User blog:BadCatMan/Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

Session Zero
After everything, I felt I had to review Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. But, to be honest, I'm not sure I can make a non-biased review of this movie. I don't know how, for one. And I'm an editor, I'm like that Marvel character Karnak who can see the flaw in all things, except, instead of using it to break things, I can, if I may, suggest a possible improvement...?

And after seven years monitoring and documenting its production (and it's not even that old), scouring social media for clues, poring over images, reporting on it, researching connections and developing articles, even finding a leaked script fragment, all just to help get the wiki ready ahead of time and then feeling I'd banked the wiki's reputation on it, I'd made myself an obsessive fan long before it would be released. And also the person most primed for disappointment in the whole wide world.

It started well before the release, of course. What I'd heard about the tie-in novels made me worry that it'd compressing and dullifying the Realms, making it too much like a generic fantasy. And then I made the mistake of reading Honor Among Thieves: The Junior Novelization, a book that's little more than an abridged early script of the first half of the movie with some sparse and perfunctory prose to connect it, draining all hope of humor and heart, of tension and drama and wonder at the world. Has children's fiction really become so bland and basic? It made the movie seem indistinguishable from garbage, with terrible lines and woeful story.

Nevertheless, I went to work, frantically writing wiki articles to get ahead of the movie, even if the n-th pass through of the novelisation helped matters not at all. I'd spoiled for myself the plot, the jokes, and the surprises, and worn it all into tedium. I wearied myself out, and on the day of the preview screening, I was sick with nervousness.

In 2000, I went with a friend, a D&D player who'd been gifting me with classic fantasy novels including Dragonlance, to the first Dungeons & Dragons movie. I, unfamiliar with D&D, thought it was okay, but he complained about the dungeon and the beholder and everything. Now, 22 years later, I'm the D&D fan and going with my brother-in-law (only an ex–Warhammer 40,000 player) to see the latest Dungeons & Dragons movie and I'm wondering if I'm going to be the one complaining about the dungeon and the beholder and everything.

But then, despite it all, I bloody loved it, and now I'm not sure what to think.

So, I say review, but it's more of a metatextual metagame over-analysis as I try to sort through my expectations and reactions. What do I think as a DM and as a Forgotten Realms fan, how does this game play out, and what would I have done as a DM?

Title
First off, the name: Honor Among Thieves. It is one of the more generic titles, just yoinked from an old saying. And yet, it works, the movie does what it says on the tin. They're thieves with honour. Simply calling it "Dungeons & Dragons" would've been terrible, as if it was meant to sum up the entirety of the game and world, an impossible goal. But Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves establishes this movie as one specific story in that game and world. And it needs that to stand on its own. Though I would've preferred Forgotten Realms: Honor Among Thieves, naturally.

Campaign
The plot is, let's be honest, rather thin, as well as a complete mess. That's made especially obvious by the novelisation paring it back to its bare bones, of which there are few. Sure, one can say it's just a D&D adventure, it's just a MacGuffin fetch quest, it doesn't need to be complex. No, it doesn't, but it also doesn't have to be quite this simple. It's hard to think of any D&D adventure module, Forgotten Realms story, or DM worth their dice since the 1980s running one this join-the-dots straightforward and so full of loose ends. The Forgotten Realms can afford to be sprawling and deep. And yet, none of it really matters in the movie itself, where it keeps moving at a good place through its set pieces and introductions and it still feels complete and internally consistent, with no actual plot holes, like there's more story and world there we just can't see, maybe because the players just aren't paying attention. Xenk and Szass Tam illustrate this best, hinting at a larger world and larger threats in fine Forgotten Realms fashion. In the end, do we really need to know what the red horn is or have a name for it? (Well, I do, I need to write a wiki article about it—beckoning doom will have to do.) In fact, I said the 80s, and that may be the key: this movie is much more of a classic 80s fantasy adventure, like Willow or Krull, comprising a sequence of settings and set pieces strung together, each of them a memorable moment and sometimes introducing a new character, like an old adventure serial—or multiple sessions of a D&D game. Since I grew up on and love those movies, then it works for me.

Nowadays, many movies are one-for-the-price-of-two deals: one storyline split over two parts, each of them often overlong and overpadded enough as it is. (Looking at The Hobbit and Dune here, in particular.) Honor Among Thieves is the opposite, being two movies for the price of one. The first is the hunt for the Helm of Disjunction, which the novelisation recounts. The second is the heist of Castle Never itself. Rather than being padded, it's cut right back, rushing through some parts, maybe too much. With a tighter focus on one of the other storyline, I do think it could have relaxed, breathed, explored some characters more, and luxuriated in the Forgotten Realms setting, which is made to be luxuriated in.

First, the MacGuffin quest. I think this is the ghost of an old script, written and rewritten. If the thread of old summaries in the press and industry publications is correct, then possibly it's the original Chainmail script by David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick, and reportedly rewritten by Michael Gilio and Chris McKay. This was apparently great enough to get a D&D movie made in the first place, but not enough to retain in any creditable form in the movie that resulted. But I guess maybe Hollywood is just like that. The Chainmail movie will be one of those lost could-have-beens of D&D history, like Gygax's original movie idea, though likely much much much better. In any case, as popular as the speak with dead and Themberchaud sequences will be, removing this may have allowed for a cleaner storyline.

Second, the heist movie, most likely introduced by Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley. EDIT: Nope, introduced by Gilio and McKay as told here. The heist works, it's very clever and inventive. With D&D and its all spells, the temptation is often to just roll Hide and Move Silently, Open Locks, or Bluff checks (I am of of course still using 3.5-edition rules) or use a spell to teleport in / adopt a disguise / turn into mist / etc., which can make the process of infiltrating an enemy base underwhelming, even tedious, but this storyline understands the idea of magical defenses and limitations too and employs its magic in novel ways to still make that interesting, while leaving out the Rogue PC who would've made it easy. While a heist is unusual for D&D, it is well within the range of D&D when it comes to getting inside enemy strongholds and making off with loot. It's a novel reinterpretation of the concept.

Clearly, much has been cut, with scenes from the novelisation not appearing in the film, the flashbacks suggesting longer scenes, named characters on IMDB that seem absent, a mask made for Dralas that went unused, and the gold dragon Palarandusk had an animatronic head and a Nerf Blaster made, yet appears nowhere in the movie. Then again, as an invisible, inaudible, intangible dragon, who's to say he isn't there the whole time, helping things along? This movie has got to have one hell of an extended edition or director's cut coming, and I need it. EDIT: There'll be over 10 minutes of deleted and extended scenes. Cutting much of the plot is something this movie shares with the 2000 D&D movie.

So, what we have is a D&D campaign formed not from one tailor-made bespoke adventure, but from two different prefab adventure modules, adapted to the setting and cobbled together, some bits dropped, and run one after another, run the DM's way with a lot of improvisation along the way as the PCs have a mad idea to go completely off the rails to find some lost treasure.

You All Meet in a Prison
That said, I feel the heist movie structure works against it. Not the heist idea itself, but the set-up to get there. There's the two leading actors, the stars, Chris Pine as Edgin and Michelle Rodriguez as Holga, going around recruiting a team of skilled people specifically for their heist. That's how a heist movie normally goes, sure. But it's not how D&D ever goes. It sets up an inequality between the player-characters: Edgin and Holga are main characters, who get top billing, most of the screen time, and the heart of the plot; Simon, Doric, and Xenk are supporting characters, who get what's left. While Simon gets a good degree of character development, Doric gets nothing after her introduction, and Xenk can only dominate the few scenes he's in. They balance out eventually, but it's already halfway through the movie. It's all very Hollywood still. In contrast, in a good D&D campaign, PCs are expected to have balanced power, to contribute equally to the plot, and to each have a time to shine, all from the get-go.

Imagine instead that the movie had a true ensemble cast, introduced at the same time, given equal time and attention throughout. They could have all met in the tavern, four thieves and other desperate sorts, and been hired by the mysterious hooded figure for their first job together, only for that to go awry as kicks off the movie. Or they could have met in prison, now with Doric a captured rebel leader and Xenk a knightly paladin sent to recapture them, only to aid them.

But, on the other hand, I can't say I've ever run a campaign that kept the same cast from beginning to end; where I didn't have to stop and introduce PCs and write out others because they've ghosted, had real-life issues, had dramas with other players, or wanted to change their character; or that I haven't done any of that myself or haven't been the only PC to have stayed in since the start.

So, it seems the hypothetical campaign behind this movie was just as haphazard, with Edgin and Holga two PCs from an earlier adventure continuing on, Simon returning later, Forge an ex-PC brought back as an NPC villain, Doric a new PC introduced. And Xenk is something else.

PCs, NPCs, DMPCs
While it wasn't apparent on the page, the characters are all quite likeable. Even Simon, the sorcerer who made Charisma his dump stat, is rather more pleasant than his dour concept suggests. The actors' charisma and delivery make all the difference in making those lines work and come alive. Some did feel, I dunno, off or awkward, more like players trying to act in character than experienced actors just acting. Maybe that's deliberate, but a few felt like they could've done with second thoughts as to whether it was something a human would say.

If it was to resemble a typical D&D adventuring party, I would've expected the cast to be all hot 20-something unknowns. While they're all no doubt hot, Grant, Pine, and Rodriguez are neither 20-something nor unknown. On second thoughts, though, the older characters aren't bad and imply older players behind them, more experienced and relaxed, perhaps introducing younger players to the game. It bridges the generation gap that plagues D&D like any long-running fandom. So, let's say Edgin's and Holga's players are the parents or older players and Simon's and Doric's are the kids.

And Xenk is... Who is Xenk? Why is Xenk? Goldstein and Daley said in interviews "He represents the player who takes it too seriously." Too seriously? I'd ask if that's meant to be a bad thing, but I'm the one leading a Forgotten Realms Wiki here. So, no, I don't see commitment to roleplay and rules and investment in the setting and story as necessarily a bad thing. That's the player who respects what the DM wants to do. That's the player encouraging the other players and providing opportunities for them to role-play. I'm a Xenk player, I love to have Xenk players in my game, and I do, and we're all Xenks here. So Xenk is easily my favourite character. So it's a pity he's barely in the movie. He comes late and leaves early. What happened? Was his player unable to continue? Was he not a good fit for the group? That's a shame.

But I'm not sure he's a PC at all. Look at his official stats, he's twice as powerful as the others. He's more than an NPC – that man's a DM PC. He's been introduced to help the PCs in their wild trip into the Underdark (since they've clearly gone off the rails), introduce them to the wider world of the Forgotten Realms setting, and encourage them to step up and roleplay more. There's the old question of the PCs asking him to save the day for them, so he has to make his excuses and depart. Movie-wise, it's strange to have some new character step in and show up the leads, but I guess he also serves to contrast with them, illustrating how they're not heroes in the Realms, how they're not that capable. But he still should've left some of those Thayan assassins for the others to fight, as in the novelisation.

And also Themberchaud. I guess he's too high-level for the PCs to fight directly – they can only escape his wrath. Dragons are kind of important to D&D, obviously. They're intelligent, charismatic, powerful, dangerous creatures, and a conversation with one should be a tense scene, a highlight of the film. It's the kind of role they'd cast Christoph Waltz to play. So it is disappointing that he doesn't get any lines and is reduced to a roaring, clumsy, overweight monster. This would've been a great opportunity for a silver-tongued bard to talk their way out of trouble, or at least try to. Legends are spun on such things.

Fortunately, the movie skips right over the tacky cliche of the slutty, horny bard. That's helped by Edgin being a father, not just to Kira but to the younger members of the team, as well as a brotherly friend to Holga. While he calls people 'hun' and 'darling' here and there, in the movie it correctly comes off as a casual parental affectation. Simon is like a son to him, I guess.

So the 'found family' concept works rather well here, certainly better than in any line or meme from the Fast & Furious films. (Who in that "family" hasn't tried to kill another member at some point? Okay, maybe they are family.) That's aided by the flashback scenes that really illustrate it, and makes the movie earn its feels and its finale. Edgin and Holga partner up well as surrogate brother and sister. OTOH, Simon and Doric don't seem to have anything working between them, and would've been better as friends, better suiting a typical D&D party (but yes, I have seen romance blossom between characters, including my own). Instead, having Simon or Doric or both swoon over Xenk would've been cuter and cemented the perfect-hero image of the character.

I find I only care about 'ships' when they're perfect platonic friendships: Mulder & Scully in The X-Files before it broke, Dutch & Johnny in Killjoys, Holmes & Watson in Elementary. So, please, let these characters never hook up in any sequels or tie-ins.

Class Action
The four classic core classes are Fighter, Rogue, Wizard, and Cleric, so it seems almost contrarian to make these ones Bard, Barbarian, Sorcerer, and Druid, plus Paladin, with Rogue and Wizard among the NPC villains. They're not traditional, nor well-suited to the storyline. A heist with no Rogue to pick locks or disarm traps, a Druid in a castle with no natural resources to call on? It adds to the sense of them being misfits, randomly chosen, and making do. But where's the Cleric and Ranger?

But to the D&D player, it's clear the characters don't use the full range of powers they have, not from their classes and not even from their official stats in the "Thieves' Gallery" piece on D&D Beyond. I guess the narrow range of powers is to distinguish them better for the general audience, as having three primary spellcasters could get confusing or have people asking why they need another magic-user. That's fine; TBH, most PCs get more powers than they know what to do with anyway, and they're rarely all used in D&D fiction. Maybe they use all their spells to buff in the background.

And yet... Edgin is the Bard, and it's nice to see them remember that and have him sing and play his lute with Realms-appropriate tunes, though new ones, nothing from the setting. And he's supposed to be the kind of player to forget he even has spells. Did he forget he has Inspire Courage and Inspire Competence too? Wait, do 5e Bards still have them? No, Bardic Inspiration then. If he wasn't meant to be front-and-centre in battles as Goldstein and Daley said in an interview, then he could have easily stood back, sung and played his lute, looking like a daft fool at first... and let magical music bolster his allies, guide their swings, given them vigor and courage. Bards are so vital to the Forgotten Realms (except bards are also meant to know all the lore, not be disinterested in it) and this would've really shown why Edgin was important to the team and driven home his more natural methods of encouraging his allies, as seen with Simon.

I guess what I'm saying is this movie should've been a musical.

The Banter
Calling the movie an action-comedy in the press and promotion does it a disservice because, frankly, its not that funny. I don't mean that as a bad thing. It has a few jokes and humorous sequences and sight gags in it, but the rest of the time I was more amused by the characters' reactions and quirks and the dumb ideas players might come up with. Whereas it all died on the page, it comes alive with the actors' delivery and charm, even after I'd seen and read it all countless times. It's just not dead serious and dark like a Snyder-verse movie, so for Hollywood press, the alternative must be calling it a comedy. But nor is it a Marvel-style humor with snark, wisecracking, and poking fun at the material. I've seen a lot of fans fearing it would be too much of comedy, but those are not borne out. Of course, many of those same fans wanted something po-faced and serious too, and I'm not sure what kind of D&D they've been playing if they've never encountered a joke.

Beyond some initial sight gags, this movie respects the D&D lore, monsters, and conventions. Intellect devourers look daft, but no one's mocking them for that. Themberchaud's morbidly obese, and outside of initial shocked reactions, he remains shockingly dangerous. While a halfling is introduced for a surprise, it's the basis for an entirely different joke and its later callback. It's a humor that arises naturally out of the world and characters, rather than is directed at the world and characters. They have off-kilter lines that reveal their personality, they're not trying to crack jokes. Forge makes strange and extravagant complaints about the tea being hot not out of reaching for a joke but to be flippant and show his priorities have nothing to do with meeting his old partners-in-crime. This style suits the more quirky, gentle humor of the Realms; it doesn't need to be explicit or obvious.

Some are the traditional D&D gags, like messed-up speak with dead questions and the brain-eating intellect devourers ignoring the heroes, while the one about simply attacking the villain during their monologue shows these D&D heroes to be more practical than most movie protagonists. On the other hand, the movie misses a few opportunities, like the classic case where players get obsessed and paranoid about something trivial. They don't have to get into a fight with a gazebo, but say they spend a few minutes debating how to get past a locked and trapped door, only for level-headed Doric to just open it and show it's safe. Well, I'm sure the writers and actors could've made it work.

It could've done without the hipster comedians of the Aunty Donna trio putting on silly whiny Australian voices for the corpses though.

The Map
At first, we were worried how the movie would depict the Realms' scale and vastness, because the tie-in novels appeared to have only a hazy understanding of travel times, with characters hopping between far-flung towns in a day and the authors seeming to assume that horses travel at freeway speeds. The novelisation was weirder, implying in one paragraph that the characters crossed the Frozenfar on foot, over the ice, in a day to get from Revel's End to Targos, then rode horses "for a few days" to get to Edgin's cottage outside town, then went back just for a drink. Since its height, the Forgotten Realms have shrunk from much of the planet of Abeir-Toril to the continent of Faerûn to little more than the northern Sword Coast and a little ways inland, and now the movie seemed set to make it more compressed than the average open-world video-game map.

Thankfully, in the movie, that is not at all the case. While travel times, wilderness camping, and random encounters on the road are clearly being waived or hand-waved, there are so many travel scenes through so many vast and varying landscapes that it doesn't matter. The movie makes the Realms feel huge and varied and full of many places to visit. And it will be great to go through and match these scenes to the geography and have some landscapes to go with the descriptions. Faerûn is as big and beautiful as we always imagined. (Big thanks to Ireland and Iceland, of course.)

There are some quibbles, mind you. The High Sun Games seem imminent in Neverwinter with the festivals going on, yet there's time to go all the way to Mornbryn's Shield and through the Underdark and back, with hours to spare go before the games. The trip through the Underdark implies a circuitous route that goes all the way up to Gracklstugh, then all the way back to Dolblunde, and this should be even slower and more dangerous than above ground.

But us wiki editors are resourceful and adaptable. If the High Sun Games do take place in Highsun, those festivals could be Midsummer or Shieldmeet, and historic and Realms travel times could well mean people arrive tendays early. Maybe there's enough time then? And that city may not be Gracklstugh, it's not named or visited, so it could just be a Gracklstugh-like stand-in, yeah. That cuts down the Underdark travel time immensely. And if that's a new Dolblunde entirely...

The Loot
Where this campaign falls down, I think, is in the treasure and magic items. For thieves, they do surprisingly little looting (more luting, actually). This DM does seem very stingy. They also have surprisingly few battles or other situations in which they can win any lute. Apart from the heist itself, of course. But them meeting their wealth-by-level tables is not at all important to the story. No, it's the items themselves that don't inspire.

For one, there are no obvious magical weapons, no +1 longswords here and certainly not the flaming swords promised in the earliest script leaks. Oddly, both Holga's axe and Xenk's sword are primarily mechanical devices, not magical. Holga's axe is darksteel and just about conforms to the 2e and 3e rules, but that's a material, not an enchantment. Edgin's reinforced lute may be an offense to musicians (aww, Elaine Cunningham has removed her essay about the impracticality of lutes on adventures) but is no Doss lute.

Moreover, it's also clear all these items are only created and put there for their plot function. The portal gun, sorry, hither-thither staff to engineer the mechanics of the heist, the pendant of invisibility for Kira's scenes, and the helmet of disjunction for breaking into the vault. Notably, the helm is not seen or used again afterward, when it would've been very useful for shutting down the Red Wizard Sofina right quick. Must've been a 1/day item. We also don't see the fate of the red horn once it's had its time. Part of the fun of D&D is not having all that you need, but making do with what you have and finding some inventive usage for something that seems innocuous or silly. What would they do with a bag of tricks or an immovable rod? Part of this may be the artificial nature of writing a movie, especially one engineered to be a heist movie, rather than letting the dice and imaginations go where they may as in a campaign.

There are more MacGuffins, in fact, a whopping three of them, which seems two too many on a typical campaign: the helmet of disjunction, the tablet of reawakening, and the ineffable red horn. Despite being powerful artifacts and central to the story, they have little-to-no history, names that befit more generic items, and the latter has no name at all. (I do of course differentiate between the item and the beckoning death spell) I feel the story would've been better served by emphasizing what they are and why they're important, with more of a legend to them. Imagine if an existing artifact of D&D lore had been employed, not the Eye of Vecna of earlier rumors, but something else storied and important that would lend weight and vitality to their quest.

In fact, all these items are brand-new and invented for the movie. Of those with a role in the movie (an alchemy jug being a background glimpse, the Harper pin more a piece of costume), only two are from existing D&D lore. The sending stones are well represented and displayed, even if only there to be a substitute for mobile phones or walkie-talkies as modern movie-making must need. Simon's bag of holding is only glimpsed and recognised through familiarity. Despite the running gag of Simon being ask to hold things, I can't recall if we ever saw anything actually go in it. TVTropes talks of fridge logic; this must be a fridge joke, something only realised in later recall while going to the fridge. Or when reading his article on the wiki. And while the pendant of invisibility has an obscure 3e counterpart, it's almost certainly a Tymora-granted coincidence.

So it almost seems like WotC literally did not let the movie people play with their toys.

Realmslore
Of the Forgotten Realms lore and flavour, much is sacrificed on the altar of audience accessibility, unfortunately. The Realms have a whole language, with English words combined and used in novel ways, words from its own languages, distinctive greetings, terms for time, and more, but Honor Among Thieves settles for modern English throughout, with perhaps only Xenk adopting an old-fashioned, stilted mode of speech. Of course, while such terms are relatively easily understood on the page, too many would be confusing to the ear (and I know it would confuse mine). And perhaps only Ed Greenwood and a few other authors really manage it, and I can't fit in too much of it in my own games. Still, a few clear English-language terms like a 'Well met' or a 'tenday' rather than a week would've gone far. A year name would also be nice, not just to help us wiki editors date things, but as a little oddity of an unusual world that adds portent to the proceedings – the is practically a prophecy for these heroes.

I'd argue that the point of fantasy fiction is to insert the reader into another world, not just reflect their own back at them. The story is meant to be dense with lore, flavor, and world-building, even slightly disorienting to the new reader or viewer. You're entering a whole new world, it's meant to be unfamiliar and unusual with a little culture-shock. But the skilled author dishes it out a spoonful at a time, you learn and discover and eventually it all just clicks and you come to understand it and you're in love with the place. That's why most fantasy stories start out small, in little villages or small-scale settings until they move beyond and out into an ever-wider world. Many fantasy television series are content to go strong with their world-building, from Game of Thrones to The Witcher and Rings of Power. Honor Among Thieves goes the other way, perhaps to set a more casual tone or distinguish itself better. But maybe the process of discovery is too long for two-and-a-quarter hours of runtime.

Nevertheless, for the Forgotten Realms fan, the lore is there, from the places to the characters and more. Some of it is obvious, easy-to-recognise, low-hanging fruit, namedrops like Mordenkainen, Elminster, Waterdeep, and Baldur's Gate. While the towns are familiar names, like Triboar, Longsaddle, and Mornbryn's Shield, they and the wood elf village are seen in bare fractions and pass by in a blur of rustic charm, all their individual character and detail lost. Mornbryn's Shield isn't shipping Shield moss, disappointingly, but giant clams. Ultimately, these are places that could be anywhere. Maybe a few less of these towns and villages, and exploring one in more detail, would give that one more character and meaning and have less of the introduction/travel/introduction/travel drag in the first half. Similarly, it could do with more scenes set in Neverwinter itself, not just the castle and arena, but in taverns and local characters with lines to show what they're saving.

The tie-in novels threatened various modern real-world elements, with packets of marshmallows roasted on fires and such. Fortunately, the movie doesn't go that far and keeps it all within a classic fantasy milieu that fits well with the Realms. There's certainly nothing to object to. Embellishments like the magically animated flier are quite a lovely addition. The Realms are more commonplace-magic than often realised, and this movie remembers that, with driftglobes and such.

Other references are shockingly obscure, deep cuts, and unexpected, and there's surely more to find that will keep us wiki editors busy for quite a while once we have video we can pause. The history of Triboar is written on the walls of the Triboar playhouse, even if you can't see it. Props, posters, and fliers are covered in Thorass, Dethek, and other Realms scripts, and I cannot wait to get some still images of these to decipher in the hopes of discovering more clues and details. Like a date! Someone really did their homework in all this stuff and put the work in showing it all, and I bow to them.

And, rather pleasingly for us, much of it is taken from the Forgotten Realms Wiki itself. We know from an interview (thanks to FANDOM and a leading question from us) that Goldstein and Daley referenced the wiki: "A ton, a ton! ...Honestly, sometimes on-set." The authors of the tie-in novels did too. And we can take a good guess why Daisy Head had seventeen tabs open when doing research for her character. We can even pick the specific things taken from the wiki, because they're little-known and haven't appeared in published sourcebooks since 3rd edition. How else would they come to mind? Holga's darksteel greataxe and its stats are inspired by our darksteel article so they conform to details in Magic of Faerûn and Volo's Guide to All Things Magical. The books The Fanged Tome of Lykanthus Szar and Galadaster's Orizon get name-dropped (the latter only in the novelisation). Caldreth's Pickles, Nuts, and Foods (okay, also only from the novelisation, likely cut from the movie) is named for Caldreth's Cobbling. Jolym's Barrels & Packing seems to have gotten robbed off-scene. And that's just the obvious ones.

And what is not mentioned is also surprising – no mention of plots in recent adventures, with no tie-in sourcebooks from WotC. Revel's End was apparently created for the movie and presented in Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden, yet Auril's Everlasting Rime doesn't seem to be acknowledged in Edgin, Holga, and Kira's backstory, even if they surely shivered through it and I can find a gap in their backstory to fit it in. And, most surprising of all, no mention of Drizzt Do'Urden, who would've gotten the biggest reaction and greatest familiarity from the audiences and press. Instead, the big Realms heroes named are Elminster, of course, and... Aoth Fezim. Who? A lesser-known hero from a half-dozen novels more than a decade ago. Another find from the wiki, no doubt discovered while reading about Thay.

Altogether, the randomness of this makes it feel more organic, a naturally told tale. This is not a movie ticking off a checklist according to corporate interests, but rather coming together by reading articles and clicking Special:Random and throwing stuff in as many a DM would.

Overall, we're really proud to be so important to the creative process, to be a source of inspiration to so many (though, honestly, the thanks and respect of fans always gets me feeling warmer and fuzzier than the confirmations from movie, novel, and sourcebook writers). And it's lovely that the Forgotten Realms Wiki has been acknowledged for that. I just wish we'd known so we could've revised and expanded all the relevant articles ahead of time and been able to provide even more information. We can be discreet and sign NDAs too!

Still, there are, not plot holes, but lore-holes. The most whopping is one you can fly a morbidly obese dragon through – how did Themberchaud escape Gracklstugh and get all the way to Dolblunde? Where is Daurgothoth, the Creeping Doom, the previous dragon to lair there, now conspicuous by his absence? What is that red horn used by Szass Tam and how did the Harpers get it? How does Szass's beckoning death ritual and undeadifying his people fit before the War of the Zulkirs? Still, these don't harm the plot; it's easy to guess the Harpers stole the red horn, stored it in Korinn's Keep, and Sofina steals it back. And the movie at least 'hangs a lampshade' on Themberchaud's surprise relocation. And tantalisingly, the, is the year Daurgothoth moved into Dolblunde. A coincidence, or is that his horn? It all hints at a missing storyline or backstory lost between drafts or edits. And it wouldn't be Forgotten Realms without that last mystery, that one loose thread in the tapestry to keep tugging on.

And, most of all, it has the Realms flavour and spirit throughout, from the idyllic cottages to the great and splendid city, from the natural beauty to the ruins that hint of great history, to the quaint and quirky charm of it all with a Greenwoodian twinkle in the eye. There are the grotesque and grasping merchants, nobles, and politicians and there's the struggle to protect common people and nature from them (and I definitely see a few real-world analogues in Forge Fitzwilliam's conman-turned-lord willing to betray his people, devastate nature, start a war, and take the money and run). There's the heroes hired to do a job, only to find their employer is a villain using them in a greater scheme, they've messed up and need to clean up. And that villain has a boss, a puppet-master manipulating events and putting plots into motion. In the Realms, there's always a bigger fish, and another story. So those holes in the lore feel more like stories crossing paths in classic Realms fashion. Everyone's got a story in Faerûn: Edgin and co. each have their stories, Xenk has his story, Szass Tam has his story, and even Themberchaud has his story.

So, finally, what kind of NPC/DMPC is Xenk in the Realms? Having him be a classic Realms hero would've been even more shocking, more contrasting, like he stepped out of another world and story entirely, as was intended for Xenk. He does occupy a Drizzt-shaped slot in the narrative: the long-lived good and honorable warrior who fights with two swords, a member of a people feared by others and with that marked on his face, who has an old grudge with an assassin rival, who guides the group through the Underdark. (Maybe he even was Drizzt in the earlier draft with drow.) But of course, this role could never have been an existing famous character from the Realms, or else the press and promotion would've obsessed on it to the exclusion of all the other characters, written screeds about 'what you need to know' when, if the movie was any good, there should be absolutely nothing you need to know, and then gotten people annoyed about the perceived bait-and-switch. So, Xenk is an original, an everyone and a no-one.

Then what kind of mold is Xenk cast from? It can't be any of Greenwood's originals or other classic Realms characters, they'd be way too much fun to be around for the PCs. He's a paladin, so let's look there. There are few well-known paladin heroes in the Realms, and most classic Realms paladins go against type: Dragonbait a saurial, Shield of Innocence an orog, Miltiades a skeleton, and Priam Agrivar has a drinking problem and a disability. Justin Melenikus is too old and obscure, almost as much as his Doctor Who reference. That leaves as traditional paladins such 4e and 5e fare as Isteval and Kleef Kenric, heroes confected and forgotten. Looking again, though Xenk is over a century old, having begun in the 3e era with a tragic backstory, the burden of longevity and a curse and coming from Thay. So, he's like that lesser-known, too-serious, slightly darker-and-edgier, magically cursed, brooding character of the late 3e era, an author's pet allowed to live on into 4e and 5e era so they could keep writing novels about them, like an Erevis Cale or an Aoth Fezim after all. But he's so much more enjoyable, the dark and the edge gone.

In any case, the Paladin class has been made, cliched, mocked, deconstructed, and now perfectly reconstructed and redeemed.