10 Reasons for Daskinor's Insanity

Pennarin, what happened to your Illithid project? Dark Sun should be based on the original boxed set with hidden history. That means having various histories that might be the truth, depending on the campaign.

The Illithid Project never went further than what was published on the old boards.

I know I read about permanent mind switch, and it is claimed here that it is from a timeline. Where is that timeline found?

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I believe that came out of Prison-State of Eldaarich. In my own campaign to account for his first human origins, nomad nature, and permanent mind switch I’ve got him statted as:

Barbarian 3/Nomad 5/|Tribal Psionicist 5/|Elocator 3/|Body Snatcher 6/|Elocator 7/Wizard 1/
Student of Rajaat 10/Nomad 6/Dragon 2

It took him 500 years to understand magic, the only reason Rajaat kept him around was his knowledge and Nomad abilities.

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He is normal - rest of world is insanity.

Maybe every fear, every strange concept of Daskinor, is true or based on true knowledge? Maybe he see more? Maybe rest of world is infected by strange psionical bacillus, who lock for others way to knowing the true truth?

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As a high functioning autistic, this perfectly sums up my life!

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The ability to use psionics comes with a price!

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Unfortunately autism isn’t a superpower, despite the opinion of a Swedish teenager.

Just had a thought though: would an autistic who used a permanent mind switch with a neurotypical host slowly become less autistic? :thinking:

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In the Brax/Kendrick take on the Trembling plains, it’s mention that Daskinor army had wrongly slain a city of Halfling. Maybe his madness started there? Here is the text:

Daskinor’s army sacked the goblin holds south of Basrai, and then his army marched north tracking goblin-spoor to Ghozer. The army passed Basrai, but did not find the hidden gate to the rhul-thaun city; Daskinor’s detection spells were focused on goblins, not halflings. After destroying Ghozer, however, Daskinor returned south, and this time their scouts stumbled on the city’s gate.
Daskinor knew from his divining spells that no goblins remained in the White Mountains, but the fact that this city was built into the mountains like a cave reminded him too much of the goblin cities he had just sacked, and he suddenly doubted his divining powers. Using magical and psionic attacks honed in years of goblin extermination, Daskinor and his army assaulted Basrai.
The halflings had no magic and little psionic skill. Their life-shaped weapons and creatures offered a nasty surprise to Shtas’ elite footsoldiers, but not powerful enough to offset the psionics and magic of Daskinor’s army. The soldiers easily overcame Basrai’s defenses and broke into the city, massacring the rhul-thaun where they stood and wrecking their life-shaping workshops. Daskinor arrived too late to prevent the massacre, and in any case he was filled with bloodlust and had killed dozens of halflings before he realized the nature of his foe.
In the burning ruins of Basrai, Daskinor considered what he had done. Rajaat forbade his Champions to have any contact with halflings at all, and specifically ordered the Champions to avoid places such as Orohna Valley and the Jagged Cliffs. But the First Sorcerer had never mentioned that there was a halfling city in the Snow Crowns, and in thousands of years, Daskinor had never heard of civilized halflings using curious living creatures as weapons and tools. Daskinor remembered as a child watching halflings dock airships in the mountain peaks above his grandparents’ cave dwellings, and he wondered how whether those airships were in fact living creatures. For the first time in King’s Ages, Daskinor spent an entire afternoon without thinking about goblins or the cleansing wars.

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Science would suggest yes, game rules would suggest no. I saw some people online asking if they could take autism as a 3.5e flaw (each flaw gave a bonus feat in compensation). The topic is fraught, of course, because of the implication. I’d be willing to offer that as a flaw or trait in my games if someone really wanted it (just as long as the autism wasn’t an excuse to be disruptive or play chaotic stupid).

Autism as a trait: -2 to Charisma based skill and ability checks. +2 to Will saves.

Autism as a flaw: -2 to Charisma based skill and ability checks. Select a bonus feat in compensation.

Select either the flaw or the trait, not both.

If you wanted to go the biological approach, you lose the flaw or trait after mindswitch. Keep in mind you also lose any benefits, such as the bonus feat from the flaw.

I’d also be willing to accept being a eunuch as a flaw or trait. Castration can provide a boost of mystical power to an arcane caster.

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That’s a nice ruling. I think I’d be more inclined to treat it as a trait than a flaw though. Instead of a +2 to will saves what about a +2 to intelligence skill based checks? That makes it roughly comparable to the -2 to charisma based checks and more appealing for player’s without being overpowering and reflects autism reasonably well I think.

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How about a +2 bonus to saves against mind affecting effects? Autism doesn’t guarantee high intelligence.

Here is a trait or flaw for the castrated. The castrated must actually have had their genitals removed, not born with ambiguous genitalia.

Castrated as a trait: Eunuch Mage (or Temple Eunuch): You have been castrated as part of a magical or religious ritual. Benefit: You cast spells from any spellcasting class at +1 caster level. In addition, you may select any feat for which you qualify as a bonus feat at 1st level and Use Magic Device is always a class skill for you. Drawback: Your body has been weakened by being maimed. -1 to fortitude saves and -2 to saves against fear effects. In addition, your maximum ranks in the Intimidate skill can never be more than your character level (Normal: Your maximum rank in a class skill is your character level + 3).

I don’t know if I’d want rules mechanics to account for autism. Autism is a spectrum condition after all. I’m ‘high functioning’ in my autism, which is quite different from how someone with aspergers behaves and presents. Additionally, most in-game affects will be as a result of a autistic player with an autistic PC seeing things and reacting differently anyway. It’s rather different than say, an eidetic memory (which I think was a trait with rules in Dragon Magazine back in 2E or 3E days).

Objectively speaking, autism spectrum disorder isn’t a superpower. It’s not a flaw. It is a difference though - I’m better than a neurotypical person at some things, but much worse in many other areas.

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Be assured that there is someone somewhere reading this thread who will request to their DM that their new PC have both the autistic AND castrated trait.

As you say, most of the people asking for autistic PCs are probably autistic themselves. As for the eunuchs, well, I guess there are quite of few of those these days too.

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I know the stats for autism in the population. I don’t know the stats for eunuchs in the population. I don’t want to know the stats for eunuch autists in the population! :exploding_head:

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I think this calls for a Venn diagram… :interrobang:

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I learn strongly towards what SeruZmaj’s take on Daskinor. However I imagined that opening a gate to the Hollow allowed Rajaat to exert some measure of influence on him. So what if Rajaat is actively trying to seize control of Daskinor’s psyche through the mirror shards embedded in his flesh? The various voices and psyches Daskinor is wrestling with could be the psionic remnants of all the bodies he’s stolen. Normally Daskinor would have an easy time maintaining his sense of self as an accomplished psion, but Rajaat constantly wearing away at his psyche in an attempt to seize control could’ve broken the floodgates. So you’d have Daskinor and Rajaat as two primary personalities, then the dozens of personalities from all the bodies he’s stolen as secondary minds all with their own fears and goals. Perhaps Rajaat could serve as a common enemy for them all to unite against. Or perhaps only death can end the thousand mind horror plaguing Eldaarich.

On a slightly off note, one point of confusion I have wrestled with was that I doubt Borys would see Daskinor actively open a gate to the Hollow and just trust Daskinor not to release Rajaat at some point in a fit of desperation/insanity. The Dragon of Tyr strikes me as the sort who’d want all of his bases covered. At the same time I can see him being terrified of just swooping down in the hopes of assassinating Daskinor before he has time to open the gate again. So to Borys the issue is one of mutually assured destruction, based entirely off his assumption Eldaarich still has the means of releasing Rajaat.

So, what I could see Borys doing instead is try to probe the prison state of Eldaarich from afar through proxies as a means of getting a better idea of the situation. In other words he would hire adventurers, merchants, spies, etc from the Tyr Region and the Forgotten North to provide him with information on Eldaarich. What I consider especially fun would be if Borys did this through Ur Draxan proxies that he trusts, namely his own Ur Draxan Templars. A distinct twist I pulled in my campagin is the dragon is actively keeping an eye on the mainland through loyal Ur Draxan Templar he uses as spies. Eldaarich is the perfect place to open up intrigue there. This could be doubly exciting if the Shadow Giants and Rajaat loyalists know that Rajaat’s prison was briefly weakened in the Prison City and are seeking to figure out what’s going on as well. Then we suddenly have a three way conflict between Eldaarich, Borys, and Rajaat with the PCs caught in the middle.

(Edit: How much this reaction Borys has makes sense depends largely on how long ago Eldaarich opened the mirror on him imo. I personally compressed the Dark Sun timeline so the SKs have only been ruling Athas for a few centuries, but the other take could be that Eldaarich only got this desperate relatively recently.)

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I mislike the focus on Rajaat, but if we must focus on Rajaat, I doubt that Borys the Dragon would permit Daskinor to interfere with the imprisonment of Rajaat in any fashion.

It’s one thing to refuse to pay the levy. Another entirely to interfere with the Dragon’s reason for existence.

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I’d argue its more a case of not letting one of Your mad ex-colleagues bring about the end of the world. :man_shrugging:

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I mislike the focus on Rajaat

Fair enough, my campaign sees little to nothing of Rajaat, so Daskinor felt like a good chance for the PCs to tangle with him. But that doesn’t work for a lot of groups.

The other thought I had was similar to Kalindren’s #7, that the mirror opened a rift to the Far Realm and whatever entity was on the other side was able to not only drive off Borys, but somehow ensure he wouldn’t return. This however came at a price, the entity sought to possess Daskinor. For while reality was poisonous to the Entity and its kind, mortal hosts could serve as a means of protection. Daskinor has resisted the entity, but the visions of the Far Realm have broken his mind. Should Daskinor’s psyche break entirely the Entity shall gain full control and Athas will know a new era of horror.

In this case, other mirror fragments are still at large, with Far Realm entities whispering to any foolish enough to possess them. Daskinor keeps such a tight control over his city not merely out of madness, but also because he rightly fears that the Entity has used him during moments of weakness to foster an eldritch cult within his very city. Rooting them out has been a constant goal of Daskinor’s and immense fuel for his paranoia.

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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.

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.

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