10 Reasons for Daskinor's Insanity

[redking]

@Star-Sage

The other thought I had was similar to Kalindren’s #7, that the mirror opened a rift to the Far Realm

I like the idea of a rift into the Far Realm. The way I see it, the rift is pouring Far Realm pollution into its surrounds. Primarily it affected Daskinor himself, as he got the full blast of Far Realm energies when the door to the Far Realm opened.

From another thread that I made about the topic.

@redking

When Daskinor attempted to open a door to the netherworld, he failed. He did open a door to somewhere, however. The Far Realm touches on the material plane of Athas in a way that the outer planes do not, and it was to the Far Realm that Daskinor opened the doorway. This doorway wasn’t a portal in the traditional sense of one that could be walked through, rather it was a gaping hole that allowed bizarre reality of the Far Realm to seep into Eldaarich, and into Daskinor’s mind.

Daskinor is not insane. If anything he has transcended beyond the feeble understandings of the other Sorcerer Kings. What do they know of impossible geometry or the reality of two contradictory states both being possible simultaneously?

Daskinor spends hours a day starting into the breach, allowing the Far Realm waves wash over him, as he communes with both beings that exist yet do not exist, possible yet not possible in accordance to the logic of the Far Realm.

Daskinor’s strange orders to his government have nothing to do with insanity in the conventional sense, and everything to do with producing a butterfly effect that will produce an outcome that seemingly has nothing to do with the strange order (such as when he banned psionics for a time). The psionic ban allowed the breach to extend the flow of Far Realm energies to spread all over Eldaarich, which is now having interesting consequences. Thus successful, Daskinor rescinded his ban on psionics, making him seem more insane. Of course, no one could possibly understand Daskinor’s point of view… Yet. As the Far Realm slowly influences the people of Eldaarich they will recieve the same lunatic insight as Daskinor himself (but to a lesser extent as Daskinor, being an advanced being, is able to comprehend much).

More generally, all the people of Eldaarich are affected in one way or another. Eldaarich has one modern innovation that the rest of Athas does not have - the mental hospital. Everyday, someone will randomly go berserk, yelling insanities like “they are here! THEY SEE US!”. Ironically the mental hospitals make the situation worse because gathering Far Realm affected people into a enclosed space creates a Far Realm cluster with viral implications, to the extent that the staff could be affected also. The already very mutable beings of Athas can suddenly mutate into Pseudonatural Creatures (non-epic version) in the vicinity of Eldaarch. Strange flowers bloom in Eldaarich, impossibly from rock.

The Quori from the Eberron setting can be renamed and reskinned as Far Realm invaders that possess some of the citizenry of Eldaarich, creating yet another faction in play in that realm. The invaders are not motivated by anything comprehensible by the people of Athas, of course.

In this scenario, it was not any Far Realm being that caused Borys to flee Eldaarich, but the opening of the Far Realm rift, which the Dragon’s psionic senses told him was extremely dangerous or toxic.