The Crystal Shard
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The Crystal Shard
''The Crystal Shard'' is a 1988 fantasy novel by American writer R. A. Salvatore. The first book in The Icewind Dale Trilogy, it was his first published novel. Plot summary Even in the remote far northern region of Icewind Dale, the renegade dark elf ranger Drizzt Do'Urden is not fully accepted, except by the dwarves whom he had eventually befriended. He roams the tundra, hunting down yeti and giants that threaten the Ten Towns of Icewind Dale. When the Dale's native barbarians band together to slaughter the people of Ten-Towns, whom they view as invaders, Drizzt, with his drow stealth and ranger's knowledge of the terrain, discerns their plan and relays the information to his friends, the halfling Regis and the dwarf Bruenor. Regis, on the council of Ten-Towns, uses persuasion and a magical hypnotic ruby pendant to convince the stubborn leaders of the towns to work together to thwart the barbarian attack. Because of the warning and their unified efforts, Ten-Towns and the dw ...
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Larry Elmore
Larry Elmore (born August 5, 1948) is an American fantasy artist whose work includes creating illustrations for video games, comics, magazines, and fantasy books. His list of work includes illustrations for ''Dungeons & Dragons'', ''Dragonlance'', and his own comic strip series ''SnarfQuest''. He is author of the book ''Reflections of Myth''. Early life and education Elmore was born August 5, 1948, in Louisville, Kentucky, and grew up in Grayson County in midwestern Kentucky. Elmore described his school days by saying, "The rural school I attended didn't have any art program, so I spent my time drawing - and daydreaming. I was a pretty bad student ... I was always getting into trouble for drawing in class. I wish I had a quarter for every drawing of mine a teacher destroyed." He majored in art at Western Kentucky University. Career A month after graduating from college, Elmore was drafted into the U.S. Army and stationed in Germany. After leaving the service, Elmore worked as an ...
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Menzoberranzan
Menzoberranzan, the "City of Spiders", is a fictional city-state in the world of the ''Forgotten Realms'', a ''Dungeons & Dragons'' campaign setting. The city is located in the Upper Northdark, about two miles below the Surbrin Vale, between the Moonwood and the Frost Hills (north of the Evermoors and under the River SurbinEd Greenwood, Sean K. Reynolds, Skip Williams, Rob Heinsoo (June 2001). ''Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting 3rd edition''. (Wizards of the Coast), ''p. 13, 125, 171, 212-213''. .). It is famed as the birthplace of Drizzt Do'Urden, the protagonist of several series of best-selling novels by noted fantasy author R. A. Salvatore. Menzoberranzan has been developed into a video game (of the same name) and a tabletop RPG setting. Menzoberranzan has been described as "a perfect unjust state" and compared to Glaucon's vision of a state that is held together only by the fear of retribution. Creative origins In 1988, the character Drizzt Do'Urden was created ...
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Dwarves In Popular Culture
Dwarf or dwarves may refer to: Common uses *Dwarf (folklore), a being from Germanic mythology and folklore * Dwarf, a person or animal with dwarfism Arts, entertainment, and media Fictional entities * Dwarf (''Dungeons & Dragons''), a humanoid race *Dwarf (Middle-earth), a humanoid race in J. R. R. Tolkien's literature * Dwarf (''Warhammer''), a humanoid race * Dwarfs (''Discworld''), a race of characters * Dwarves (''Artemis Fowl''), a race of characters * Dwarves (''Warcraft''), a short, strong race *Dwarves (Marvel Comics) Literature * ''The Dwarf'' (Cho novel), a 1978 novel by Cho Se-hui * ''The Dwarf'' (Lagerkvist novel), a 1944 novel by Pär Lagerkvist Other arts, entertainment, and media * ''Dwarfs?!'' (video game) *Dwarves (band), American punk band *Killer Dwarfs, Canadian heavy metal band *Wrocław's dwarfs, small sculptures in Wrocław, Poland Biology *Phyletic dwarfism, an average decrease in size of animals **Insular dwarfism, a evolutionary condition caused by ge ...
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1988 American Novels
File:1988 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The oil platform Piper Alpha explodes and collapses in the North Sea, killing 165 workers; The USS Vincennes (CG-49) mistakenly shoots down Iran Air Flight 655; Australia celebrates its Australian Bicentenary, Bicentennial on January 26; The 1988 Summer Olympics are held in Seoul, South Korea; Soviet Union, Soviet troops begin their Soviet-Afghan War, withdrawal from Afghanistan, which is completed the 1989, next year; The 1988 Armenian earthquake kills between 25,000-50,000 people; The 8888 Uprising in Myanmar, led by students, protests the Burma Socialist Programme Party; A bomb explodes on Pan Am Flight 103, causing the plane to crash down on the town of Lockerbie, Scotland- the event kills 270 people., 300x300px, thumb rect 0 0 200 200 Piper Alpha rect 200 0 400 200 Iran Air Flight 655 rect 400 0 600 200 Australian Bicentenary rect 0 200 300 400 Pan Am Flight 103 rect 300 200 600 400 1988 Summer Olympics rect 0 400 200 600 8888 ...
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Comic Book Resources
''Comic Book Resources'', also known by the initialism CBR, is a website dedicated to the coverage of comic book–related news and discussion. History Comic Book Resources was founded by Jonah Weiland in 1995 as a development of the Kingdom Come Message Board, a message forum that Weiland created to discuss DC Comics' then-new mini-series of the same name. Comic Book Resources features columns written by industry professionals that have included Robert Kirkman, Gail Simone, and Mark Millar. Other columns are published by comic book historians and critics such as George Khoury and Timothy Callahan. In April 2016, Comic Book Resources was sold to Valnet Inc., a Montreal-based company based known for its acquisition and ownership of media properties including Screen Rant. The site was relaunched as CBR.com on August 23, 2016, with the blogs integrated into the site. The company has also hosted a YouTube channel since 2008, with 3.97 million subscribers as of December 21, 20 ...
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SciFi
Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel universes, extraterrestrial life, sentient artificial intelligence, cybernetics, certain forms of immortality (like mind uploading), and the singularity. Science fiction predicted several existing inventions, such as the atomic bomb, robots, and borazon, whose names entirely match their fictional predecessors. In addition, science fiction might serve as an outlet to facilitate future scientific and technological innovations. Science fiction can trace its roots to ancient mythology. It is also related to fantasy, horror, and superhero fiction and contains many subgenres. Its exact definition has long been disputed among authors, critics, scholars, and readers. Science fiction, in literature, film, television, and other media, has become popul ...
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Renton, Washington
Renton is a city in King County, Washington, and an inner-ring suburb of Seattle. Situated southeast of downtown Seattle, Renton straddles the southeast shore of Lake Washington, at the mouth of the Cedar River. As of the 2020 census, the population of Renton was 106,785, up from 90,927 at the 2010 census. The city is currently the sixth-largest municipality in greater Seattle and the ninth-largest in Washington state. After a long history as an important salmon fishing area for Native Americans, Renton was first settled by people of European descent in the 1860s. Its early economy was based on coal mining, clay production, and timber export. Today, Renton is best known as the final assembly point for the Boeing 737 family of commercial airplanes, but it is also home to a growing number of well-known manufacturing, technology, and healthcare organizations, including Boeing Commercial Airplanes Division, Paccar, Kaiser Permanente, IKEA, Providence Health & Services, UW Me ...
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Wizards Of The Coast
Wizards of the Coast LLC (often referred to as WotC or simply Wizards) is an American publisher of games, primarily based on fantasy and List of science fiction themes, science fiction themes, and formerly an operator of retail stores for games. It is currently a subsidiary of Hasbro, which acquired the company in 1999. During a February 2021 reorganization at Hasbro, Wizards of the Coast became the lead part of the new "Wizards & Digital" division. Originally a role-playing game publisher, the company originated and popularized the collectible card game genre with ''Magic: The Gathering'' in the mid-1990s. It also acquired the popular ''Dungeons & Dragons'' role-playing game by buying TSR (company), TSR and increased its success by publishing the licensed ''Pokémon Trading Card Game''. The company's corporate headquarters are located in Renton, Washington, Renton, Washington (state), Washington, part of the Seattle metropolitan area. Wizards of the Coast publishes role-pl ...
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Moonshae Isles
''Forgotten Realms'' is a campaign setting for the ''Dungeons & Dragons'' (''D&D'') fantasy role-playing game. Commonly referred to by players and game designers alike as "The Realms", it was created by game designer Ed Greenwood around 1967 as a setting for his childhood stories. Several years later, Greenwood brought the setting to publication for the ''D&D'' game as a series of magazine articles, and the first Realms game products were released in 1987. Role-playing game products have been produced for the setting ever since, as have various licensed products including novels, role-playing video game adaptations (including the first massively multiplayer online role-playing game to use graphics), comic books, and an upcoming film. Forgotten Realms is a fantasy world setting, described as a world of strange lands, dangerous creatures, and mighty deities, where magic and supernatural phenomena are quite real. The premise is that, long ago, planet Earth and the world of the For ...
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Dragon (magazine)
''Dragon'' is one of the two official magazines for source material for the ''Dungeons & Dragons'' role-playing game and associated products, along with ''Dungeon (magazine), Dungeon''. TSR, Inc. originally launched the monthly printed magazine in 1976 to succeed the company's earlier publication, ''The Strategic Review''. The final printed issue was #359 in September 2007. Shortly after the last print issue shipped in mid-August 2007, Wizards of the Coast (part of Hasbro, Inc.), the publication's current copyright holder, relaunched ''Dragon'' as an online magazine, continuing on the numbering of the print edition. The last published issue was No. 430 in December 2013. A digital publication called ''Dragon+'', which replaces the ''Dragon'' magazine, launched in 2015. It is created by Dialect in collaboration with Wizards of the Coast, and its numbering system for issues started at No. 1. History TSR In 1975, TSR, Inc. began publishing ''The Strategic Review''. At the time ...
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Douglas Niles
Douglas Niles (born December 1, 1954, in Brookfield, Wisconsin) is a fantasy author and game designer. Niles was one of the creators of the Dragonlance world and the author of the first three Forgotten Realms novels, the ''Star Frontiers'' space opera setting and the ''Top Secret (role-playing game), Top Secret S/I'' espionage role-playing game. Early life and education Niles was born in Brookfield, Wisconsin, a suburb of Milwaukee, and his family moved to Nashotah, Wisconsin, Nashotah, a small town to the north, when he was twelve years old. Niles developed an interest in heroic fantasy, as well as wargaming, and began writing short stories and making short films in high school. Niles attended the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh, where he majored in speech and minored in English. While there, he met Chris Schroeder, whom he married three years later. After graduation, Niles began teaching Speech and English at Clinton High School (Clinton, Wisc ...
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Darkwalker On Moonshae
''Darkwalker on Moonshae'' is a fantasy novel by Douglas Niles and the first novel written for the Forgotten Realms campaign setting for the ''Dungeons & Dragons'' fantasy role-playing game. Published originally as a standalone novel, it is also the first part of '' The Moonshae Trilogy''. Major characters The Earthmother - the goddess venerated by the Ffolk, the native human inhabitants of the islands. Kazgoroth, the Beast - the ancient enemy of the Earthmother, come to walk the Moonshae Isles to banish her from her domain. Tristan Kendrick - a prince and heir of the kingdom of Corwell, on the Moonshae island of Gwynneth. Deemed immature and irresponsible by his father. Robyn - a ward to the king of Corwell, Tristan's childhood friend, and now - his love interest, and druid of great potential. Plot summary The novel and its trilogy use the Moonshae Isles as its setting. Kazgoroth, the Beast, has come into the world to destroy the power of the Earthmother. Changing its shape a ...
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