Here's a thing about the #ForgottenRealms that's bugged me for 30 years.
See this gap in the road between Dragonspear Castle and Soubar?
It shouldn't exist.
#dnd
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This is the Trade Way. It 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.
It's not clear how the gap got on the 1E map, but I long assumed that this passage was responsible:
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"Not considered safe" and "devastated" apparently got interpreted to mean that the road had been wiped out.
But, in point of fact, the road was not actually destroyed and the very next paragraph in the book describes how an army was raised and Dragonspear Castle was sacked.
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Another question is what happens between Scornubel and Baldur's Gate.
For a long time, I assumed (based on the map) that the Trade Way actually WAS interrupted here: Trade would come down the road to Scornubel and then take the river to Baldur's Gate before heading south.
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This turns out not to be the case: The Trade Way has always entered Baldur's Gate via the city's north gate.
This would imply that a road must run from Scornubel to Baldur's Gate following the River Chionthar (and various snippets of text support this).
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But here's the odd thing: Elturel is NEVER described as being on the Trade Way, despite the fact that logically it would pass right through the city.
In fact, it EXPLICITLY doesn't:
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We'll come back to this. For now, let's go back to the obvious mistake of the missing road between Dragonspear and Soubar. Easy to fix, right?
And it was.
I believe the next map produced was for the Forgotten Realms Atlas, and you can see that the road appears there:
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But there are a couple problems:
(1) There's still no road between Elturel and Scornubel, so how does the Trade Way get from Scornubel to Baldur's Gate?
(2) There's a new road that cuts south directly from Dragonspear to Baldur's Gate. Why isn't THIS used as the Trade Way?
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In fact, on the map it's shown as a more significant road than the one leading to Soubar.
Let's move forward into 2nd Edition.
At some point this map was produced (it's all over the 'net claiming to be from the revised boxed set), but I can't figure out its actual source:
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You can see it adds some abortive roads north from Baldur's Gate, but otherwise reverts back to the errors of 1st Edition.
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This is what the actual map from the revised Gold Box looks like.
It largely follows the Atlas, except it downgrades the "Coast Way".
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I spent some time trying to figure out how these maps related to each other, but I have come to the conclusion that both the Atlas and the 2nd Edition map are based on a common source: Ed Greenwood's original maps.
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They were apparently displayed at Gamehole Con last year and you can view some photos here:
sageadvice.eu/2019/10/31/the…
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Note the lack of a road between Elturel and Scornubel. That's not a production error. @TheEdVerse didn't have it on his original map.
Again: We'll come back to that.
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Enter 3rd Edition.
This map adds the missing road from Elturel and Scornubel and is probably the most detailed map of the roads in this region to date (although having now done this deep dive, I have quibbles).
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4th Edition's Faerun map is... interesting. It's obviously a regression in terms of detail, but also has a number of glaring inaccuracies. (The road crossing the river far to the east of Baldur's Gate is the most notable.)
We'll mostly ignore this.
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The other notable thing here is that the writers of 4th Edition also wondered why the Trade Way would go all the way east to Scornubel if there was a road heading straight to Baldur's Gate.
Their solution was simple: It doesn't. In 4E, the Trade Way no longer goes to Scornubel.
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Which brings us to 5th Edition.
For 5E's cartography they apparently went back to the original 1E maps. The goal was presumably to sort of "get back to basics," but the result was to reintroduce the errors of the original map.
Including the gap.
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When I started this thread I was primarily aiming to just say, "Hey. Look at that gap!"
But it turns out there's some deeper lore here.
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Specifically, if you do a close reading of the 1E boxed set (which I just did), you'll discover that the entire idea of there being a single "Trade Way" is an illusion.
There was a Trade Way from Amn to Waterdeep:
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And it is this second Trade Way that goes to Scornubel. The reason there's no road from Scornubel to Baldur's Gate (and why Elturel is explicitly not on the Trade Way), is because there IS no Trade Way between Baldur's Gate and Scornubel.
They're two different Trade Ways.
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(My suspicion would be that there were originally many more Trade Ways. These were just the ones that got particular mention in the first boxed set.)
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In the 2nd Edition boxed set, the addition of the "Coast Way" was an attempt to make the difference between the two routes clearer.
(For example, in this boxed set, Baldur's Gate is no longer on the Trade Way, it is only on the Coast Way. They are two different things.)
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But I suspect due to all the prominent references to Baldur's Gate being "on the Trade Way" and "the Trade Way follows the coast" that already existed, this became confused.
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In short order, the Coast Way was effectively just another name for the Trade Way. And it was soon explicitly stated to be so, reintroducing the confusion.
4E, as noted above, attempted to resolve it by taking Scornubel off the Trade Way.
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(Although incoherently, the same 4e campaign guide still asserted that the Trade Way crossed the Boareskyr Bridge. Which, of course, it cannot possibly do if it's following the road to Baldur's Gate.)
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Of course, this means that there's ANOTHER gap in the Trade Way on the 1E maps. This one between Scornubel and Iriaebor.
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sure would be nice to hear from @TheEdVerse on all this. Fascinating find there @hexcrawl
Mar 22, 2020 · 8:01 PM UTC
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