Roads to Other Places

The entry door with its two guardian statues is still slightly ajar. The girl, your welcome and guide through the complex, is still standing there looking at you, a smile in sad goodbye on her dark face. Briefly you raise your hand in a final ‘thank you’ and then resolutely turn to leave the building behind.

After nearly an hour, or so you estimate, you emerge from the woods back at the road. A few more minutes walking brings you to an intersection from where you know you can go almost anywhere. Or at least almost anywhere that matters. You stand a few moments to study the brown, wooden signs inscribed with curling, black script and pointing in all the directions of the wind. Then you decide where to go and leave on the chosen path.

	Official Links Here you’ll find a couple of, what one could describe as, “official links”. These are a couple of links to official pages from companies and products in some way related to the Chosen. It is both as a common courtesy to the professionals behind said products/companies as the first place for our visitors to look for more information on them. Well, this is the game it’s all about: Neverwinter Nights. To quote the official text: “Prepare to embark on an epic adventure with Neverwinter Nights, the highly anticipated roleplaying game set for a summer 2002 release. With a gripping single-player campaign and unparalleled multi-player options, Neverwinter Nights will change the face of PC roleplaying forever.” Well, there you have it. We highly recommend you check it out if you haven’t already. After Neverwinter Night’s success it, of course, couldn’t last long before a sequal would be made. And with the highly inspired name of “Neverwinter Nights 2” this is it. Still in development, looking at a spring 2006 release, it promises to bring better graphics, better tools, a better official campaign and, well, just more and better. From the brief glimpses we have had so far it certainly looks like the developers will deliver on their promise. But seeing how high the anticipation runs for this game this certainly isn’t an easy task. BioWare is the computer games development company that created Neverwinter Nights. Adding it to their list of excellent games such as “Baldur’s Gate”, it’s sequel “Baldur’s Gate 2 - Shadows of Amn” and Star Wars roleplaying game “Knights of the Old Republic”. Seeing the quality of these games BioWare’s dedication to make top-of-the-line roleplaying game it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Neverwinter Nights is, to date, still one of the most popular computer roleplaying games despite it’s release in 2002. Of course this is in no small part also due to their continued support of the game, having created two expansion packs, numerous premium modules and far more patches giving new content and functionality to count. Where BioWare developed Neverwinter Nights, it is Obsidian Entertainment who is making it’s sequel Neverwinter Nights 2. With only one previous game to their name they might look like a somewhat dubious choice for such a highly anticipated and complex game, until you take a closer look at the people that make up the studio. First of all this one game is the highly successful “Knights of the Old Republic 2”, sequel to another of BioWare’s games. This alone should show the quality this studio is capable of. And if you then consider that the key members of Obsidian have been responsible for titles such as “Fallout”, “Fallout 2”, “Planescape - Torment”, “Icewind Dale” and “Icewind Dale 2” (not to mention the numerous other talented individuals now part of this studio) it seems clear that they have what it takes to make the sequel every bit as successful as the original. We are all holding our breath, Obsidian, so show us what you’ve got.

	Eilistraee Links More information on our Good goddess than you’ll probably ever need. While the first link might be considered ‘official’, all others are fan pages. Still, the information they contain is for the most part based directly on (if not a direct copy of) the official information and should still provide valuable. < Faiths and Pantheons Excerpt: Eilistraee > With the release of the 3E Forgotten Realms sourcebook “Faiths and Pantheons”, Wizards of the Coast released excerpts from that book on four deities. And lucky for us one of those deities was Eilistraee. So here we can offer the full, official description on Eilistraee online. < The Temple of Fruit Yogurt: Eilistraee > If the official 3E information isn’t enough for you, then here is the full 2nd ed. information. There is even more background information here, though all statistics are old. And once you’re done reading even more on Eilistraee you can also find full 2nd ed. descriptions on the five other drow deities here. < Eilistraee, The Dark Maiden > Provides basically the same information as the previous links. Again all 2nd ed. with ample background information, though little new compared to the previous links. < The Priesthood of Eilistraee > A text file with more 2nd ed. information on priestesses of Eilistraee. It is old information (for example, the pronunciation is listed wrong, it’s Eel-iss-TRAY-yee), but still has some good information. It seems to pre-date the “Demihuman Deities” sourcebook, maybe even the “Drow of the Underdark” sourcebook. < City of Moonblade > A whole city devoted to Eilistraee! From what I can tell it’s a group of roleplayers, though I can’t seem to find the forums. I’m not sure how active they are for I found the site a while back and it doesn’t appear to have changed since then.

	Drow Links These links are not Eilistraee specific, but still relate to the drow. Again all but the first are fan created, though a lot of it is based on official information. All in all there’s a lot of juicy information here so enjoy the read. < Delve Into the Drow > Three authorities on the drow post their thoughts on the dark elves. These people are R. A. Salvatore (famous for his Drizzt novels), Elaine Cunningham (for her books on Liriel) and Chris Pramas (for his contribution on drow in Chainmail). Especially Elaine’s piece is definitely worth reading, if only for the short story she provides with it. < L’Ilythiiri Zhaun’ol (The Drow Dictionary) > Based on the dictionary as presented in the “Drow of the Underdark” book it provides some useful information particularly on grammatical rules. The list of words is by far not as extensive as that in the Drow Fortress. < Tales of the Drow > A collection of drow oriented fan-fiction stories. I must admit that I have yet to read them, but it seems like a nice diversion if nothing else. < Menzoberranzan > This is the homepage of the Sojourney server that represents the famous drow city Menzoberranzan. Has very good information on the city and extensive forums. < Demona Vandree > This is the homepage of the artist who made the image on the front page. “Head bowed in prayer, Demona of the House Vandree seeks the one thing she craves most in her dark and forbidding heart… the attention of the Spider Queen.” < Valm Neira > Italian web site dedicated to drow, with translation in English. Galleries, resources, downloads... and all about drow!