Global Navigation: If I can cheat, I can do whatever I want

Floating Cities

In 886, Ioulaum proved his worth again when he built the first floating city. Tired of fighting orcs, goblins, and others who coveted Netherese gains, he took a Mysera core to the southern section of the Peak of Rage and cut off the top with an 11th-level spell. Using a combination of Yturn's levitation and Chronomancer's gravity reversal, he turned the broken peak upside down, placed the Mysera core at the center of the plane, and prepared to build a city on the wide, flat circular surface. He called this new fortress "Ioulaum's Enclave." People came from all over Netheril to gather under Ioulaum's banner. They were eager to live among the blue sky and white clouds, high above, far away from the races who feared and were ignorant of magic. It soon became a true flying city.

The ruler and creator of the flying city of Iolum, the Grand Master, holds absolute power. He allows people to speak freely - sometimes he also listens carefully to their suggestions and requests - but whenever there is a major event, Iolum takes care of it all.

As the Netherese were busy building more floating cities (1048 NY), the orcs felt that they were in danger of being exterminated by the Netherese. They felt that the only way for their people to survive was to drive out the Netherese. That year, they launched a powerful offensive against Zyness and Conch; their threat began to approach the Seventon region.

The Seven Cities sent their best troops westward to fight the orcs, but they were quickly called back when the Seven Cities learned that the orcs would attack from the east. The Seven Cities had never experienced the hardships of fighting on two fronts, and without reinforcements from Eollumfly, the region would become a prize for orcish bandits.

The Silver Age
Due to the urgent need for resources, Netheril began to send people to explore for minerals all over the country. Their most important mine was discovered by the miner De Kentl in 1101. He found a huge vein of gold, silver, iron ore, mercury, and platinum ore. For thousands of years, it supplied Netheril with more minerals than all other places combined.

The exploration movement, driven by the Netherese, lasted for 550 years. At the same time, the Netherese also established a number of small colonies and outposts. They were scattered throughout the Savage Frontier. For those who came to this borderland from thousands of miles away, those outposts were very safe havens. Caravans and explorers could get food, horses for transfer, and other supplies from there.

As Netherese rule expanded, the native Netherese also set off a wave of invention. The endless flow of magic from the core of Mysera enabled relatively low-level arcanists to make magic items themselves, and these people all wanted to create an invention that would make them successful, famous, and retired. Most new magic items were designed by these mediocre people (in the middle level). This group was overwhelming in numbers, and they engaged in this business as their best hope for making a quick fortune. This group of shallow arcanists generally held the idea that their inventions should be cheap and easy to use, but look expensive - which meant that they had to at least have an elegant and beautiful appearance.

The first product to hit the market was a simple roomlight, a sphere used to illuminate a room. It was later eliminated because the second generation of the product had been improved to the point where it could be controlled by various commands and voices (according to the customer's preferences, of course). Soon, every household in the floating city had installed this light in their house.

Then, running water (actually I really don't want to translate it this way) appeared. This invention was achieved by opening a permanent pipeline connected to the Elemental Plane of Water. People used a simple valve to control the flow of water. After the project was completed and put into use, laying water pipelines directly to the interior and building water storage facilities became the next goal.

Outposts

The Archmage of Netheril began to feel a little worried. As more and more cities rose into the clouds, they worried that one day, there would be so many of them that they would completely cover the land and block every ray of sunlight. So they thought it was time to expand their territory. They used the Sphere of Divination to explore in both the east and west directions, and found that the land in the west was more in line with the needs of the Netheril people. In the east, there were some thriving powers, although they were taking a different path of development from Netheril.

Some archmages still debated whether to conquer the eastern kingdoms. But in the end, all plans to invade and infiltrate the eastern kingdoms came to a halt. The Netherese officially chose the easier target of the West. At that time, the West was loosely ruled by barbarian tribesmen, who were the product of the union of Earthmother and a wolf. The reason why the Netherese invasion of the East was not carried out was probably because of the key role played by Terraseer, a mysterious wise man. Together with a group of powerful arcanists, he led an expedition to the Frontier. They investigated the open-pit mines here and the problem of large-scale reclamation.

After 3000 months of travel, Tiresil returned to Netheril with a shocking conclusion. "If we allow this land to be dominated by savages who are so incompetent that they cannot even understand the most basic concept of collective imagecraft, it would be a crime, hindering our progress and being incompatible with the word 'prosperity'." In , Tiresil found an ideal location. He planned to build a bridgehead there, where caravans and scouts heading to the mineral-rich mountains could replenish their water. But this meant that he had to drive out the owlbears who originally lived here. This of course caused conflict. Soon after, in the so-called Caravan War, Netheril's scouts and light cavalry guards wiped out as many as owlbears - creatures created by the Creator Race thousands of years ago. Once the Netherese warriors had restored order, the arcanists entered the town and built a network of pipes, one of the finest in the land. Through this network of pipes, which penetrated five miles into Toril's crust, the arcanists provided an endless supply of water to the outpost, called the Old Owl Well.

The Old Owl Spring Outpost was stationed with a company of warriors and several fortune tellers. The fortune tellers' job was to use magic and crystal balls to monitor the movements of the Elfaen elves. Because at that time, the elves had already regarded Netheril as a potential opponent. Despite the tense atmosphere between them and the elves, the Old Owl Spring became an important transit station in just five years, welcoming and sending off tired caravans day after day.

There were two other outposts in this border region, which served as water supply and espionage stations. The first was built in the forests northwest of what would become Southkrypt. However, since they settled here, they were forced to leave frequently. Because this place was far away from the force field of Mysera's core, the quasi-magic items were completely ineffective. Therefore, the Netherese began a new round of difficult attempts. They tried to use the quasi-magic items made by Mysera's core to create truly magical items that could function independently. But this was not an easy task. It took several generations of efforts before they finally succeeded. Let's talk about the other outpost. It is close to the northern edge of Westwood, hidden in the southern foothills of the Sword Coast Spires (now the Sword Mountains).

The Golden Age

1652, the year of Kronomanthor's birth, marked the beginning of Netheril's Golden Age, when the nation reached its peak of power. Construction began on a massive scale, with a new floating city completed every year. Soon, countless magnificent magical cities appeared in the sky, suspended in the wind and clouds. Some of them stood still, while others slowly flew along the shifting borders of the empire. Each Archmage who established a private floating city followed the precedent set by Iollum, enacting his own laws in the city and enforcing them strictly. As time passed, the people gradually lost their voice. Their voices, whether for changes in the political system or adjustments in tax rates, were swallowed up by the Archmage's power-hungry ambitions. The flying cities soon became tools for the Archmage to squeeze funds for magical research and bases for fighting against other Archmages. At the same time, they also served as flying bases for traveling to quasiplanes and paraelemental planes.

The Archmaester, Chronomanthor, had once paid attention to another human civilization, in Fetin. He worried about them. The Netherese were snobbish, and they looked down on nations with less developed magic. He knew this was wrong, and that the Netherese Empire would one day suffer the consequences. Although Chronomanthor shared the same shortcomings as the other Archmaesters (for example, they all believed that the gods were just particularly powerful Archmaesters who could be defeated and replaced), he did care about the interests of the elves, dwarves, and barbarian tribes, the Empire's neighbors.

In 1756, Cronomancer learned that Illusk was being plundered by orc tribes. So he intervened in the war and assisted the local human colony in resisting the invasion. Unfortunately, even a man as powerful as Cronomancer could not save the country. Even more unfortunately, he himself became a victim of the war - he was seriously injured and his body became weaker and weaker, and he died eight years later. Originally, he could have relied on healing magic to recover his health. But he refused. This is because like all great masters, he also believed that gods are just great masters like him. The only difference is that they have learned the so-called "ultimate magic". And this arrogance caused the great masters to be unwilling to believe in any god, fearing that if they were willing to be under these "ultimate great masters" (including accepting treatment from priests), it would deprive them of the opportunity to ascend to godhood.

Netheril has never been free of threats, some of which have become increasingly severe. This has forced the Archmaesters to spend a lot of time to quell both internal and external troubles. This includes the destruction caused by the people of Netheril, who are no less destructive than the non-human races that have been wreaking havoc within the empire and abroad. In 1963, Netheril saw another civil war: it was started by a group of civilians who had little knowledge of spells and lacked the proper respect for magic.

Here is what happened: Nine men broke into the Most Holy and Magical Chamber of Ioulaum the Demidivine. They killed nine guards, seven of them themselves, and the survivors took away 24 Netherese scrolls. After they escaped, a manhunt was launched throughout Netheril. The two thieves feared the terrible punishment they would suffer if caught by the Archmage, so they destroyed the evidence in a panic, chopped the priceless treasure into countless small pieces, and exchanged the precious metal pieces for 260 gold pieces.

In 2201, excessive mining exhausted the resources of the Decontel mine. Because no more oil could be extracted, the place was soon abandoned by the Netherese. However, three years later, the Decontel mine was reused and became a testing ground for the development of various dangerous spells. The reason for this arrangement was a lesson learned from a disaster: the destruction of a floating city.

The First Falling

The first floating city crash occurred in 2202. A failed spell experiment led to the collapse of the floating city, Sunrest. On that day, people were testing a spell that was about to be completed in the city, called "Sunrest sunshock" (an early attempt at an extremely effective meteor shower spell, meteor swarm). But something unexpected happened. At first, the spell seemed to have succeeded. Especially when witnesses in the City of Remembrance said that they saw a brilliant light shining in the western sky. But then, within a few minutes, there were bursts of deafening noises, roaring in people's ears. Then, everyone who saw this scene was terrified: under the huge explosion force, the entire city was torn into pieces of broken bricks and tiles, falling to the vast earth. No one survived, no doubt. (End of this chapter)