Unapproachable East.pdf - The Forgotten Realms

Best known for the crimson-robed Red Wizards
who rule the land with an iron fist, Thay is a
realm shrouded in mystery. Few outsiders have
traveled extensively within its borders unless abducted and sold
into a short life of slavery there. The Thayans who do talk
about their homeland speak of it with such pride as to make
most listeners doubt their amazing claims—were it not for the
fact that these same rumors surface again and again from a
dozen different sources.
The Thayans have endeavored constantly to expand their
borders since they won their independence from Mulhorand
in 922 DR. In fact, it was only twelve years after that momentous
date that the Thayans launched their first invasion
of Rashemen. The Thayans have been beaten back numerous
times from both Aglarond and Rashemen, but though their
armies failed to subjugate these realms, they still brought the
Alaor, the Priador, the Sur and Umber vales, and the cities of
the Wizards’ Reach under Thay’s control.
The borders of Thay have changed little since the conquest
of the Wizards’ Reach fifteen years ago. The Red Wizards keep
their armies at home these days, while their merchants have
spread throughout the lands of the Inner Sea, selling valuable
magic items in well-protected concessions and Thayan enclaves.
Rivers of gold, goods, and slaves pour into the zulkirs’
coffers from this expansion of Thayan trade. Szass Tam and
his colleagues have come to understand that gold can conquer
lands that resist swords and spells, and Thay’s monopoly on
the manufacture and sale of magic items might be the weapon
that brings the Red Wizards dominion over all Faerûn.
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Geographic
Overview
The country of Thay, once a large portion of the Mulhorandi
Empire, extends from the borders of Thesk and Aglarond in
the west to the Sunrise Mountains in the east. It stretches
nearly 500 miles from north to south and 450 miles from east
to west. Rashemen is directly to the north, across Lake Mulsantir,
while the Alamber Sea and Mulhorand form Thay’s
southern edge.
Most of Thay consists of a great plateau almost 350 miles
across. These arid tablelands are about 2,000 feet above sea
level at the outer edges and slope up to an elevation of about
4,000 feet in the vicinity of Lake Thaylambar and the
foothills of the Sunrise Mountains. The plateau’s southern,
western, and northern borders are a band of broken cliffs and
rugged canyons known as the First Escarpment. While few of
these cliffs are more than a couple of hundred feet in height,
the Escarpment rises on a dozen or so such precipices in the
space of ten or fifteen miles, like the tiers of a wedding cake.
A small party on foot can pick their way up the Escarpment
over a day or two of difficult paths and short scrambles, but
an army of any size is limited to a small number of passes and
roads, which the Thayans guard well.
Atop the Plateau of Thay, the land consists of broad, rolling
vistas broken by low mesas and chains of jagged rocks. Within
its bounds rises the Ruthammar Plateau, a second, smaller
plateau roughly 150 miles in diameter, which is more often referred
to as the Thaymount (its most prominent feature) or
High Thay. The Second Escarpment, a chain of cliffs and gorges
even more forbidding than the First Escarpment, bounds High
Thay. It averages almost 6,000 feet in elevation and is noticeably
colder and more arid than the tablelands below.
At the center of High Thay stand the volcanic peaks of the
Thaymount, in actuality a hundred-mile chain of fanglike
ridges and smoldering cinder cones whose highest point is