I actually never got to see the proper details for the Sundered Regions or the Anattan Wastes so all I had to work with were maps. So I decided to just focus on some vague details for the Eastern Continent (I imagined the oceans were legit replaced with Seas of Silt, but that’s for another thread).
The way I did things, the majority of the world suffered from Rajaat’s mad ambitions. However Rajaat focused primarily on the Tyr Region, the Deadlands, and the Forgotten North. Rajaat didn’t engineer the cleansing wars alone, there were two other powers alongside him with their own histories that oversaw conflicts that would shape their regions as well. This is because the world of Athas doesn’t have one pristine tower but at least three, all of which were used by the rullisti across the globe to stop the brown tide. Rajaat and friends claimed these towers for their own mad scheme and used all of them in tandem to empower champions who would crusade across Athas. This idea came to me when the old entry for the dragon mentioned that a dragon of Borys’ power was not exclusive to the Tyr Region and others could potentially be encountered in far away lands.
For the west there was a monster called Dralguin which was a nature bender that survived the brown tide and through his blasphemous craft turned himself into a horrible crustacean centipede hybrid of immense size. He taught the tohr-kreen nature bending which eventually lead to xixchil bio-sculpting. The west saw a terrible war eventually erupt between rebellious nature benders and the defilers tasked with cleansing the west, this leads to the first avangion known to history only as The Great One to join the kreen to defeat the defilers of the west and forge an empire of kreen and men (among other exotic races) very much themed after ancient china.
The East is what I’m currently sort of working on. There was a powerful creature known as an “athasian vampire” which is more akin to a shadowy winged demon of the Gray than anything but are masters of siphoning life energy. Vesper was an extremely powerful example of her ilk that Rajaat befriended in his years of wandering. When they found and communed with Dralguin they were able to start pioneering a great deal of terrible arts. Vesper played a key role in figuring out how to not use the world itself for arcane power as Rajaat attempted with… interesting consequences, but instead stealing life energy to fuel this arcane magic Rajaat had invented. This art (later to be known as Dragon Magic) had to be simplified by Rajaat so lesser beings could practice it, thus giving us defiling.
So what does this mean for the East? Well Dralguin had the least amount of champions as we would know them, probably around seven compared to Rajaat’s 15, favoring his nature bending acolytes and bio-sculpted horrors, but still employing a fair number of champions due to the sheer power they commanded and the possible forms he might sculpt an athasian dragon into. Rajaat had the most as he invented the very process of making them and saw the Tyr Region as the most powerful region and thus most likely to offer resistance to his totally rational and not over the top scheme. Vesper had a good number of champions as was well, closer to about 11 in total. Unlike the Crimson Savanna Region where there’s a couple of isolated sorcerer king held realms, I see the Eastern Continent having a very prominent Sorcerer King presence as well but in a decidedly different manner from the Tyr Region.
I don’t see Vesper running around the Eastern Continent anymore, I also had Dralguin sealed underground during the cleansing wars of the west. I’m taking pains to make all of the continents of Athas have a post-apocalyptic/struggling for survival vibe. The West has a sort of wild west theme with the Avangion Empire giving a mood of manifest destiny from the States and the ethnocentric center of the world mentality of China, while the rest of the Crimson Savannah has to struggle against an extremely dangerous wilderness, savannas prowled by humanoid great cats that the kreen consider brutal hunters, jungles ruled by athasian yuan-ti, the huge kreen khanates that didn’t integrate with the avangion empire, and eldritch cults of Dralguin.
The Eastern Continent would still have sorcerer king city states that are very much key powers of the continent, but also full fledged city-states ran by mortals. Unlike any independant city states that might exist in the Crimson Savanna Region these ones would be key central powers that would rival the realms of the eastern SKs. Two key ideas I have are of the merchantile class being the ones who outright run some of these city states and are developing colonial ambitions towards more primitive realms. As well as perhaps having a kingdom ruled by a dynasty of long lived humans connected to a living vortice, creating a sort of “dynasty of god kings” that goes hand in hand with the ancient cultures Dark Sun calls back to.
As for the races of the east, I am definitely thinking of sticking dromites either here or in the crimson savanna. Elan I depict as creations of the Order used as sleeper agents or soldiers so you’ll find them anywhere the Order cares enough about. I actually kind of like the idea of thri-kreen not being native here. I’ve been toying with a concept for a race of humanoid termites that might live elsewhere in Athas, the East seems most appropriate for them. You’d still have Half-Giants and Muls here, not as many as in the Tyr Region but more than the zero you’d have in the Crimson Savanna. The sorcerer kings of the east would vary in their attitudes, some would be allied with “free” nations, others would be antagonistic towards anyone not a SK. However there would also be realms of eternal night where the few children of Vesper reign over their own nightmare kingdoms. These would be the places everyone stays away from. Instead of a Dragon’s Levy forged from an alliance of sorcerer kings or an Avangion Empire of nature benders and preservers to keep their respective dark lords contained I envision the Eastern continent having a sort of grand alliance to keep Vesper’s children from overtaking the rest of the continent. Naturally the alliance is horribly dysfunctional and has a hard time getting anything done, only barely able to work together enough to keep back the Kingdoms of Night. Ironically if they could all work together there probably would be no vampire kings to fear.
Overall the Eastern Continent needs a lot of development still. I just posted my take on the cleansing wars and the crimson savanna to give some perspective on the sort of direction I’d want to start running with the East. If you guys are curious for further details on any of this stuff let me know and I’ll post what I can. I omitted a great deal of details on the crimson savanna, my depiction of Rajaat, and the other dark lords of Athas.
). So they used a combinaton of magic and psionics to made the forest energy “poisonous” to arcane casters (both preservers and defilers) that gather it. Ironically, the only way to mantain that power, is arcane magic. The only arcanist Green Elves are the “Eternal Guardians”: meorties from the Green Age with the duty to preserve the forest’s power.