I have my own issues with it. I think the bugdead are an excess: do we really need ANOTHER intelligent insect race? It should have just been undead kreen. The scale is too small. Shadowmourne has something like a standing army of 10k troops in an area of like 600 square miles that is still described as empty and desolate. The stats of the various faction leaders are wimpy, especially as they’re basically a new batch of sorcerer-monarchs (although this issue was endemic to the revised setting: the Mind Lords are supposedly the most powerful psions on the planet and have been around for thousands and thousands of years . . . but by the numbers the Order has them beat, hands down). The backgrounds and stats of some of the undead are inconsistent (Kulrath is a zhen but his fluff makes him sound like he shouldn’t be. Gretch is also a zhen but should very clearly be a kaisharga variation. The whole idea of zhen is hinted at being this big important thing, but is never really explained). There’s more, but still.
As to the undead not leaving the basin and not being aware of the outside living world? I’ll just agree to disagree. I think the point and explanation are clearly made in the text itself, but that being said I would agree that it wasn’t given the proper emphasis, and the writers could have connected the dots a bit more clearly for the audience.
All else being equal, I think it’s important to bear in mind that it IS an unfinished product. I mean as far as production goes, it’s essentially finished. But there are enough inconsistencies that it clearly needed some final polishing. In addition to that, the audience that have had access to read it is INCREDIBLY small. I mean I don’t know how much it has been disseminated over the years, but based on the fact that you apparently can’t find it on the typical yar har and a bottle of rum type websites indicates that probably less than a hundred people have really read it in any amount of detail over the years. All I know is that I grew up with TSR’s stuff. That’s my jam. And while SotDL doesn’t answer all the high concept issues and questions it raises in the form it currently exists, I’m happy enough with what it did do.
Yeah, I for one have tried to find a copy for I don’t know ten years at least. I’ve never found anything. Honestly this is the most I have found or learned about any of it in a VERY long time even searching through these forums only gave me a few details here and there. Maybe I’m just terrible at looking but I think that less than a hundred people number is accurate, at least it feels that way looking for info on it.
I have greatly enjoyed this discussion and information. I’m thrilled to learn anything new about the setting at all. The last time I got this excited about info was one of Bone, Stone and Obsidian podcasts that interviewed someone that actually worked on the setting. I ran across a random interview with the Prism Pentad writer as well recently that basically confirmed that there was no consensus about The Messenger and just a few ideas.
From what I’ve learned of these Bugdead (are they ALL undead or some of them living or is just a few lines of actual original text referring to them anyways?) and their sentience I kinda figured they were a mutated (because everything in this world starts at least a mutant except Kreen & Halflings) Kreen that could still live under or near water. The Thri-Kreen of Athas brings up (and a few other sources I think) that they don’t like moisture they get sick and die since adapting to the changes. Still withouth any water sources any water origins leaves em redundant other than having armies of the dead themselves. I’m still fine with multiple intelligent bug species simply becase the Kreen have enough variety as it is and there’s certainly enough humanoids that I can live with two types of insectoids running around. I am however not even remotely impartial and Thri-Kreen are one of my favorite races.
Honestly, I’d probably just reskin them a little as Scarab Spiders, toss in some nice Egyptian themes and give em a plan to drown the whole damn world or as much as they can, since their aquatic heritage doesn’t do them any good on Athas as it is now. Turn em into sun and moon tide worshippers give them a vision of the Pristine Tower and a buried sun and moon temple with a nice McGuffin to rile em up.
The thing with the bugdead is that once the dead lords rose and developed necromancy, they started raising everything they could get their hands on. Very “more is more” kind of mentality. That included insects. But undead insects are kind of insane (sorta?) by humanoid standards, and it very rarely ever works out right. Gretch has some undead scarlet warden lackeys, which is one of the reasons he scares the shit out of some of the others.
Anyway, undead versions of the spider bugs / scarlet wardens are highly intelligent. This resulted in a new form of insect civilization that is just very inhuman / antithetical to the dead lords way of life. It includes both living and undead insects, living and working in harmony.
So yeah they’re kinda mutated . . . but only in the sense that by experimenting with undead bugs the dead lords managed to create a mutant society of insects that now utterly scares them, and that the dead lords collectively treat as an existential threat.
Worth noting is that not all scarlet wardens are undead (most are).
I’m not real keen on the name “scarlet warden”. Maybe thats the common tongue translation, but think they would have a more kreen or alien sounding name they refer to themselves as.
Think they may have been an aquatic offshoot of kreen that existed since the Blue Age. They’re an interesting race and wish SotDL gave a bit more info on them. I like to think there are more of them to the south of the Dead Lands which are more akin to their pre-obsidian cataclysm society who act independently of the bugdead.
I see the S’thag Zagath (the living Scarlet Wardens) as entirely different from the Kreen. Kreen are insects, Zagath are a cross between crustaceans and arachnids. Certainly on Earth they would be from completely different clades of taxonomy. There’s nothing that says everything has to go back to just 2 species on Athas during the Blue Age (and arguably the Dolphins would be the third known Blue Age race).
I like the idea of each age having it’s proliferation of species, but the end of each Age effectively represents an Extinction Level Event and only a small number of species make it through to the next.
Forgot that S’thag Zagath was the name athas.org termed them in Terrors of the Dead Lands (can’t find it in the original doc)
Agreed that not everything needing to tie back to either kreen or rhulisti. I could go either way of them being a totally separate race or distant sub-species of kreen. I’d say they were closer to insects than crustaceans though. They are rulers of the “bugdead” after all. Can’t wrap my head around crabs controlling insects.
I would love to know if there was any basis for a lot of the stuff in TotDL that doesn’t appear in SotDL. I love Terrors either way as it adds so much flavour to the creatures, I’d just find it interesting (I’m an information junkie).
This did make me chuckle. You’re having trouble wrapping your head around that when we’re talking about undead, psionic and magic using bugs in a post apocalyptic world ruled by a Dragon?
That said, I do take your point. I guess the Zagath aren’t something that map directly over to anything we currently know of in Earth taxonomy
But the "Bugdead aren’t just undead insects, they’re undead 3e Vermin (insects, arachnids, crabs, etc.). Its an army of clicking, hollow exoskeletons led by bigger, intelligent creatures w/ exoskeletons (whether living or dead).
Because the bugdead are inherently programmed to associate and follow other things w/ shells - from when they were alive…
Boy, you know, i wanted to tell you that you were wrong, but i can’t. You’re right, i’m wrong.
The best I’ve found is Aratha (in TotDL) are described as “looking rather like large spiders” and have 8 legs. And the other (older?) version of (in TotDL) allows applying the Exoskeletal Bugdead template to Insect-like creatures, whereas the other version of TotDL (with all kinds of Bugdead statted out) just says Insects.
I kind of always imagined spiders and scorpions in the Bugdead mix. Can’t think of a good reason they’d be excluded, barring some cool setting-based environmental reason.
There are spider bugdead mentioned in SotDL - the section of the Dead Lands known as The Web is host to them. The text specifically states that “Like other bugdead, the arachnids are insane, a product of their reanimation as undead”. Scorpions however are completely absent from any references in the Dead Lands. Whether that was an oversight or intentional, who knows.
Agreed. I also noted, if we’re going to drill down into it, that there’s no Mites mentioned as bugdead either and they cross the arachnid lines. I mean it’s a bit niche, but if we can have giant ticks etc then I’m sure some sort of evil giant mite must exist on Athas, but they’re not mentioned. Maybe I’m reading too much into things (more than likely!)
The purple glow doesn’t bother me much, but agree on the suction cups… Not clear where that came from other than to make them seem more indigenous to obsidian.
I have not heard an update in a couple of years, but the last I heard was that Secrets of the Dead Lands only needed some maps finished to be completed. However, finding a quality map maker to complete all of the needed maps was the problem.
The last I heard on Emissary it needed a lot more work.
There were descriptions on where things, cities, etc… were located, just not scale. My guess is that if they’d come out with a scale in a published form that it’d still have been too small. Undead don’t sleep or tire. They need space to range. The larger the Dead Lands the better.
I say this with no spite or venom, but it honestly should be released as is at this point. Its been almost 15+ years. A rough hand drawn map would suffice. WotC isn’t going to come down on it not being a complete product. Its been in athas.org’s hands longer than it was in TSR/WotC’s. From what I understand, WotC hasn’t actively been responding to any athas.org correspondence short of canned ambiguous responses.
Again, I’m not trying to be a jerk, I just want to see this out for public consumption so it can be openly discussed.
