# What happened to Izmir?



## hopeless (Feb 9, 2007)

What happened to Izmir?

In the first dungeons and dragons movie, Izmir was a massive metropolis that resembled Sharn from Eberron to a small degree (in that Sharn would make Izmir look "small").

Then when they made the sequel movie set a century later Izmir had now shrunk to the size of maybe a small city... so what happened?

Is there another Izmer a metropolis abandoned for some reason, just waiting to be explored, or has the Blackmoor setting released something to clear this up?


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## Nifft (Feb 9, 2007)

Today it is merely "old history... by the sea".

Cheers, -- N


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## Whizbang Dustyboots (Feb 9, 2007)

I think they were just distancing themselves from the original movie somewhat, which is a shame, since the now-vanished D&D movie setting articles at the WotC site were pretty nice. I imagine the never-released setting book has had its electrons shredded as well.


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## teitan (Feb 9, 2007)

hopeless said:
			
		

> What happened to Izmir?
> 
> In the first dungeons and dragons movie, Izmir was a massive metropolis that resembled Sharn from Eberron to a small degree (in that Sharn would make Izmir look "small").
> 
> ...




What does Blackmoor have to do with it?


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## Henry (Feb 9, 2007)

The movie was made by two different directors and writers, hence the disconnect. I don't  think anyone released any explanation, but there are as half-dozen possible explanations one could make up to explain it (you just did the most obvious one above!)


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## WayneLigon (Feb 9, 2007)

Probably no reason beyond 'we need a way to tie this totally re-done movie to the first one for some obscure continuity (or contractual) reason, so we'll just use a few names and a character from it'.


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## Kae'Yoss (Feb 9, 2007)

Maybe they wanted to pretend that the first movie never happened? I know most of the D&D community would gladly do this


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## Cthulhudrew (Feb 9, 2007)

Whizbang Dustyboots said:
			
		

> I think they were just distancing themselves from the original movie somewhat, which is a shame, since the now-vanished D&D movie setting articles at the WotC site were pretty nice. I imagine the never-released setting book has had its electrons shredded as well.




They're still there, you just have to dig around a bit:

Journey Through Dungeons & Dragons: The Movie

Society of Sumdall

Some random Movie links

I know there was a thread either here at ENWorld or else on the Mystara board at WotC that posted some more links to those articles as well.


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## Mark CMG (Feb 9, 2007)

hopeless said:
			
		

> What happened to Izmir?





Izmer, iz lezz.


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## Whizbang Dustyboots (Feb 9, 2007)

Cthulhudrew said:
			
		

> They're still there, you just have to dig around a bit:
> 
> Journey Through Dungeons & Dragons: The Movie
> 
> ...



You rock, thanks.

I wish they'd just go ahead and release the setting book as a free PDF on their site, if they're never going to sell it.


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## hopeless (Feb 12, 2007)

*Regarding Izmir and Dave Arneson*



			
				teitan said:
			
		

> What does Blackmoor have to do with it?




I heard DA was placing Izmir in his blackmoor campaign world but never heard anything more about it.


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## Sir Brennen (Feb 12, 2007)

Henry said:
			
		

> The movie was made by two different directors and writers, hence the disconnect.



Just like two different DMs wont neccessarily have their players adventure in the same version of Greyhawk


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## Relique du Madde (Feb 12, 2007)

I'm willing to bet that most of the people in Izmir either failed to purchase DnD3.5 or they started playing world of warcraft.


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## Klaus (Feb 12, 2007)

hopeless said:
			
		

> What happened to Izmir?
> 
> In the first dungeons and dragons movie, Izmir was a massive metropolis that resembled Sharn from Eberron to a small degree (in that Sharn would make Izmir look "small").
> 
> ...



 Either a lot of Dispel Magic to eliminate all those Wall of Stone spells used to make those towers, or an Epic spell called "Budget Cut".


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## Hypersmurf (Feb 13, 2007)

hopeless said:
			
		

> In the first dungeons and dragons movie, Izmir was a massive metropolis that resembled Sharn from Eberron to a small degree (in that Sharn would make Izmir look "small").
> 
> Then when they made the sequel movie set a century later Izmir had now shrunk to the size of maybe a small city... so what happened?




Most of the food, the trade, the economy, and so on, was all enabled by the mages.

Then, at the end of the first movie, the Queen declared that mages and commoners were now _equal_.

A month later, the commoners went to the mages.  "We're running out of food," they said.  "Trade is drying up, the economy is tanking.  Why aren't you doing anything?"

"You're our equals now," replied the mages with a shrug.  "_You_ fix it."

But they never did.

-Hyp.


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## The Grumpy Celt (Feb 13, 2007)

I always thought (well, I thought little of the movies, however you wish to define the term) the city in the first one was the capital while the city in the second one was just some podunk village the king was visiting to make it easy on his enemies.


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## Knightfall (Feb 13, 2007)

hopeless said:
			
		

> I heard DA was placing Izmir in his blackmoor campaign world but never heard anything more about it.



Hw was considering it, but I don't think he was able to get permission. I had an e-mail conversation with him back in 2002 about Izmer. Here's the e-mail I sent him...



> *From:* Robert Blezard
> *Sent:* Friday, September 27, 2002 6:17 PM
> *To:* darneson...
> *Cc:* Arneson, David
> ...



And here's his reply...



> *From:* Arneson, David
> *Sent:* Wednesday, September 25, 2002 7:16 AM
> *To:* Robert Blezard
> *Subject:* RE: From my Web Site
> ...


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## trancejeremy (Feb 13, 2007)

I think the real answer is that the original movies had a pretty big budget ($30-35 million), while the sequel was direct to video and had a budget of a couple million.


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## Cthulhudrew (Feb 13, 2007)

Whizbang Dustyboots said:
			
		

> I wish they'd just go ahead and release the setting book as a free PDF on their site, if they're never going to sell it.




There were several articles in Dragon magazine around the time the movie came out as well, most of which had character stats and/or magic items in them. About three or four articles in total, which (along with the interviews) would help to flesh out such a product.


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## Cthulhudrew (Feb 13, 2007)

Some more info about the D&D movie and setting, from several threads on the Mystara boards:

Director Courtney Solomon discusses Izmer

Discussion of the character stats from Dragon articles

More discussion and links to Izmer stuff


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## Andim Feelingood (Sep 5, 2017)

Aziz Kocaoğlu happened.  happens.


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## Zarthrax (Feb 21, 2019)

Hypersmurf said:


> Most of the food, the trade, the economy, and so on, was all enabled by the mages.
> 
> Then, at the end of the first movie, the Queen declared that mages and commoners were now _equal_.
> 
> ...




This is the greatest post of all time.


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## haakon1 (Oct 15, 2020)

For anyone interested in Izmer, or Greyhawk, there’s a recent post on Anna Meyer’s Flannaess Geographic group on Facebook.  It’s a map of the full continent of Oerik, of which the Flanaess is a subcontinent, where the only other inhabited place, at the opposite end, is the Empire of the Izmer.  In between are only wastes, like the Sea of Dust.  To me, it makes a lot of sense for both settings.


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