How far along technology-wise is Amia? With the two rivaling technology-based regions, Lantan and the Shou empire, I'm curious as to what state Amia is with technology. Obviously we don't have flying clockwork helicopters or any smokepowder sources, but what have the Gnomes at the testing range been up to? Have they contributed to any of Forstakkr's technology at all?

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Been asked a lot of times. I think the only safe answer is: whatever is reasonable within the confines of the genre. We play a neomedievalist fantasy setting, not a steampunk setting. Rather than play the devil's advocate and try to think what's potentially feasible, I'd always play it safe and stick with the feel of the setting. When you read source books like The North, with its gritty illustrations, the setting just doesn't smell like Final Fantasy or Thief. Some large cities may be an exception, but even if you read descriptions of Waterdeep it's all quite subtle.

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I was guessing as much.

Would I be right in thinking a lot of Amia's technology is arcane-based?

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I think so. I would say there's also two schools of technological craftsmanship: those who do it purely mechanically on principle or because they can't afford magical help, and those who use magic to operate part of the machine. This, at least, is the kind of player interpretation I've seen in game that makes a lot of sense. If you want to build a printing press (an example of the kind of technology we do have, but it's uncommon and valuable) you can do it like Gutenberg or you can take some shortcuts and use magic. The latter approach will probably be more durable and easier to operate, but it obviously requires an experienced mage/magical artisan and those can charge rather high fees.

This is all rather based on gut feeling, because there's not that much hard data to go on. You could take every wonder we've had in Amian history and assume they're the kind of stuff that's technologically feasible in the setting, but I'd rather chalk flying ships, artillery and whatever up to less-than-tasteful storytelling and consider them rare oddities.

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I was assuming as much. While looking into what lore sources I could, I've found that few nations actually wish for technology to advance at all. Techno-phobia is a common thing amongst many cultures as those who do not serve dieties with Craft aspect fear that technology advancement is on tier with those who attempt to become gods themselves, one-upping those who have been given divine power.

That aside, I think I'm getting a clear picture of what would and wouldn't be feasible to invent on the isle, luckily all of which were nothing I had in mind to pursuing anyway.

Thanks for the help Iron!

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There is regionally at least one Printing Press in Cordor, and a couple of close facsimiles elsewhere in princple. One I can't attest to but the others I know are Arcane-applied technology in effect.

My suspension of disbelief seems to cut off at steam power. I find that I can easily accept as plausible things powered by winding up springs and gears, or things powered by wind or water, but steamworks is where I start to reflexively scoff. Though maybe that's just my personal disdain for the whole steampunk genre.

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Winner of Amia's "Most Ethical Time Traveler" award 2026

Character Portraits!

Speaking as one who "battled" this issue as a player as well, with my own artificer, I can say that the best course of action is to simply ask when in doubt. I know that with the water purifiers that Ranallas made, that was pretty much scraping the ceiling for what would be allowed, since they were essentially the most primitive form of steam engine that could be made, but used a couple of magical components and wasn't used for anything even remotely approaching an engine.

Damn, there goes my dwarven giant death robot with laser beams idea...hmmm, maybe giant death construct with scorching rays on the other hand....

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"A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." - Antoine de Saint-Exupry

And here I was thinking about making a zeppelin airship armed with cannons, bombs and electric engine with propeller to move it.

How would any of the Gnome's inventions in Forstakkr be rated in terms of hitting Amia's technological ceiling?

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Let's just say there is a reason they're testing on a secluded island a good distance from any civilization.

Steam-power wouldn't be too 'out there' in terms of technology, but because of the risks involved, boiler explosions, extreme heat, etc, it's an area that only the most suicidal of tinkerers would even think about going into.

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Aoth Nathandem - Wizard of house Tholaunt and chosen of Ma'at.

If I had my way those gnomes would be history.

Because they chose to travel home or because they obliterated themslves?

I'd rather the former, and then we can eventually see a proper non-insane Gnomish representation. :p

I'd be inclined to agree, but that means moving a prayable idol of Gond to the Wyvern Forge or have it and Garl Glittergold's idols stand on the ashes of where their Hellball cannon misfired.

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There seem to be steam locomotives in the mines in... Whatever the Underdark starty area on the B server is called (I can never remember drow words).

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Player of:
Asya Goodmonsdottir - Knight of Lesser Gods.
-Winner of 2014's "Razored Tongue" Award, and Emcee's pick "Authoritarian of the year".
Jannah Vindle - Mistress of Coin.

Yeah but I've never seen them work or do anything at all, so aside from their appearance there's not much indication that they're steam engines. Assume clockwork or something!

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@Thanatopsis#6293

Locomotives that run off the blood of elven virgins.

Damn it Yoss! I told you to stop revealing major plot-points.

You can easily cause an explosion there!

Pft, Paush wouldn't like it if the gnomes blew up his adventurer-trap!

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Aoth Nathandem - Wizard of house Tholaunt and chosen of Ma'at.

Could be a good way to get rid of the Abyss/Meld the abyss into the Blood Rift and have a reason to fight all three fiendish races in one hunting area.

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I play: Gage le Gris
Socially and recently politically Inept Knight of Xymor

Printing presses aren't really that advanced.

Andrew's is purely mechanical and powered by manpower. It loosely based its design off of a mechanical movable type printer.

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Andrew Fryar: Cordor's Folk Hero
Bobrin: Eccentric Avenging Executioner
Lyle Torrowfire: Retired badass
Marigold Cobcruncher: Perceptive Priestess

True enough, I do forget about the hand press as well.

It's a bit into advancement and highly connected, so I'll ask:
What about hygiene? In the medieval people used to take bath like once per few weeks or even more seldom. Is it the case in here also?
Commoners/most of the island I mean, cause I assume that everyone can play being even overly higienic if he/she wants.

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That's not true, really. It's hard to estimate how often someone bathed 600 years ago, but there's really no evidence to suggest that was the case. They probably washed daily, though obviously had no showers.

I'm sure all taverns on Amia have basins, and some of them running water, for washing hands and face before a meal. We have a public bathhouse, too. "Dirty medieval people" is a popular stereotype that doesn't apply to real history, and probably not to the Realms either.

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That's not true, if you learn history.
Yet I don't want to get into another futile discussion with you.
Can I ask someone else answer me, please?

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...you do know that I am a University-trained scholar of medieval church history, right? As in, I've studied five years to make a career out of knowing whether medieval people were dirty when they went to Communion or not. And that within the last year, I've attended one post-doc and one professor-level presentation on the subject of medieval welfare and hygiene in city planning.

Dunno why you feel you have a bone to pick with me. But fine: can you cite some recent studies of medieval hygiene that you base your claim on? Within the last twenty years, preferrably, as that's considered a bit of a new leaf for medieval studies.

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If it were as true as the stereotype presents, female bladder infections would have been on the level of pandemic.

Lol. I'd bet most middle class families would save up to buy a prestigiditation trinket just because it owns household chores to the face.

Ok that's giving some light on the topic for me, thanks
Lately I've read some biographies from 17-18th century and personal documents like Mozart Letters, and this gave the impression of them not being too clean. But again they might have neglected their higene in comparison to the middle ages then.

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Well, people probably bathed often enough to be somewhat sanitary, though my intuition tells me dental hygeine was a thing afforded primarily to the wealthy and educated so there was likely plenty of bad breath and the gum disease GINGIVITIS to go around. (I would be interested in any clarification Iron may have on that subject!)

I am not an expert, but I think there was a trend in the 17th-18th centuries among the upper classes not to wash often because they thought it was unhealthy. (Such beliefs could probably be traced to earlier times too, but how widespread they were in practice is another matter.) But this could be one of those myths, I've never read anything about it.

There are different levels of cleanliness, of course. Given that they didn't have an abundance of soap or hot water, the kind of thorough washing like we'd get from a shower was obviously uncommon. But that's not to say they didn't wash at all. There were also some public bath houses or basins in cities, though who used them and how often is not that clear.

It's one of those things that's hard to get a good impression about from the sources, I'll grant you that. When a town ordinance or a monastic rule requires cleanliness of someone or something, what they mean by "clean" might be different from what we assume. That said, towns had both public and private cess pits and latrines, governed by ordinances that generally required them to be maintained and also determined the distance they were allowed to be from the house or street. (The distances were not very great on our standards, though.) When a cess pit filled up with garbage, it would either get emptied or buried and a new one digged. Archaeological evidence suggests that some of them could be in use for fifty years, taking long to fill up and maybe emptied outside of town once. What is known for certain is that various written documents appreciated and urged cleanliness. It was generally seen as a good Christian thing (unless you were an ascetic hermit), so people wouldn't intentionally stay filthy if water was available. And why wouldn't it be?

I don't have many specific examples off the top of my head, but the monastery-specific additions to the Birgittine Rule at Syon Abbey require washing hands after meals, shaving beards, and assign punishments for dropping food on the table. There's more there on hygiene, but it's obviously a pretty specific case that doesn't necessarily say much about reality at a farmer's table.

Environments weren't as sterile, that's for sure. But if you think about it, there's really no reason to assume they were any filthier than we would be if we lived at a summer cottage with no electricity or running water. We'd still have wells, and we'd have means of heating water. We could dip in a stream or lake if one was closeby, but mostly we'd wash ourselves with a basin and some kind of a rag or sponge. Dishes and laundry would be done by hand, probably not as often as we wash them but often enough not to die of some infection. (Yossarin's earlier point is a good one.)

I don't know about dental hygiene, but I agree with Yoss. I seem to recall a presentation on medieval medical text books, and the guy said cleaning teeth by rubbing them with your finger was recommended. That would be what the doctors who used said manuals would recommend, and I suppose it's common sense too. I highly doubt the common man had access to dental care more sophisticated than pulling teeth, though. They probably chewed on some herbs that didn't actually have much of an effect, but they were sure they did - there was a lot of that going about.

EDIT: We need to remember, though, that any stereotype or generalization about "the middle ages" is bound to be inadequate and have a counter-exmple. We're talking about a period of some 1000 years, 6th to 16th century. The beginning of the middle ages was twice as distant past at the end of the period than the end is to us now. Add to that geographical and socio-economic diversity, and we can probably find support for any idea. I'm sure you're not entirely wrong, Laiquendi. No doubt somewhere, sometime during the era people had quite atrocious standards of hygiene. When I speak of medieval society here, I'm generally referring to the Late Middle Ages (14th-16th cent.) and maybe the latter half of the High Middle Ages (c. 11th-13th). We can't equate the Realms to any one period in real world history because it's a hodge-podge of modern ideas, different social models, technologies and magic etc., but I'd say the general mood and level of social and technological advancement most closely resembles the late medieval and early modern era.

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To be honest I peg Amian technology on cleanliness as circa the Pax Romana. This especially holds true when looking at both Cordor and Kohlingen. I would also toss the Salandran Temple up as an honorable mention despite being such a small settlement.

All three have running water, public baths, a sanitation system, and toilets of a fashion.

Wharftown, Winya, Uhm, the Shrine, and Bendir Dale are a half step (or more) back from that.

Rating towns on the island itself by overall hygiene of their NPCs populations, I would go with this:
1•Cordor (thanks in large part to the Temple of Love)

2•Kohlingen/Salandrans

3•Winya

4•The Shrine/Wharftown/Bendir Dale

5•Uhm

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Eli Hodgewall <{/,~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~X
Sven <=={o===========>
Qeelak \ | / ,

In 14th century England health and hygiene was terrible. Even without the smoking of tabaco, smog of cities or chemicals of pharmaceutial companies being dumped in the rivers, there were a lot of health hazzards. The lifetime of exposure to the smoke of open fires caused lung diseases similiar in nature to smoking. Water was not always clean, due to overflowing cesspirts to dead animals. There might be no allergic reactions of children to excessive use of chemicals in the household, but nearly half of them still did not live to adulthood.

Injuries due to poor knowledge of medicine and hygeniene means that blood poisoning often led to death or the amputation of a limb. Hospitals put seriously ill people in one bed together, even when they are suffering from infectious illnesses. The germ theory was completly unknown.

The most common cause of ilness is, according to most opinions, divine judgement. The widespread understanding is that disease and physical suffering are the means of God purifing your soul. So often it was not medical assistance that was sought, but divine one. Other ideas of disease were bound up with astrology.




Medical diagonistic advice partly were written like this:




As to hygiene, there were very different mindsets. While the germ theory was unknown until the 19th century, homes should smell of saintly manner. When saints die there was supposed to be a smell like the breaking open of many perfume bottles: the odor of sanctity. Hence homes should not smell like the connotations of sinfulness, corruption and decay. In a community where everyone knows everyone else, the cleanliness of your home was a rather important aspect of your personal identity.

People should also seem cleanly, so they paid attention to their personal appearence as well. Their face, teeth, hands, body, fingernails, beards and hair. If you smellt like fetid air of a miasma, people would have shunned you like the plague and regard you as immoral. The methods of cleanliness of course varied with wealth and social class. Those who worked with noxious materials are aware to bathe themselves daily and so made use of the rivers. Babies are regularly given bathes sweetened with rose petals ground with salt.

Those who did not have such dirty jobs of course had less bathes. Bathes were generally labor intensive, given you need to heat several pots of water. But they do wash parts of themselves frequently. Face and hands in the morning, given they are shown, are rather important. Monastaries had a stone lavabo or communal fountain. Those are also washed before and after a meal traditionally, and that is practiced by all social classes. Members of the aristrocracy tend to have bathed more often, and with more fragrant additions.

Clothes are washed by washerwomen. Certain colors needed more expensive soaps. So social classes tended to wear different colors more often depending on the price of dyes and soaps. There were certain combs to remove lice. Brushing your hair too often as a man was frowned upon, but women did it more often. That is primarily due to the fact women were not allowed to wear their hair down in public, hence needed to brush and comb it so it could be styled or covered.

Spices were used for the teeth. In "The Miller's Tale," Chauncer's characters chew cardamom and licorice. Aniseed, cumin and fennel are sometimes recommended to women. The purpose was more of making the breath smell fresh, rather than keep disease from the teeth. Bad breath was believed to carry disease. There are also other believes such as that the breath of menstruating women can make a wound go bad, and so can the breath of a physician who has recently had sex with a menstruating woman. The breath of lepers can give you leprosy.

Toothaches were often treated with myrrh and opium. For the less wealthy you could:



alternativly, you could go to a tooth drawer, who will yank it out for you.


I can add more to this some time, if you are interrested. Alternativly, you can buy "The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England" by Ian Mortimer, which covers really a lot of aspects of 14th century england. It is a great book to read up on the landscape, people, medieval character, fashion, traveling, food and drink, health and hygiene, the law, as well as things like humor.

As for the hygiene of Amia, Kohlingen certainly holds the highest standards in the region without a doubt in my opinion. The Church of Ilmater is likely the most influential of the religions in Kohlingen, followed by Tyr and Torm. The Church of Ilmater being one of the most educated and medically advanced in the realms, and being in close contact with the Church of Salandra, who's lady stands in service to their lord.

Kohlingen has a hospice, and it has a bathhouse. When they are overburdened, they have the Saladran Temple just across the bay. They people do not live as much on top of one another as in Cordor. It has a working sewage system, and the clean sea shore and lake to wash clothes. With the care of the ilmaterite faith and the strong sense of social pious community poverty is far less of a problem. Arcane technologies like the water purifier help as well.

Kohlingen also has magical artifice that bolsters the overall health and welfare of the city, such as the water purifier.

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Playing:
Marcus Valis

I will subscribe to almost everything Gabe said. I actually have Mortimer's book on the shelf, but I haven't read it yet. It seems good, although it's pretty general and popularised (a 6-page bibliography on a work of that scope).

I do not think the part about illness as divine retribution is quite as simple as that. While astrology and theology played an important part of making sense of the world, doctors and common people weren't dumb or complacent; they recommended and used treatments that worked, or seemed to work within their medical paradigm. The will of God, demonic possession or the alignment of the planets should be seen as another lay of interpretation complementing, not replacing, common sense and proper medical procedure. There's somewhat of a discrepancy between the elaborate humorological treatises and what was actually prescribed as treatment. It's also a little unclear how commonly people actually subscribed to those ideas: while the possibility of, say, heretical visions caused by demonic powers was acknowledged, literary authorities (don't remember who exactly, off the top of my head) generally accepted that in most cases the cause was an entirely mundane mental illness.


As for Amia, I would put Winya in the running for cleanest settlement, if only because of its low population density. I think we may have overestimated its population at some point when we gave it as a few thousand, given how few elves generally are in relation to humans. Either way, it's still a lot less than in Cordor, in a spacey environment up and down a hill, in trees and on ground, and most importantly, by clean running spring water.

In contrast, the public areas we see of Cordor are probably fairly clean, but to house all those people it must have mazes of narrow alleys, with maybe 1.5 meters between buildings on both sides, and no immediate access to the sewer. (A major factor in cleanliness!) I'd say the poorer, denser parts of Cordor are among the filthiest on Amia. Something like rural Uhm just doesn't pack so many people's shit in as small an area. The public baths are another factor to improve hygiene, but there's no way they have the capacity to service more than 5% of Cordor's population on a weekly basis. Generally, the less people, the better the hygiene.

Unless it's something that just isn't represented in the module, by the way, Kohlingen has no sewers. That's a major drawback.

There's also the industry factor. Major industry pollutes. Whoever makes Amia's paper and parchment isn't living very clean. Forges and sawmills are also nasty. Settlements with little of that would be better off. Winya seems to do well in this department, too.

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Kohlingen still has sewers as far as I know. Before the module update there were still grates and I think even further back there were some you could go down into.

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Yeah, certainly the aspect of divine retribution in regards to illness was not everything. In the 14th century good physicians already knew that it helped treating wounds with vinegar for instance, among other things. Though there were quite a few medicial procedures that were ineffective and dangerous. For instance the treatment of Syphilis with mercury.

In regard to medicine, europe also experienced a rise in knoweldge through the crusades. So the exchange between the western and eastern culture certainly helped find new treatments and ways of diagonisis. Though many beliefs and misconceptions actually made it hard for more scientific treatment to evolve.

By this reasoning, the Grove would be the cleanest settlement, with a Great Druid (also an accomplished healer) to control the water supply from the glacial runoff, and (spread of) disease. Just ignore the fleas, they don't eat much.

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I wouldn't consider the grove a "settlement" as much as home to literally the NPCs that are in game and the PCs that are bound there, no more. The settlements I'm referring to have several times the NPC population of what's visible in game.

One thing not directly in support or contest of any point, but interesting nonetheless: the NWN tilesets make all of Cordor appear paved with cobblestone. That's extremely unlikely. Paving streets and squares is not so much a matter of technology as it is of effort and investment. Stone is not forever; it needs to be replaced regularly, even if most of the material is reused. There's just no reason all the streets and alleys in Cordor's residential districts would be paved. Your typical, well-off medieval city would have plenty of dirt streets. The ditch was digged by the street, and all of it was covered with wood. It was cheap and easy to replace, and protected the road from going all muddy. Before asphalt, there was really no point in paving everything.

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Before the discussion gets too deep onto the subject, I should remind everyone about the inherent fallacy of equating the Forgotten Realms with 14-15th century reality, even in terms of technology available. Magic alone creates a variable that has some technologies and concepts arising at rapid rates while others dwindle since no one ever had to conceive of a mundane way out of it.

More so on amia, where high tier clerical magic is available to every farmer who has an ailing pig. >.>

Yes. Forgotten Realms as a "high magic" setting is not one of my favorite details of the setting and I would prefer more elements of control over such excesses and more reliance upon the mundane, but in a way that tends to be built in. People expect magical problems and magical solutions so when you take mundane approaches to problems, or create problems through mundane means, people get all confused and don't know wtf is going on or how it happened!

"This dwarf is vomiting uncontrollably and cannot remember his name! Nor can he walk in a straight line or think of a woman as anything other than a sex object! Clearly, this is the work of a nefarious spellcaster. Someone fetch a cleric! We must get to the bottom of this mystery at once!"

If you look over the NPCs in the Forgotten Realm setting or read the novels, you will find that it's magical power level is far lower than it is represented on amia. That is mainly due to the fact that you generally do not have 200 adventurers who are level 30 in a small region like amia. Usually such powers are exceptions.

It is made worse that we make the NPCs even more powerful than the level 30s to balance it out and make them less special. Elminster being a level 50 in terms to our level 30s. So now casting ressurection or disjunction is a mediocre level of magic. Having such powerful magic so readily available just suspends the need for anything else.

The balancing of amia works well as long as you exclude magic. The ancient red being a CR 46 instead of 26 prevents Robert from smacking such a rare creature alone. But with mages and clerics the abilities do not truly get weaker with the way amia is balanced. Greater Restoration still removes all ailments. Ressurection still is readily available.

High End Realms Toilet: Set up magic bag so that it remains open on a stand below a seat of ivory and gold.

#1, #2... No problem! No smell, and it would take a lifetime to fill! Perfect for when the Lady Justicar has to lead her own troops from the front!

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Eli Hodgewall <{/,~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~X
Sven <=={o===========>
Qeelak \ | / ,

LoL

But the point of high-magic disturbing grately the development is a fair point. Even IRL China for example, because they discovere porcelain long before Europe, they didn't use glass so their laboratories were much different, and they had a chance to create such things like fireworks long before the rest of the Earth. And thus their technology is still much different, in spite of easy interconnections available now.
So having such an element as magic in high concentration on Amia, we face an unbalanced root, base, difficult to place anywhere in our domain.

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Agreed. That's what compounds the problem. I was referring, though, to the fact that the Forgotten Realms is advertised as a "high magic" setting to begin with. Apparently. Never seen that from an official source, but everyone says so.

I do not think there is an official caculation of when a setting is high magic, but more a gut feeling when comparing it to other settings. The Frogotten Realms are certainly high magic when compared to worlds like Middle-Earth, Aventurien or Westeros.

I always felt it is not that difficult to adjust. The creatures are pretty simple to do already. A balor not being a CR 18 creature that can also be summoned via gate is a good step to avoid them from being seen as the equivilant of an ogre. What is mainly left is magic.

Most spells are not problematic, as the list of nwn spells that are of concern is not very long. The healing spells (heal to mass heal, and lesser to greater restoration) can be toned down in roleplay power and mechanical power. For example greater restoration (and this is just at the top of my head):



That would open up the possibility of storylines and plagues not having to be of epic magical proportion, but simply being potent and dangerous. A city can not be easily cured by only having 20 clerics cast 10 greater restorations every eight hours, but for epedimics you would require a medical cure if it spreads. So the danger and need to take precautions rises, and not everything is left to the clerics.

Greater Restoration remains a powerful curative spell, it just falls more in line with the average of the original setting. Mechanically it would still be a great boon to remove malignant effects when hunting or during plots, it however is not an absolute guranteed cure-it-all.


Another example, this time arcane, would be mindblank. Instead of giving a 100% success against all devices and spells that detect, influence, or read emotions or thoughts, why not make it a 80% chance with a +3 will save against such effects? Ilithids no longer would be an absolute pushover. While the spell remains very useful, it is not a 100% gurantee. Death Ward also being 80% with +3saves against such spells would be far better than it's guranteed 100% at the moment. Both would leave a danger to the characters, while remaining a valuable protection.