What the heck is a Phaerimm? I hear of them in various Forgotten Realms articles but I've never come across an explanation, and they're usually responsible for the downfall of several civilizations.
Imagine funnel shaped creatures, with a huge mouth at the wide end of the funnel, a stinger at the tail end, and four arms surrounding the mouth. Now imagine that they are natural sorcerers and can cast without somantic or verbal components, and that their tails inject you with their eggs that gestage new little phaerimm within you.
Phaerimm are stattted out in Lost Empires of Faerun, and the Web Enchancement for the Player's Guide to Faerun at the Wizards of the Coast site. Essentially they have age catagories like dragons, and the most powerful become 20+ level sorcerers.
The Phaerimm acting together created a massive spell known as the Lifedrain that started sucking the life out of Netheril and turned the land into desert, which is why the Netherese started living in their floating cities. The Phaerimm would have likely killed off the Netherese, excpet another bizzare race of aberations, the Sharn (three headed eyeless teardrop shaped creatures with two arms but multiple hands per arm) decided to cast a spell that would trap the Phaerimm in the Underdark directly under Anauroch.
Recently, the Sharn Wall, the barrier that kept the Phaerimm in, was breached, so many of them managed to escape back into the surface world, and did a lot of damage to Evereska.
There are also so Phaerimm that were not trapped and are trying to syphon the magic off the the Mythal in Myth Drannor.
Whoa..
I was wondering what the Sharn were as well. Thanks for killing two birds etc.
If you're interested in reading about phaerimm in action, and their attack on Evereska, then pick up the excellent Return of the Archwizards trilogy by Troy Denning.
Here's a link to a cover picture with a phaerimm on it:
The Winds of Netheril
And another
Another
And the Sharn
and you can do a google search under the images category
and yes, they are baddies to fight aganist but they are fun to run as a DM
Lilith, you just plain rock! Where do you store the info that lets you pull 4 links to artwork, such as that, out of the air.
FH
Uhhh...really good memory? That and I know WotC usually posts galleries of book artwork when they're released. Poke through the archives and you'll find just about all the books and a nice majority of the pictures.