Elminster is a jerk!
lummoxybez
Member Posts: 33
With reference to Volo's guide to the Sword Coast and other BG manuals:
Imagine coming across a Lonely Planet guide book that someone had annotated with their own comments in the way the Elmister annotated Volo's works.
You would think they were a right nob!
He sighs in exasperation and repeatedly belittles the author for what he considers innacuracies or subjective opinions rather than fact. He even slates Volo for no real reason, when Volo's comments are accurate and unbiased.
Well go and write your own guide book you pointy-hat-wearing, pipe-smoking jerk!
Imagine coming across a Lonely Planet guide book that someone had annotated with their own comments in the way the Elmister annotated Volo's works.
You would think they were a right nob!
He sighs in exasperation and repeatedly belittles the author for what he considers innacuracies or subjective opinions rather than fact. He even slates Volo for no real reason, when Volo's comments are accurate and unbiased.
Well go and write your own guide book you pointy-hat-wearing, pipe-smoking jerk!
Post edited by lummoxybez on
11
Comments
I meant "Elminster" with a capital E.
Er... at least I assume you are a different person...
I think the evidence is piling up.
The poor man was only trying to imporve volo's work, and that's on the side of being an awesome pointy hat wearing, pipe smoking badass
:P
Volo is an eminent sage. - Volo
Eminent indeed! - Elminster
Why would anyone go to the Black Pits? This seems like poor decision making to me..... - Volo
I suppose you would know something about that. - Elminster
I prefer to avoid violence myself. - Volo
Perhaps because everyone you meet tries to direct violence your way. - Elminster
Wild mages meddle with power far beyond their control. - Volo
Not unlike a certain travelogue owner with whom I am unfortunately acquainted. - Elminster
Tossing about magic will give my chosen profession of mage a bad name. - Volo
There are plenty of mages whose bad names are richly deserved. - Elminster
I could continue but I'm fed up of typing on an iPad.
(jerkiest jerk from Jerksville, Jerklahoma........)
(When referring to Silence 15' Radius) Effective for thwarting enemy spell casters. - Volo
If only the spell could be used more often on you, Volo. - Elminster
jerk
Volo also shows frankly a disregard for the impact that the secrets he wants revealed could have if they were revealed. As a Chosen of Mystra Elminster kind of has a responsibility to ensure evil forces don't get a hand on some of these powerful items.
Or as Elminster puts it regarding Volo's "Guide to All Things Magical"
What a pretentious title. Not even I would dare to
pen something that purported to be a guide to all
things magical. Volo did not even try. What he
foisted upon Faerûnians hungry for enough
secrets of magic to make them rulers of the
Realms was a grab bag full of odds and ends about the Art:
notes about this and that, gossip, and distorted fragments of
spells and processes copied from spellbooks on the sly or misremembered
from brief glimpses snatched in places and on
occasions when he dared not write anything down.
In the interests of reader safety, I was forced to spearhead
an exhaustive search for every last copy of his masterpiece of
horrorsI think we got them all and then convince him of
the error of his ways. Just about every other mage who had
seen the work offered to help in this little task. After due passage
of time, I agreed that something called Volos Guide to All
Things Magical (that title what an arrogant longnose!) should
become available across Faerûn, if only to stop greedy adventurers
from getting themselves killed in the defenses of every
mages tower between Evermeet and Kara-Tur in an attempt
to gain a copy of the work rumored to yet to survive.
Yet mark ye it was not going to be the same opus Volo fondly
thought of as his great gift to all seekers after magic. I set to
work on the only copy of the text remaining (safely kept up to
that point in my library) to expunge the worst of his distortions
and just plain errors in order to keep Faerûn from being overrun
with uncontrolled elementals and worse summoned
extraplanar beasts to identify just one consideration.
And then, of course, a little minor surgery was necessary on
what he got right. I really do not think the Realms would be
better off without any wizards around to keep the beholders,
dragons, drow, orc hordes, petty sword-swinging tyrants,
insane Baneliches, and other evils at bay and that is what
would have happened if Volos little list of carefully pilfered
command words, phrases of activation, true names, and the
like had fallen into the hands of the inhabitants of wider
Faerûn. Some things only the magically enlightened, whether
wizards or priests, are meant to know really! Accordingly, I
considered just what delicate deletions to make and then went
out and got a good sharp meat axe.
When a small pile of tattered scraps of parchment were all
that remained of Volos opus, I set to work restating his fumbling
prose into understandable terms and chopping the
most irresponsible blow-up-all-Toril spells. What emerged is
that which ye hold in your hands: a few fragments of useful
material about magic. These are only the bones of Volos
colossus of magical revelation, but at least they are now the
right bones to keep the thing standing up.
Spells found in other recently released volumes of Realms-
1ore, by the way, for the most part are not repeated herein
unless substantial amplifications or corrections of earlier
accounts are also included. With that said, the reader is
warned that to act on much of the information in these pages
is inherently dangerous and may even earn the dabbler some
perilous foes. Moreover, much of the information here in is dangerously wrong!
On the other hand, the revised work in your hands does
have value as a source of ideas a spur to the sorcerously creative,
if ye will. A crucial part of the Art and any understanding
of it is to recognize that there are many ways to achieve a
desired effect or result, just as many cooks prepare the same
dish in different ways. What Volo says herein may be a way of
doing thus or so, but bear in mind that it is often (nay, usually)
not the only way of doing it.
Priests will find some lore of practical use to them in this
book, and mages who follow other paths to mastery of magic
will find that what appears herein is almost wholly concerned
with magic as practiced by humans dwelling in Faerûn.
Thankfully, Volo resisted the temptation to set down wizard
jokes in print, so none of them are perpetuated here.
For all my work, this tome is still a grab bag of this and that
and not a comprehensive guide at all. That is something that
can probably never be written. Only the beings known to us as
Mystra and Azuth could possibly encompass the subject, and I
can conceive of nothing that would induce them to write a
work that lays bare in a few pages what should take mortals a
lifetime of careful study and experimentation to learn the paltry
beginnings of.
To readers who trust in the sword or the dagger and hope
to find in these pages a guide to how to lay mages low, I tender
the following piece of very good advice: Wizards? Avoid em.
Lifes better when yere not a frog. That anonymous trail saying
of the Sword Coast lands has been around a long, long
time, but it is best never forgotten if ye take my point.
Happy reading, then, dabblers in magic and try to leave a
little of the Realms still standing when ye are done, will ye not?
Urgh... Why do those names have to sound so irritatingly similar...
Polo-playing gogo dancer Gogol hobos.
everytime I read about Gandalf I think of Elminster
But yeah, he's not very nice to Volo.
Elminster certainly isn't my favorite fantasy character (that honor goes alternately to Kvothe, Denna, and Auri, depending on my mood), but I definitely elevate him beyond Mary Sue status.
Still, it's probably easier living with a name like Elmister than Mary Sue. Imagine what those poor women go through!