When-ing the comeback inn

[aldarron]

I dunno if you guys have long since scrutinized this, but I'm seeing puzzling things about the descriptions of the "great rain of fire" and the interior of the comeback inn as described in DA1.

Maybe, some of what I'm seeing is descrepencies between Dave's original ideas and later developments at TSR? I would guess that most of the layout and interior description of the inn comes from Daves notes. It seems likely he would have written that up.

Here's the thing; we are told flately that the cataclysm happened 1000 years after Uther becomes king, and house Andahar is ended in it.

Thus, the inn should reflect the year 2014, more or less, right?

Yet, when we read the room descriptions, everything points to a time period in, or not too long after, Uther's rule. Certainly there is nothing to indicate 1000 years of history had passed. No tributes to later emperors or heroes, new names, non Uther era coins etc.

Not necessarily. The Comeback Inn is a magical place. The dressing of the rooms could be changing to prepare the adventurers for their destiny.

That's definetly a reasonable explanation, but I don't get the sense that that is what was intended when it was written. Am I missing something?

Uther's reign is a key point in history. His expeditions to the Valley of the Ancients lead to dramatic breakthroughs in technological development, ultimately leading to the doom of the entire civlization.

okeydoke.

Hard to say if the names were Arneson's but this theory seems highly speculative to me.


-Havard

Yeah, definetly speculative. I read through DA1 specifically looking for dateing material and kept seeing things that suggested first, a 1000 year time period for Blackmoor, and second an end to Blackmoor seemingly at time when Uther's influence was still strong.

The puzzling details of the Inn and the odd bit about newest province made me wonder if maybe Arneson had meant the catyclism to occur much earlier, hence the list of emperors would be earlier, but if not, then that would apparently be a list of Andahars, right?