Elven Nations

[Kosmit]

Hi there!

I know there is still a lot of work needed to be put into Companion and Questors book but I am rereading Blood Wood and I wonder if it will be canonical with 4ed.

Do you have plans to include Blood Wood in Elven Nations or left it out because old Blood Wood will remain canonical?
Can you tell what nations excluding Western Kingdoms and Shosara are you planning to include? Tableu Infractus had very nice book about Shosara. Is it gonna be incuded?

[Mataxes]

Blood Wood is not going to be included. It was part of the original plan, I think, under ED3 to have Elven Nations be the revised Blood Wood book with additional material. But the scope shifted because of the amount of material produced for the new areas.

Blood Wood is/will be still canonical, except for any places where Elven Nations provides updated information on it. (I've been reading the document and haven't come across anything that jumped out at me.)

It includes information on Shosara and Sereatha (historical and present-day), and gives history on the 'Western Nations' that were lost to what is now the Wastes. I have no idea if the info from Tableau Infractus will bear any similarity to our product.

[Andrew1879]

As the author of the Shosara book on Tableau Infractus, thank you!

[Kosmit]

As the author of the Shosara book on Tableau Infractus, thank you!

No problem It was great material that made my player play shosaran character.

Also in my Barsaive there was a plot to cleanse corruption of the Forest Heart. It included shosaran ambassador, Seekers of the Heart and Alamaise. Alachia was stabbed with Everliving Flower, Elven Palace was burned by Alamaise which was accidental attacked on that day.
From the ashes Alachia stood up without thorns vowing to heal the Wood. Or at least she appeared to not having thorns (meh... Illusionists).

[Andrew1879]

Heh. In my campaign, they broke the thread that connected Alachia to Oakheart, and Alachia died. They then used three legendary staves, the Staff of Naming, the Heartstaff (drawn by Jaspree from the heartwood of Oakheart), and Forever Chrysanthemum (a Cathayan staff of healing) to restore Oakheart and cleanse the Wood. Took them a week to deal with the ring of blood around the Wood, five feet across and two feet deep in the middle.

[Penagain]

Figured this was as good a time as any to jump in. Jeremiah Schwennen here, and Elven Nations has been my labor of love for the past four+ years. It is now in the talented hands of the ED4 development team, of course, so my insights are all potentially outdated, but I am happy to shed what light I can on things!

Blood Wood is not going to be included. It was part of the original plan, I think, under ED3 to have Elven Nations be the revised Blood Wood book with additional material. But the scope shifted because of the amount of material produced for the new areas.

At the time of writing, the ED3 plan was to re-release the ED1 Blood Wood book as Nations of Barsaive Volume 5: Blood Wood with small updates (ala Throal, Sky Raiders, etc.) and simultaneously release Elven Nations to cover the other elven nations.

Blood Wood is/will be still canonical, except for any places where Elven Nations provides updated information on it. (I've been reading the document and haven't come across anything that jumped out at me.)

Truthfully, there are only two changes that spiral out of EN into Blood Wood materials in the original draft--an additional ranelle and some information about the passions (or rather, one in particular).

It includes information on Shosara and Sereatha (historical and present-day), and gives history on the 'Western Nations' that were lost to what is now the Wastes. I have no idea if the info from Tableau Infractus will bear any similarity to our product.

There are some bits and pieces from the Tableau Infractus material, I think--the original outline from which I started work on the book had been started by Mr. Ragland. The book went in some different directions once I had settled into it, but I tried to not be inherently contradictory!

[Kosmit]

Awesome!

[Lys]

The Tableau Infractus write-up of Shosara was competent but not particularly engrossive or impressive. One major flaw that stood out for me is that it completely failed to mention the neighbouring human city-state of Khistova and its famed sailors. The Shosarans borrowing Khistovan ship designs was the primary cause behind their being Severed from the Elven Court. Though little is said about them in Blood Wood, one can surmise that the Shosarans must have had a close relationship with the Khistovans given their willingness to adopt some of their customs. That relationship is likely to have grown closer after Shosara was Severed, since the elves would have been cast adrift culturally and left with no one else to turn to but their neighbours. Yet in the Tableau Infractus' Shosara it only says that the problem was "diverging customs" with no mention at all of the source of the divergence, when it was that source that made their crime so severe. This in turn had knock on effects on the entire work that resulted in something that just didn't seem to fit with what little we knew of Shosara based off the Blood Wood book.

Hopefully the Elven Nations book will contain some material discussing Shosara's relationship with Khistova. Because said relationship played an important role in shaping the history of Shosara, the Elven Court, and the rest of the world.

[Penagain]

Hopefully the Elven Nations book will contain some material discussing Shosara's relationship with Khistova. Because said relationship played an important role in shaping the history of Shosara, the Elven Court, and the rest of the world.

I thought the same while writing! Truthfully, every attempt was made to paint (in small brushstrokes) the beginnings of a picture of the lands immediately beyond Shosara, Sereatha, and the Blood Wood. It remains to be seen how much makes the final cut though--there are lots of things that have to be considered by the development team when locking down details in a book like this.

Fingers crossed/thumbs pressed that the finished book gives you what you are looking for!

[yankeeschic]

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