Thursday, February 28, 2008

ItFR : Shadowdale Keep


Into the Forgotten Realms will begin as you and your fellow adventurers are received in audience by Lord Mourngrym himself in the great hall of Shadowdale Keep. Lord Mourngrym, the long-time, elected leader of Shadowdale, will set before you the task that you will take on for the peace and security of all Dalelands.

Here’s a question to FR buffs: do you find anything wrong or odd about the fact that there would be such a keep in Shadowdale? I have not found any reference to the Lord of Shadowdale’s residence and thought a relatively modest keep would make a plausible one.

These interiors are quite dark by design, since that is how I picture the inside of a mostly windowless keep (plus, I like moody lighting). The lighting was calibrated for my LCD screen. While these shots look fine on my end, they may appear excessively dark on some other screens. It’s probably nothing a bit of gamma sliding won’t fix in game if some players need it.


10 comments:

Briesence said...

I'm not a FR expert but if I had to deal with Drow, Sharrans, and Zhentarim I'd want some place that could easily be defended. :)

Alex Hugon said...

The lord of Shadowdale lives in the Twisted Tower in Shadowdale, which was once a stronghold inhabited by drow before Mourngrym & co. drove them out. :)

See the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, page 139 for more info!

Erik Birger Karlsson said...

It's nice to see you're making progress! :) Are these screens from Nestlehaven 2 or some of the other mods your currently making? Sorry if I'm not completely on the right track here. :D In any case, it looks very interesting.

By the way, I have added your Blog link to my own Blog and if you feel like it, perhaps you could add mine to yours? My blog adress is berra-nwn.blogspot.com

Looking forward to what you'll come up with next!

dirtywick said...

They also spend a significant portion of the novel Spellfire in that keep. There's towers and dungeons and a throne room, the whole nine yards.

EC said...

@Brie: Good point. :)

@Alex: Thanks for the precious info! I'm now indeed finding references to the Twisted Tower, and pieces of Shadowdale/Dalelands recent history that may actually require me to rejig my storyline... Hmmm, I'll have some thinking to do in the coming days.

@Erik: Thanks for dropping by! These screens are from Into The Forgotten Realms, another of the mods we're working on over here. You'll find more info in the earlier launch post. Thanks for the good words, and I'll be adding your blog in a sec with pleasure!

EC said...

@dirtywick: Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I might give that novel a read. Maybe the decription that is made of the Twisted Tower is close enough to the area I built. It is really just a staging area in which the player will not spend a whole lot of time.

What is your sense of this, dirtywick?

Otherwise, I'd really hate to redo that area to make it match established FR lore. Maybe then I could set the adventure staging point in another Dale that would plausibly have such a keep, one that has not already been officially described in great details.

Erik Birger Karlsson said...

*E.C.Patterson,

Ah - cool. :) I'll be sure to keep an eye out for that as well then. :D Thanks for adding me and you're very welcome. :)

Unknown said...

http://www.theseaoffallenstars.com/sofs/image/TowerofAshaba.BMP

the inside of the twisted tower of Ashaba in Shadowdale

EC said...

Thanks Skunkeen. That could come in handy.

Ryshara said...

Yes, thanks, Skunkeen. We appreciate your help with showing us such a detailed guide on the Tower!