Volothamp "Volo" Geddarm, created by Jeff Grubb, is a fictional character of the Forgotten Realms campaign setting for the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game. Description It is through Volo's perspective that Ed Greenwood authored his detailed Forgotten Realms lore-books of the Volo's Guide series: Volo's Guide to Waterdeep, Volo's Guide to the North, Volo's Guide to the Sword Coast, Volo's Guide to Cormyr, Volo's Guide to the Dalelands, Volo's Guide to All Things Magical, Volo's Guide to Baldur's Gate II (note that this relates to the video game and not the city) and Volo's Guide to Monsters. Volo was a too-curious-for-his-own-good travelling scholar and minor wizard. Always on the lookout for an exposé, he all too frequently was at odds with Elminster, who preferred some things to be kept in the dark. In fact, it was his assembling his "first" guide—Volo's Guide to All Things Magical—that put him on the "path" to making his other guides. As for Elminster, it is he who edits every guide that Volo has published, as evident in the many footnotes in each, including Volo's Guide to All Things Magical, which almost got Volo killed making it. "Volo" is not to be confused with "Marcus Volo", real name Marcus Wands, of the Wands family of Waterdeep. A trouble-making bard, Wands gained Volothamp's moniker after he stole an artifact from a powerful wizard, and laid the blame on the far more infamous scapegoat of the real Volo. Pursued by the mad mage and his forces, and protected by adventurers hired by his father, Marco came into his own at the finale, when the artifact was revealed as containing a god from another world, who had come to Toril along with Marco's family. The Sunstaffs, as they were known then, had through the generations been destined to keep the god imprisoned, and Marco awakened to his destiny with the help of the adventurers, Volothamp himself, and the gods Tyr, Sune, and Corellon Larethian. He has also had several adventures of his own, as told in Once Around the Realms and The Mage in the Iron Mask. Reception Trenton Webb, writing for the British magazine Arcane, thought of Volo as "a sort of magically empowered Magenta DeVine". Paul Pettengale, also writing for Arcane, described him as "a famous AD&D adventurer who, in an effort to help adventurers in Faerûn, has written a number of guides to regions