Vilhiard

Vilhiard was a human man from the city of Procampur in the Vast. He was a renowned scholar and monk of Deneir, famous for his book A Discovery of the World.

History
On the orders of his Hierarch (who was in turned thought to have received commands from the Thultyrl of Procampur), Vilhiard set out on a number of lengthy and hazardous journeys into the East. Though he later wrote of his travels, Vilhiard remained quiet about the actual purposes of these missions. The Thultyrl granted him a supply of wealth for expenses.

At one point, Vilhiard explored the Hordelands and met a people called "Taangan", later commonly known as the Tuigan. After seeing an envoy from the Zulkirs of Thay made to suffer starvation and various irritations for failing to present gifts to the Tuigan leaders, Vilhiard was forced to give them a large part of his Thultyrl-granted funds. Afterwards, he tried explaining the laws of Procampur and the Thultyrl to the Tuigan, in comparison to their own, but they only laughed and ignored them.

Vilhiard wrote of all that he saw and discovered on his journeys in A Discovery of the World, including Tuigan customs. Though his observations were generally accurate, he also saw many strange things he could not fully explain, either in amazement or for lacking the right words, which led to some clumsy descriptions in his work. This, combined with some rough abridgements of his book, lead to number of inaccurate tales of his exploits, which became confused with even less accurate tales from other travelers. Nevertheless, his work became the basis for the majority of Faerûnian scholarly knowledge about the Hordelands, and provided context for the rise of the Tuigan Horde under Yamun Khahan.


 * The dates of Vilhiard's travels are not known, but the mention of Zulkirs places them sometime after they seized power in 1074 DR. As his book is described as an older work than those that reference the Tuigan Horde, his travels likely also occurred sometime prior to 1360 DR.