regarding the Caldwell piece, “I was never a fan of that art suggestion. The seagull on the wraparound (Clyde did it I think) made the whole thing look like a weekend at Mystic Seaport and Aquarium. Luckily we had some marketing budget left so we could commission a more evocative piece for advertising. [Lockwood’s] Silent Blade ad piece was inspired. So good in fact that we made it the book cover instead.” This certainly sheds a bit of light into why Caldwell’s piece isn’t more widely-known.

Follow-up correspondence by James Fallone on this topic after a fellow follower of Lockwood asked about the issue of integrity involved in the transfer of the subject matter between the two WotC-employed artists garnered the following clarification: “...we used to do mock up covers for our catalog from original art suggestions which was done around the 4th quarter for the next year's catalog. These could be as much as a year in advance of the books actual publication. Later on the covers got assigned to final artists and based on schedule and workload it often ended up a different artist than the comp. In this case Clyde. When we started talk of a marketing piece Todd's schedule had opened. I think because the piece was originally for marketing where was a little more freedom and when Todd suggested reflections of the characters faces in their weapons we loved it. The piece was so good we successfully argued replacing the Clyde cover. This cover say the tone of the rest of the books in the series by focusing on the characters faces for drama like the powerful Spine of the World.”

Words from Lockwood regarding this image:

The Silent Blade Comp. 5 x 8 Before the original painting of The Silent Blade, with Drizzt and Entreri’s faces reflected in their weapons, this was a comp I painted for the cover that never came to fruition. In it we see Wulfgar standing at the docks while Jarlaxle and Entreri watch from the shadows.

When we all still worked in Lake Geneva, I did this comp (comprehensive) for the cover of an upcoming novel, The Silent Blade, by R.A. Salvatore. It was part of the usual push of comps—endless numbers of them—done as placeholder images for the catalog of forthcoming products.

Someone else got the commission. I believe it was Clyde Caldwell, though I never saw the painting. Marketing was unhappy with it for some reason and commissioned me to do a different painting for their marketing push. They liked that painting so much that they used it on the cover of the book, my first for a Drizzt novel. The rest, as they say, is history.

I am kind of sad about the unrealized status of this piece. Lockwood has done such gorgeous and on-point depictions of Entreri that this was a missed opportunity for us to see more of such work. :’( ]]