Forgotten Realms Wiki:Help-Finding Realmslore

The Help:Finding Realmslore page discusses various ways an editor can find Realmslore, either to add information to an article, to corroborate existing information, to check that it's not copied from somewhere, or to add a reference or necessary information to an unsourced article.

Please feel free to add or suggest other useful resources.

Forgotten Realms Wiki
Right here, of course! This is a huge, extensive, and varied compendium of Realmslore, so it should be your first port-of-call when seeking lore on some topic. The FRW may already have an article on it, or a related article that alludes to it. So, search the wiki for likely words, browse the categories, and follow links to closely related articles until you find what you're looking for. Also search for related topics: if you want to know more about a character, then check the town they live in. Chances are that an article on that town will lead you to a book that talks about that character.

Forgotten Realms Index
The Candlekeep's Forgotten Realms Index, hosted at the popular Candlekeep site, is an extensive index of Realms-related references in sourcebooks and magazines, from the very beginning to the early days of 3rd edition. Although it stopped updating in 2006, it remains a useful index for finding where various topics are mentioned, helping you to track something to its source in older works.

Alaundo's Library
Alaundo's Library at Candlekeep maintains a collection of articles and responses from Ed Greenwood and other authors, as well as a variety of lists and indexes to help you find old sources. But pay close attention to what is canon and what is not.

Search Candlekeep's forums
You can use Google to search through Candlekeep's forums, which is a quicker and more accurate way of finding information than its own search. Suppose you wanted to use Google to search candlekeep.com forums for the term "Alaundo". You can enter this into the Google search engine:

site:forum.candlekeep.com Alaundo

Note that the forums mostly contain discussion from members of the public. However, posts by Ed Greenwood and by Realms authors are probably regarded as canon.

Wizards' Forgotten Realms Archives
The Forgotten Realms articles on the Wizards of the Coast website are currently stored here, maintaining access to the past lore of 3rd and 3.5 edition.

Previous Edition Downloads
For a time, Wizards of the Coast provided a selection of 1st and 2nd edition sourcebooks and other resources free for download. The link was lost in website redevelopment, but PurpleWorm.org maintains links to mirrors of the old downloads page here.

Secrets of the Mages
The Secrets of the Mages website contains an almost complete archive of all forum posts from the Wizards of the Coast forums before they were shut down some years ago.

Unfortunately, there is no search function on the site, but you can use the Google search engine to search it for you. For example, if you wanted to find everything on "Secrets of the Mages" related to "Dawn Cataclysm", you would write the following into a Google search:

site:secretsofthemages.net "Dawn Cataclysm"

Not all discussion on Wizards of the Coast forums relates specifically to the Forgotten Realms, so results will often turn up for other WotC products as well. Be as Realms-specific as possible when searching.

Note that these forums mostly contain discussion from members of the public, and so information is not normally considered canon. However, posts from Ed Greenwood and by Realms authors are probably regarded as canon.

Internet search
There's been enough fan discussion online that you've got a good chance of finding a clue to something if you just search for it and browse the results. If you suspect an article has been copied, you can search for a likely phrase or sentence online—to be honest, there's enough already copied material online that, if you're careful, you can confirm whether an article has copied.