I’ve been meaning to follow up on a comment Terry had made in my interview with him a few years back:
BH: Are there any other continents besides Emer and Jaiman that you’ve written notes/materials that you’d like to tackle?
TKA: A couple (Folenn and Falias) are kind of taken-care of. I would like to go southwest to Thuul…
So I thought I would start blogging about some of the other continents that haven’t been developed well, or at all, excluding the basic summary material in the Master Atlas. We can all agree that Jaiman and Emer are pretty well fleshed out with years of play material. While it would be nice to have Emer IV and Wurilis and Urulan to round out Jaiman, the existing material stands on it’s own.
First, Folenn. I’m assuming that Terry saw Folenn as partitioned off as the “Bladelands” even though there hasn’t been any further development of that material AND I’m not sure the Bladelands even fit into SW. I have to admit some ignorance on the topic of “Metal Express” or really anything about the Bladelands. Per the Master Atlas the word “Bladelands” is only mentioned 1 time and Folenn is described thusly:
17•FOLENN
An isolated, shadowy land on the edge of the
earth, Folenn has had little contact with the rest
of the hemisphere. It is shielded by the encircling
Gale of Hues (a name for the Essænce Flow surrounding
the continent), and is near the Great Barrier
dividing East from West.
So it seems as though Folenn has been set aside for the Bladelands and that is that. Terry basically washed his hands of it and saw it as a done deal.
I was a bit more curious about his comment including Falia. Did I miss a source book that provided a lot of material on Falia? One of the non-canon modules perhaps? Falia is the home of the Vashaan Domain (a nation of angry elves, but I don’t see Falia as especially developed. Certainly no more so than the rest of the continents. Why would Terry mention Falias specifically as being “kind of taken-care of”? Does that imply that he has some additional work, notes or the start of a book that might be in his papers? That is intriguing.
What do you think? I’ll be looking at some of the other continents in upcoming blog posts and offering my own thoughts on future development.
I always confuse Palia with Falias with Govon.
– Star Crown Empire and the Sea of Fates is about Govon.
– There are no books that I know of covering adventures in Palia and Falias (didn’t check the Tales of the Loremasters though)
We made a campaign in Falias, using the information in the Master Atlas, although we played in a custom 4th era that we sometimes use, so there was no need for official material.
When I was developing Sea Law, I focused quite a bit on Palia at the direct suggestion of ICE (I believe Coleman Charlton in particular). It stuck me at the time they must have been planning something for that region, although I did thumbnail sketches of shipbuilding throughout SW. I’d originally intended to keep the rules much more generic, but they wanted a focus on SW in general and Palia in particular. Never really did find out why, though.
Maybe the goal was to expand from Jaiman/Emer outward?
That I don’t know. Somewhere I still have the Sea Law correspondence (packed away, no doubt), but they were pretty explicit about both wanting linkage to SW and what areas they wanted to see emphasized. My example campaign idea was set in Palia, and it went to publication pretty much unchanged from the draft version. I don’t know how much Terry was involved in this (if at all), as my correspondence was pretty much with Charlton. They mentioned Falias as I recall, but Palia was always at the top of the list.