The first product to actually sport the Forgotten Realms logo on the front cover was not a module (some that came out at the same time had it on the back cover) or a source book for the world of Faerun, but a novel, Darkwalker on Moonshae by Douglas Niles. We’ve seen Niles here before as one of the writer for TSR adventures and books, so it was very much an in-house hire, and we’ll see him several more times as the years go on.

This isn’t the most obvious Forgotten Realms novel, there are none of the famous characters of the setting such as Elminster or Drizzt, and even the famous gods of the setting are mostly absent from the story as it takes place in the Moonshae Islands, a place that is quite literally set apart from the main activity in the continent of Faerun as these islands retain a kind of “old religion” connected mainly with druidic activity.

If there is an easy parallel to the Moonshae Islands it would be the folklore of the Arthurian Legends, down to knights in shining armor, kings and magical swords and a druidical religion having its first contact with an outside religion (the gods of Faerun here and Christianity in the Arthurian Lore). This makes the novel quite singular as well as making it stand alone from the rest of the universe, making it a good place to start off an exploration of the edges of the world of the Forgotten Realms.