Safeholds (Part One)

By Ed Greenwood

The King and Queen of Cormyr found themselves in a small, dark room quickening to
coziness around them as two glowing globes came to life. One orb hovered above a
round bed with shimmering overclothes, and the other overhung a desk. By their
shared light, the Obarskyrs surveyed a wardrobe, a knights-and-dragons board set
ready on the otherwise spotless and empty desk, two lounge chairs smooth and
flowing enough to be elven-make, a carpet of dark and unfamiliar furs underfoot, and
smooth, featureless dun-hued walls that curved to become both floor and ceiling --
and displayed a complete lack of doors, windows, or any other visible way out.

"And just where are we now?" The Queen of Cormyr looked less than amused.
"Have you no way of controlling Vangerdahast's magic?"

Azoun sighed. "If I did, d'you think he'd be driving all Cormyr wild day after month
after year, ruling us just as firmly as he does every last crofter and dung-carter in the
realm?"

Filfaeril rolled her eyes -- and then, surprisingly, grinned.

"I meant, lord of my heart, can you control the ring you wear? Or does it take us
wherever it wills?"

"It takes us, I believe, from one place to another in a sequence our beloved Royal
Magician set. A sequence that I hope -- that he hinted, once -- is a circuit that will
eventually return us to the Palace."

"Its dungeons, or his bedchamber, or the room we departed from?"

It was Azoun's turn to grin. "I begin to think none of those Palace destinations is
preferable to any other. I'll be even less amused if our bedchamber turns out to be
among them."

"Right, I'm having the tapestries that face the foot of our bed taken down tomorrow,"
his queen said darkly.

"If we get within speaking distance of any Palace servant by the morrow," Azoun
reminded her gently.

"Ah, that's my Purple Dragon." Filfaeril's voice was sweet. "The man who heartens
and inspires every lass and jack of Cormyr by his reassurances. The overconfident
lord whose confidence spreads warmth to all, because he always says the right
thing."

Azoun gave her an innocent look. "I see a handy bed -- and privacy. Care to be
heartened and inspired?"
"I said 'overconfident,' not 'lucky.'"

Azoun and Filfaeril seem to have been translocated magically into a hidden room: a
furnished space intended for the use of humans, elves, or similar creatures, that has
no visible physical entrance or exit. Neither of them has yet noticed spells awakening
or affecting them, any inhabitants or guardian constructs . . . or bad air.

They kissed each other affectionately, and then turned again to peer at their
surroundings, each with an arm still around the other's shoulder.

"So where do you think we are, love?" Filfaeril murmured, hand going again to her
dagger.

"A safehold," Azoun replied promptly. "Whose, and where it is, though -- I haven't the
faintest."

"A safehold," Filfaeril echoed, gazing at the empty chairs and the knights-and-
dragons board.

"A little refuge, a magical hiding-hole. Elves crafted these, in the elder days. Myth
Drannor's said to be riddled with literally hundreds -- perhaps thousands -- of them.
You remember the Safehold, reached by setting a ladder atop the Standing Stone,
and jumping up from it in just the right direction --"

"To break legs or worse if you miss, and crash back to the ground," Filfaeril said
darkly. "I know very well what safeholds are. Yet I also know very well what
Vangerdahast is. Whose safehold is this, and why has he cause to visit it? Is this
where he hides folk he doesn't want us -- or divers murderous nobles -- to find, d'you
think?"

Azoun sighed. "Do I have to think about that, Fee? Thinking's what always seems to
get me in trouble. Can't we just use the bed and stop fretting about all Faern for a
bit?"

"No," the Dragon Queen said flatly. "Such luxuries aren't for those who wear crowns.
Vangerdahast could be busily marrying both our daughters right now, and declaring
himself Emperor-Wizard of all Cormyr."

Azoun snorted. "If he tries, he'd better lash up Tana's tongue and Luse's sword hand,
first, or he'll have the shortest reign of any --"

Filfaeril giggled. "Hold that thought, my lord. That's a mind-view I can savor."

The Purple Dragon sighed. "Well, that's one of us."

Azoun of Cormyr is correct: Safeholds were created in great numbers by elves in

earlier centuries, but none are made now, because those who crafted them belatedly
saw their perils. The presence of a safehold weakens planar fabric, allowing
translocation and dimension-spanning magics to penetrate a location more easily,
and unintended visitors (monsters) to "slip through the cracks" and arrive unwanted
and unheralded.

This was one contributing factor in the fall of Myth Drannor; in the battles of the Year
of Doom, both opportunistic monsters and the forces of the Army of Darkness often
appeared without warning in the heart of the city, taking folk by surprise and
slaughtering them in the most private chambers of their own homes.

Safeholds are called "elf holds" by many human sages, and they are sometimes
confused with slightly more common, visually similar refuges made before and
(rarely) since the times when safeholds were popular: subterranean chamber
networks, tombs, or "landlocked" caches (buried rooms or chains of rooms that no
longer have a physical entrance or exit to aboveground areas or adjacent Underdark
passages) that are portal-linked to a room or spot in Faern.

The lighthearted Cormyrean royals will return in our next column, wherein we'll see if
they learn enough about safeholds to find their way out of this one.

Safeholds (Part Two)

By Ed Greenwood

"What will happen if you trigger Vangey's ring while we're in here?" Filfaeril
murmured.

Azoun shrugged. "There's one way to find --"

Filfaeril's snake-swift slap stung his fingers.

"First, let's look around," she snapped. "If I have to die, I'd like it to be in a rather
more interesting manner than standing watching someone trifle with magic like a
fool."

"'Look around'?" The king's voice was incredulous. "Look around where?"

"In the wardrobe, under the bed, the undersides of the chairs, move a knight or
dragon on yon board and see what happens -- really, Az! How you lived this long
without falling into the habit of checking such places for angry husbands,
I don't know!"

The Purple Dragon of Cormyr considered possible responses to his wife's heated
words for a moment or two, and found none of them very satisfactory. After a
moment he announced decisively, "I'll check under the bed!"

A true safehold is a permanent extradimensional space or "pocket," linked by opaque

(and usually invisible) portals to specific points in the Realms. Some points include
atop a rock deep in a forest, or between two close-standing forest trees, or even a
closet or back corner of a room (perhaps now ruined, or entirely collapsed, to leave
the portal in midair) in Myth Drannor or another old elven settlement or structure. The
Knights of Myth Drannor adventuring band found several safeholds while exploring
ruined Myth Drannor, and they were told (by Elminster and several elves familiar with
Myth Drannor in its heyday) that the city hosted hundreds of small, hidden, secret
safeholds, private to a family, a business, or an individual -- so many, in fact, that
they started to intersect, collapse, cause wild magic in tiny, immobile areas, and
cause unintended planar interpenetrations that allowed marauding outsiders to creep
into the city and prowl.

Like the temporary extradimensional space created by a rope trick spell, a safehold is
a finite, rather small "hidden space." Creatures in a safehold can't be detected or
reached by spells (including divinations), unless those magics work across planes.
Safeholds have identical planar traits to the Material Plane (the Realms they connect
with), and they can be furnished with materials and filled by items (both mundane and
magical) brought from the Material Plane.

Most safeholds appear as single rooms, often lit by a continual flame effect (or similar
silent, heatless, fuel-less magic), having a solid, opaque, continuous surface (a wall,
akin to that created by a wall of forcespell, and usually having the same
characteristics and weaknesses) that forms walls, ceiling, and floor. This surface is
usually covered by carpeting, paneling (to which lamps, tapestries, and other
furnishings may have been affixed), and paint or stucco; some even have interior
walls of dressed stone built along the inside of the magical "walls."

The majority of safeholds have just one creature-sized portal for entry and exit,
though a few have portalkeys (usually command items, command words, or
situations involving the moon or spellcastings) that can "lock" the main portal, and
reveal or open otherwise-hidden alternate exits and entrances.

Sounds, missiles, and spells don't pass between a safehold and its immediate
Material Plane surroundings. However, unlike the extradimensional space associated
with a portable hole, air passes through a safehold continuously, providing endless
fresh air to its interior, from and to invisible links with the Material Plane that are
places where the creator of the safehold has earlier cast particular spells, and then
hurled an enspelled stone into midair.

When these recovered stones are later brought to the safehold location by its creator
and a series of spells is cast on them, invisible airflow portals the size of the stones
come into existence elsewhere in Faern, at the highest points in the arcs the thrown
stones traced when hurled, and they connect with the interior of the safehold. The
wall of the safehold influences temperature and humidity in the safehold interior,
creating convection currents and imbalances that encourage airflow. (A safehold
created without airflow portals will soon twist out of shape, and ultimately collapse.)

A safehold can usually hold up to a dozen creatures, but it is constructed for the
comfortable use of four at most. Many safeholds began as refuges for tending crying
babies, lovemaking away from prying eyes, or study areas (casting experimental or
battle spells in a safehold can be disastrous), but soon turned into storage: throw-
closets for anything broken, presents or contraband to be hidden away until later, or
bric-a-brac for which no better "stash space" could be found.
It will take at least until our next column for King Azoun to search the safehold well
enough to satisfy Filfaeril. In that installment, we'll wrap up our look at these
hideaways -- and see what next befalls our royal couple, too.

Safeholds (Part Three)

By Ed Greenwood

"Nothing," Azoun Obarskyr said at last. "Nothing but this."

He regarded the dusty tangle of string rather dubiously, and then held it out to his
queen.

Without hesitation Filfaeril ordered, "Undo the knot."

"What?" Azoun frowned at her, and then at the string. There was a knot, a simple
knuckle-knot, at one end of it.

He shrugged and teased the knot apart.

And the featureless dun-hued wall nigh his elbow silently melted away to let dappled
sunlight spill into the room, heralded by a faint rustling of leaves and birdsong.

Azoun stared at the oval opening that hadn't been there a moment earlier, smelled
the fresh forest breeze wafting through it, shrugged again, and offered his wife his
arm.

Smiling very faintly, Filfaeril took it, and together they stepped out into green and
waiting fastnesses.

Our royal couple have just stumbled upon one of the simpler "emergency ways out"
that the creator of a safehold can devise. Safehold creation definitely bears
examination -- wherefore, read on. Where Faernians say "knuckle-knot," by the
way, we would say "half-hitch."

Safehold Construction

Safeholds can be constructed by epic spellcasters who possess and cast the right
spells in the correct (complex) process.

Unless a would-be safehold creator has access to a specific process (either a written
record or a fully cooperative creator of safeholds), the character must devise the
process -- a difficult endeavor of speculation and trial-and-error that often results in
either failure or a spartan, short-lived safehold. (A Dungeon Master may choose to
adjudicate success in devising a process by applying modified rules governing
Founding Rituals from the Weapons of Legacy sourcebook; meditation, quests to
gain the blood or organs of specific planar-traveling or ethereal creatures, and similar
elements may be involved).

Available experts on safehold creation (almost all of whom are baelnorn or long-lived
elf mages who can wield high magic) are very few -- and safehold experts willing to
discuss such matters even rarer. The very best libraries, such as Candlekeep, may
hold enough fragmentary hints and references to steer someone trying to devise a
process for safehold creation in the right direction, suggesting necessary steps and
possible spells (or magical effects to be achieved if precise spells remain unknown).

Safehold creation always involves numerous precise castings of spells and often
multiple applications of the same spell. The necessary steps in all successful
safehold construction processes can be outlined as follows:

The extradimensional space must first be created and immediately anchored (to a
specific spot in the Realms, usually where its entry and exit portal will later be
created). Then the space must be shaped (given permanent size and dimensions).
Once the space is stable, a specially prepared item (or items, but there must be at
least one) must be linked into its "walls" (continuous outer surface), at spots where
future expansions or access points are planned.

At least one of these items is then replaced by a portal (allowing access to the interior
of the safehold), and the item thereafter is either destroyed or converted -- by still
other spells -- into a portal key. (Other items can be left "in the walls" for future use.)

Spells are then cast on the wall (the "skin" or "sphere" of the extradimensional space)
to give it specific temperature and humidity characteristics, to link it to Material Plane
sources of fresh air, and to give it some measure of permanence and stability.

What's missing from the spell arsenals of most arcane spellcasters today are the vital
spells that stabilize a safehold, making it something that persists from year to year
(as opposed to being swept away in a matter of days, or twisted into a cavity filled
with wild magic or ethereal traits, by planar stresses and energy ripples in the local
Weave). These magics were closely guarded elf family secrets even in the days of
Myth Drannor's glory, and they are largely forgotten today.

Scarcely better-known are the spells linking walls to fresh air sources, which is why
most of the few safeholds of more modern creation instead have tiny
invisible portals linked to their immediate surroundings. As one might expect, these
holes allow betraying sound and light to pass out into the surroundings, and
individuals outside can cast some spells and missiles into a safehold. In fact, those
outside can attempt to "smoke out" beings inside the safehold via fires, which can
render dead or unconscious those who choose to remain within the safehold.

Safehold Collapses
What happens when a spell takes effect inside a safehold depends entirely on what
characteristics its creator gave to the safehold (usually by spells cast on its wall).
Safeholds can and have collapsed, usually under magical onslaughts wherein
a disintegrate spell is cast, or conjunctions of conflicting magical effects cause wild
magic effects that destroy or "twist" the wall.

In a safehold collapse, creatures and items inside the safehold are hurled out of its
confines through one of its portals (the portals "suck" at the interior as they collapse,
because they collapse out from the safehold to their "other end" destinations). The
creatures lose their footing and tumble (DC 15 Reflex save to avoid losing grip on
held items), and they (and all worn or carried items) are harmed as if struck by
an energy vortex spell cast by a 20th-level caster (Spell Compendium, page 81): an
instantaneous blast of electricity that deals 1d8+20 points of damage (Reflex save for
half; spell resistance applies, as do any immunities and resistances creatures may
have to electricity).

Whew! It's probably a wise idea to leave safeholds behind and step into something
entirely new next column. Azoun and Filfaeril are probably hoping it isn't a trap, or
terrasque dung, or (gasp) a plot device.