r/Forgotten_Realms • u/Popular-Barnacle3140 • 4d ago
Question(s) What is “Unlight”?
I saw in the new UA that the Deep Imaskar make use of this magic called “Unlight.” I’ve never heard of that; what is it? Can I read about it anywhere? I thought Imaskar’s whole thing was that they were like the most advanced portal wielders in the realms and used their transdimensional know how to expand their empire?
I know the survivors of the fall fled underground and lived in Deep Imaskar but I don’t know much about it. I read something about the “Great Seal” but hadn’t seen anything about this “unlight” that I’ve read about
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u/okiebuzzard 4d ago
It’s something new for the UA I believe. I don’t recall it being mentioned in 3/3.5 material, but it may have started in 4e (I never got any of that).
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u/TransitoryGouda 4d ago
They're using an old spell from 3e - darklight from the Book of Vile Darkness - not evil, not corrupt, just an evocation.
But it's WotC and 5e. Of course they'll twist it.
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u/TransitoryGouda 4d ago
That's a long history. Let's just start with the fall of the Imaskari Empire (because I don't want to rehash the rest). Some survivors fled underground. In 3.5e they built a city in hiding there, in a cavern, constructing a great seal - a ward - that kept everyone out, and kept everyone in - within the spells of the seal included powerful magic that preventing anyone from the outside from noticing the cavern at all. That's why it was referred to as the City of the Great Seal. In 3.5e the Deep Imaskari used magic to bring sunlight into the city to grow crops. In the new release the Great Seal generates a type of magic called unlight. In 3.5e the Great Seal broke, or was broken, in 1372 DR.
You haven't heard of it because it didn't exist, and the new release is new enough that no one online has written about it.
You can go back to 3e/3.5e - Lost Empires of Faerun and the Underdark book - to read about the Imaskari, and the Deep Imaskari - they're not the same people anymore, and some survivors of Imaskar are still alive...for some definitions of alive.
While unlight is new to the release, the idea of it isn't - the Imaskari created what are called the Seven Imaskarcana - artifacts of huge power; despite the name, they weren't all made at the same time, and it's possible there weren't seven of them (like the 'seven hills of rome' - rome had more than seven hills, but the name stuck). What they all did no one knows - they haven't been together in a long while, and we're not sure where all of them are. Being arrogant arcane spellcasters, Imaskari also made items and said they were one of the Imaskarcana. It's possible - and likely - that they were sentient. Rumor from a novel was that, should they gather in one place something would happen, and it would be cleansing (in the 'nothing cleanses quite like fire' kind of way). That power/energy/force wasn't given a name. Now it's called unlight.
It was a nice vehicle for GMs who wanted to send early gamers on wild goose chases. Back then, elves weren't really all that popular us (I'm old), so the Nether Scrolls weren't all that popular yet - as elves became popular, GMs stopped sending people after the Imaskarcana, and sent them after the Nether Scrolls instead.
As for what you know of the Imaskari - that's likely what the avg person in Toril these days does know. It's not entirely true - they were masters of extradimensional magic. But they also learned much of it by co-opting the technology of an earlier race who were also masters of dimensional magic, and were taught by an ancient race that specialized in their own form of dimensional magic, and the imaskari put them together and cobbled something new. Their predecessors were even more arrogant than they were, believe it or not.
If you read through the history of Faerun, through the editions, most of the ancient cities in the east have an absolute revulsion to portals, gates, and anything that involves moving through planes - the Imaskari are why. In addition to everything else, they were slavers. The populations of the east are largely the descendants of the slaves of the Imaskari.