Placing GH legends in chronology

 From: Mark Barazzuol [markb@intergate.bc.ca]

Sent: Friday, November 06, 1998 11 :36 AM

To: 'greyhawk@MPGN.COM'

Subject: RE: [GREYHAWK] - Placing GH legends in chronology

I am attempting to place several of the historical and legendary figures of Oerth in a chronological order to help determine the possible influence and interaction between them.

I am looking for info on the powerful Mages, Liches and King-Priests ofhistory such as:

Tuerny, Lum, Acerak, Vecna, Tsojcanth, Cuthbert, and any others that come to mind.

Most of the time, all the books give you is "A long time back," or many centuries ago ..

Tuerny had influence over part of the great kingdom if I remember correctly, he may have controlled all of it at one time with his demonic servants. The artifact later turned on it's creator, and well, let's just say the rest is what you see of Tuerny now .. Given that time frame, it would put him in Early Great Kingdom history. Depending on the way you look at it possibly even before the formation of the great kingdom. (If you believe there was civilized life there before ..

Baron Lum was a noble under the rule of one of the Kings of Aerdy. He had - quite a rivalry going between himself and Leuk-o another who discovered one of those technological artifacts. He is definitly one of those early great kingdom personages too. No firm dates given.

Acerak is easily the most ancient of those you listed there. With the POSSIBLE exeception of Tsojcanth, depending on how you look at his time period. We know Acerak's empire was around the Sunndi area, and it existed before that place turned into a swamp. Given that there is no record of it with even early Great Kingdom history I would place them at least 500 years before the migration. Probally even 1000. Also given that Acerack had to be extremely old at that time. I would say the kingdom itself would have had to have lasted at very least 1000 years. (It does take a while for a lich to turn to dust..)

There is so much conflicting stuff on Vecna I can't really tell you .. Probally 1000+ years ago his empire was around. I wouldn't make it too much more than that.. I also don't even know where his empire was supposed to be. Early TSR docs seem to point to the West, somewhere in either the Suel or Oerdian empires. The most current docs point to around the Nyr Dyv area. Go figure ..

To find out how Tsojcanth was you just have to figure, when was the last time Tharizdun was active on Oerth? Given what horrors this guy is responsible for, I'd say he predates any of the history books for any races here. I'd put him 10,000 years back... He seems to be in a time period all to himself.

Cuthbert? No one has even speculated that before.. How old is Celestian? Or Farlanghn? Who knows? It's probally got to take a while to get up to that status. Realistically, I don't see any of the gods with "Medevil" styles to them originating on Oerth at all. Back when they were actually mortal (if they ever were .. ) the time period wouldn't have reached a Medevil point in Oerth culture.. No, probally like Mayheine they migrated. Maybe it wasn't from too far though .. Remember, there's lots of life on some of the other planets in the Oerth solar system. Some like Kule which have had long dead civilizations.. Who knows?