The following is extremely non-canon (even though it’s partly extrapolated from hints in earlier materials, like the Wanderer’s Journal and Dragon Kings) and totally incompatible with the revised box set’s history. The key assumptions that differ are:
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Athasian civilization (and the non-halfling intelligent species) are much, much older. When the King’s Age calendar was begun in Tyr ~14,500 years ago, the region was already largely desertified, with a long history of civilization and magic use.
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There was no Blue Age when the whole world was ocean and halflings were the only humanoids; when intelligent life arose on Athas, it had an Earthlike mix of continents and oceans. Halflings, humans, elves, dwarves and kreen all existed in a stone age state before the first rise of civilization, though they originated in different regions and were not originally all present in the Tablelands. The rhul-thaun of the Jagged Cliffs do tell, and believe, the myth of the Blue Age; but it’s not actually true. (It’s a reasonable version of their own early history, though - they did originate on an archipelago surrounded by ocean, with no other intelligent species in their local area.)
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All the major players and events don’t connect to Rajaat. There might well still be a Rajaat, as a mysterious power of shadow or as some ancient mage who created Rajaat’s Swamp beneath the Jagged Cliffs (the rhul-thaun certainly think so), but no one knows who the first inventor of arcane magic was, and the sorcerer kings of the Tyr Region don’t have a common origin. As stated in the Wanderer’s Journal, Andropinis was elected Dictator 700 years ago (and.wasn’t then expected to be immortal) and Kalak took over Tyr about 1000 years ago. Others are incredibly ancient (Lalali-Puy has ruled for about 10,000 years, as stated in Veiled Alliance, and she’s not the oldest…)
Early Geography: At the beginning of Athasian civilization, the Tablelands, Ringing Mountains, and Hinterlands were an isthmus between running between a northern and southern landmass. The Silt Sea was a real sea (known as the Sunrise Sea); in addition, shallow inlets and bays extended inland where the mudflats of Draj, the silt basins around Bodach, and the Great Salt Flat are today. The Dragon’s Bowl was a deep lake, and the Ivory Triangle area was a wide, shallow lake (with the Mekillot Mountains as an island within it). Beyond the Jagged Cliffs (then the Jagged Coast), what is now the Crimson Savanna was also a sea (the Western Ocean); the Ringing Mountains formed the center of an isthmus of land.
As the Deadlands to the south and the Lava Gorge, Troll’s Grave Chasm, Glowing Desert, etc. to the north did not yet exist, travel northward and southward was quite easy.
The region lay in the northern half of the tropical zone, and was a mixture of tropical seasonal forest and savanna, with many wetlands near the lakes and bays. True tropical rainforest began south of the region, in what is now the Deadlands.
Stone, Copper, and Bronze Ages
The first known Athasian civilizations are those of Tyr, Urik, Raam, and Yaramuke. Originally, this area was marked by rivers running down from the mountains, and the first cities were established along these rivers. Yaramuke and Tyr were nearer the headwaters, while Urik sat just above the river mouth that opened into the huge lake that once filled the Dragon’s Bowl, and Raam occupied a broad plain where two rivers converged before flowing into the westward arm of the Sunrise Sea.
For ages, the northern Tablelands followed a path similar to that of the civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt on Earth. Villages grew into cities; chiefs became kings, and aristocracies developed. They advanced from Stone to Copper (Chalcolithic) to Bronze Ages; their populations increased, trade developed, and wars of conquest and empire building ensued as the rulers of various cities sought to control the surrounding countryside, villages, and towns and eventually other cities. Writing was developed, and the beginnings of astronomy as calendars were invented for agricultural purposes.
In this early era, magic was not yet important to Athasian culture. The only form of magic known at this time was druidical (and ranger) magic, and the practitioners of nature magic were both rare and usually far from the emerging centers of civilization. The cities were mostly ruled by kings who reigned over and controlled the common populace through a warrior nobility. As the cities became larger, the kings developed palace bureaucracies to aid in governing and administration, but these remained subordinate to the nobility.
During this era, dwarves first appeared in the region from the north.
The later part of this age is marked by the reign of the Empire of Urik, the first great empire of the region.
Iron and Classical Ages
This period begins with the discovery of iron and the collapse of the last of the Bronze Age empires. Once civilization recovered, the use of iron and eventually steel, far more broadly available than bronze, allowed for dramatic economic expansion. Ships crossed the Sunrise Sea to the distant east. Islands far out in the Sea are settled, first as stopovers, then grow into cities themselves. In the west, contact with halflings occurs.
The age of city-states gives way to that of empires once more, with the rise of the Empire of Kalidnay out of a league of initially coequal city-states. This was still an age ruled by kings and warrior nobility. As empire spread, however, education also spread, and philosophy and theology developed. Philosophers and theologians studying the halfling skills of life-shaping and the abilities of druids postulated the possibility of a new form of magic which drew directly on life energy in the land itself, rather than indirectly through a druid’s spirit pact. Eventually, these speculations were proved true. Arcane magic was developed, and the first simple spells were cast.
Time of Magic - Before the King’s Ages
The development of arcane magic leads to centuries of turmoil. As civilization begins to emerge from this period, however, study of arcane magic is strongly supported (as a source of power) by most of the rulers of the new city-states and kingdoms. Arkhold (an island in this era) rises from village to powerful city.
The development of magic as a broadly applicable body of knowledge and power caused dramatic shifts in Athasian society and politics. Through many conflicts, over centuries of turmoil, power shifted from the warrior aristocracy to spellcasters. In some cities and island states, a wizard-monarch ruled over over an aristocracy in charge of the bureaucracy, with the old warrior nobility forming an intermediate class between the aristocracy and the common people. In others, a form of aristocratic republic/oligarchy led by mages developed. As the splintered Empire emerges from chaos and reunites, the last form is dominant - it rises as an oligarchic, mage-ruled Republic of Kalidnay.
In this era, defiling was not much feared (except by druids, who were not much valued in ‘civilization’). Destroying plants to fuel your spells was considered no worse than cutting down a tree to fuel your stove. It was usually illegal to destroy someone else’s crops or trees by defiling, but defiling your own land (or unclaimed wilderness) was perfectly accepted, and so aristocratic wizards had few concerns. The Tablelands of this era were biologically rich, so defiling affected only a very small area, and defiled land recovered far more quickly than it now does (instead of centuries, it usually took perhaps five or ten years). Techniques of preserving magic were developed slowly, but eventually formalized as a separate art.
The Pristine Tower is created, and pyreen and pterrans appear.
However, eventually, the effects of defiling proved to be far more significant cumulatively than expected; the first magic-using civilization collapses in famine, leaving behind the first isolated sorcerer-kings.
The Interregnum
The collapse of the previous civilization leads to vast movements of peoples and great conquests by defiler warlords. During these movements, elves first arrive in the region. Elemental clerics appear. Silt basins form.
A second wave of wars, and further defiling, leads to the effective extinction of civilization from the Tyr Region except for a few localized fiefdoms of powerful sorcerer-kings. A few survivors adapt to nomadic life in the deserts.
A thousand years later, a new empire from the South rapidly conquers the disunited region.
The Early King’s Ages
During this time, while desertification has become significant, there are still seas to east and west. Isolated sorcerer kings control small city-states such as Yaramuke, Nibenay, and Tyr, but most of the region is a frontier province of a vast empire centered on the Southern continent. It remains thinly populated, though settlements are slowly re-founded on the sites of the cities of the previous age.
After this empire falls, the Empire of Bodach - last of Athas’ seafaring empires - briefly rises, then itself falls.
Age of the Red Sun begins
The formation of the Deadlands had critical consequences for all of Athas. This event pulled Athas closer to the planes of Earth, Fire, and Negative Energy and farther from the planes of Water, Air, and Positive Energy. Seas turned to silt or evaporated to salt, earth turned to magma, and the sun was blighted - producing more heat and less life-giving energies. The many immediate victims of the event became undead as the land was consumed by para-elemental magma.
While the event ended before all of Athas was turned to a lifeless undead world, the damage was permanent. The blighted sun and destroyed waters greatly reduced the resilience of Athas’ biosphere; the drain of magic on the ecosystem suddenly became critical, potentially fatal.
This crisis, combined with population movements fleeing from ports left high and dry by vanished seas or farmlands turned to blowing dust or arid dunes, led to the Wars of Desolation.
The great defiler warlords fostered the Wars, for they had learned to feed off death, drawing power from themselves from the war’s bloodshed; every soldier who fell was another sacrifice, and often enough another undead minion for their seemingly inexhaustible armies. Casting spells of dragon magic drawing on the stolen life force of armies, they marched across a world almost helpless to oppose them.
After the Desolation Wars
During this time, the current shape of the landscape is established. The dynastic merchant houses, the elven tribes, and the kreen packs of the Tablelands appear. In the Crimson Savanna, the kreen reorganize. The Dragon (re)appears, and his taking of slaves begins.
Modern Times
The current shape of Athas is in place; the only dramatic changes are the conquest and fall of cities.
Timeline
Stone, Copper, and Bronze Ages
c. 40,000 years ago - First permanent settlements appear on Athas, originally north of the map
c. 35,000 years ago - permanent settlements appear in the coastal Tablelands
c. 33,000 years ago - Some settlements grow into true cities, including Urik and Yaramuke. Writing invented.
c. 32,000 years ago - Use of copper becomes widespread. Tyr founded.
c. 30,000 years ago - Bronze begins to be used; Raam founded
c. 29,000 years ago - Rise of coastal trade connects city-states up and down the Sunrise Sea coast, and spreads knowledge; use of bronze becomes widespread. Dwarves first arrive in the area during this age of trade.
c. 27,500-26,000 years ago - City-states establish new colonies, some of which grow into new independent city-states; others remain subject, and allow their parent city-states to rise to empires. Nibenay, Celik, and Kalidnay founded.
c. 26,000-25,500 years ago - Time of competing empires
c. 25,500 years ago - Empire of Urik comes to dominate the region, after the conquest of Kalidnay and the installation of a satrap in it.
c. 25,500 - 25,000 years ago - Thriving period of the Empire of Urik, ending in decay and internal division
c. 25,000 years ago - Athasian Iron Age begins - iron smelting developed in the uplands.
c. 24,800 years ago - Decaying Empire of Urik is largely conquered by iron-wielding forces from the uplands
c. 24,000 years ago - Halflings arrive in the region from the Western Ocean, establishing settlements on the Jagged Coast (later to become the Jagged Cliffs).
c. 23,000 - Good quality steel developed. Maritime trade has fully recovered. Population expands, major drainage of coastal wetlands and deforestation begins.
c. 23,000 to 21,000 - Classical age. An initial league of three great city-states - Raam, Nibenay, and Kalidnay - gradually transforms into an unified empire centered in Kalidnay and stretching from the far south (beyond what is now the Dead Lands) to beyond Saragar in the north. Rise of philosophy.
c. 22,000 to 21,500 -Trade with the Jagged Coast halflings. Some move into the Ringing Mountains and the upland cities, especially Tyr.
c. 21,500 - Philosophical schools in Tyr compare life-shaping and druidical magic, unlocking the energy of life and creating the first arcane magic.
c. 21,500 to 21,000 - Arcane magic goes from a few “laboratory” oddities to an organized set of skills used to manipulate life energy.
c. 21,000 - A combined team of life-shapers and mages create the Pristine Tower. A vast variety of new creatures begin to arise. Unhappy with the direction arcane magic work is taking, the halfling life-shapers withdraw from humanity. The Jagged Coast towns cut off trade with humanity. Those halflings which remain in the Tablelands are now cut off from the major oceanic halfling culture.
c. 21,000 to 20,500 - period of bloody wars and revolutions, as the old imperial aristocracy (ultimately based on hereditary landholders and military power) is replaced by a wizardly aristocracy (based on arcane power)
c. 20,500 to 18,500 - First “Time of Magic”. Preserver/defiler distinction formalized. Trees of Life developed, and widely planted/enchanted.
c. 20,000 pyreen and pterrans appear due to the Pristine Tower.
c. 18,500 Super “dust bowl” event leads to collapse of the classical civilization in a mass famine.
c. 18,500 to 17,500 Major migrations, invasions, wars. Defiler warlords rise from the ashes of the classical civilization, conquering the Tyr Region and far beyond. Many new peoples enter the Tablelands area, either voluntarily or due to resettlement by the conquerors; elves first reach the area during this time.
c. 17,500 First elemental clerics appear, a response by the elemental planes to defiler damage
c. 17,500 to 16,000 Civilization continues to slide downwards as defiling damage accelerates. First silt basins appear. Massive desertification. Population greatly reduced as many die in famines and wars, others migrate out or the region. A few defiler warlords conquer isolated cities and become the first sorcerer kings (not yet dragons or immortal); elsewhere civilization continues to fall apart.
c. 16,000 Outside the localized fiefdoms of the sorcerer kings, civilization is essentially eliminated from the Tyr Region; small populations survive and adapt to the desertified lands, adopting a nomadic way of life.
c. 15,000 Southern humans migrate into the Tyr Region, first establishing trading posts, but rapidly conquering the disunited inhabitants. Balic founded as a regional capital of the new northern province.
The Early King’s Ages
c. 14,500 King’s Age calendar begun under the authority of Vardan, sorcerer king of Tyr.
2nd King’s Age, King’s Slumber: Raam re-founded
3rd King’s Age: Celik and Kalidnay re-founded
11th King’s Age: Lowering sea levels lead to settlement of the new coastline. Giustenal founded.
12th King’s Age: Bodach and Waverly founded.
13th and 14th King’s Ages: Decline of the Southern Empire,
14th King’s Age: Eldaarich founded.
15th and 16th King’s Ages: Defiler Wars. The remnants of the Southern Empire are torn apart by a second era of defiler warlords, who ultimately control much of the inland areas, while the coastal cities and islands form into a league that becomes the Empire of Bodach. Desertification worsens further.
16th to 23rd King’s Ages: Empire of Bodach, last of the seafaring empires of Athas. The Empire of Bodach is built on a foundation of elemental philosophy and elemental magic; defiler magic is highly illegal, preserver magic strictly controlled and disfavored.
20th King’s Age: Githyanki incursion/origin of the gith (see Black Spine)
22nd King’s Age: Psionic talents begin to appear in the human and demi-human populations
28th-29th King’s Age: Psionic abilities formalized as the Way. This is rapidly seized upon by city-states as an additional source of power to impose control on the ever-simmering elemental cleric / preserver vs defiler conflicts; psionic aristocracies rapidly arise.
33rd King’s Age: in the distant city of Ebe, the Circle, a group of spellcasters with psionic abilities and psionicists, is founded to pursue esoteric research into combinations of psionics and magic.
34th King’s Age: The Circle breaks down violently, with the death of several members. As far as is publicly known, the organization ceases to exist. In reality, several of its chief defilers continue research in secret, having discovered the first step toward dragonhood.
34th to 37th King’s Ages: Defiling activity accelerates, driven by the surviving members of the Circle (working still largely in secret). Revolutions occur in city-states that ban defiling. Many powerful and outspoken preservers and elemental clerics disappear, die mysteriously, or are murdered in unidentifiable ways.
36th King’s Age: The psionicist-ruled city-state of Saragar, controlling the Marnita Basin in the North, expels (or executes) its few mages and isolates itself.
35th to 40th King’s Ages: Sea level drop accelerates. Mudflats form and then expand in coastal areas.
37th King’s Age: Last maritime contact from the Western Ocean. After this, the Jagged Coast halflings (rhul-thaun) are isolated.
38th King’s Age: Dregoth (a former member of the Circle and now a 22nd-level dragon) emerges from 300 years of secrecy, overthrows Taraskir, the king of Giustenal, and takes over - first of the dragon kings.
43rd King’s Age: The city of Ebe is largely destroyed by defiling magic (due to psionic enchantment experiments by Borys). Refugees flee south.
47th King’s Age: Due to extensive defiling use in the north, conditions worsen, and a mass migration into the Tablelands rapidly becomes an invasion led by Hamanu (secretly one of the former members of the Circle and now a 21st-level dragon). Hamanu conquers the city of Urik and sets up his warriors as nobles. Shortly thereafter, Daskinor leads a second such invasion and becomes dragon-king of Eldaarich.
50th King’s Age: A second line of magical research begins in the far South, leading to the development of necromancy.
52nd King’s Age: Borys, formerly of Ebe, becomes king of Waverly.
53rd King’s Age: As a response by the elemental planes to the appearance of dragons, the first cleric-elementals appear.
55th King’s Age: Devastating magical experiments in the South, led by Gretch and Qwith, distort the planar connections of Athas, pulling it closer to Fire, Earth, and Negative and farther from Air, Water, and Positive. Extraplanar contact, especially to the Astral and Outer Planes, becomes far more difficult. The sun turns red. The Deadlands form and a vast number of undead rise, including Gretch and Qwith. Formation of the Deadlands blocks off contact and trade from the south.
55th to 56th King’s Age: In the area north of the Deadlands, desertification progresses rapidly and settlements isolated from southern trade decline. Many people migrate north; a large number settle in the forest town of Gulg, established and protected by a mysterious figure known as the Oba.
56th to 59th King’s Age: Conditions rapidly worsen due to the planar shift. Mudflats become choked with silt; sea level decline accelerates faster.
57th to 65th King’s Age: The Desolation Wars - Mass starvation leads to a cycle of desperate wars, fought largely with defiling magic that destroys even more arable land and further worsens conditions. Seven hundred years of this reduces most of the Tablelands, Hinterlands, and the near North to desert and scrub plain. Half-giants and muls first appear (as soldiers) during this time. Terrible monsters such as so-ut and nightmare beasts are mutated into existence as living weapons.
59th King’s Age: The Desolation Wars worsen and become openly genocidal, as defiler warlords redirect fear and anger away from themselves. Ogres and trolls are first targeted (under the pretext that their large size requires more food and water).
(60th King’s Age?): At some point during the Desolation Wars, Borys researches what has happened in the South, and creates or obtains a mysterious elemental artifact known as the Dark Lens. Borys does not participate in the first phases of the Wars, isolating and defending his island city of Waverly as he continues magical research.
60th King’s Age: Abalach-Re becomes sorcerer-queen of Raam
61st King’s Age: Last trolls killed. Troll Grave Chasm created.
62nd King’s Age: A mysterious defiler warlord takes over Nibenay and renames himself after the city.
62nd King’s Age: Last ogres killed. Lizard men became the next victims, under the pretext that they need more water than other humanoids.
63rd King’s Age: Last lizard men outside the Marnita area killed.
63rd King’s Age: The Sea of Silt east of the Tablelands assumes its current form
64th King’s Age: Halflings outside the Jagged Coast are driven into the heights of the Ringing Mountains and cut off from external trade, adopting a stone age culture to survive.
65th King’s Age: Waverly’s population is consumed to feed Borys’ transformation. He bursts upon the world, and the last phase of the Desolation Wars begins. Many forces retreat toward their home territories; others are driven to greater desperation by the increasing desolation. One retreating nomadic force, led by Tectuktitlay, founds the city of Draj on a new mudflat.
65th and 66th King’s Ages: The remaining armies, and the rampaging Dragon that was Borys, devastate the landscape of the North - creating the Glowing Desert and the Lava Gorge. Contact north of the Eldaarich/Kurn/White Mountains area effectively ends. Many metal sources in the North are no longer available; obsidian use increases.
66th King’s Age: Borys somehow (combining his dragon transformation with the Dark Lens?) consumes the entire life energy of the island of Baora; it explodes into a massive caldera, which becomes the Valley of Dust and Fire. Sympathetic tremors rock the world; the Lava Gorge expands and the Smoking Crown erupts. Somewhere in the heart of this devastation, he apparently disappears from the world.
66th King’s Age: Effective end of the Desolation Wars, as all surviving civilization is contained in fiercely defended small pockets separated by wasteland. Trade, already cut off from both north and south, greatly declines even within the Tablelands.
66th to 74th King’s Ages: A series of intermittent but very severe famines, worsened by lack of trade, leads to small-scale wars between city-states. Famine and war devastate the Tablelands, and access to metal drops greatly due to lack of trade. Use of stone and bone tools greatly increases. A period of severe decline in both population and technology.
70th King’s Age: The drying of the Western Ocean (or at least that part of it near the Hinterlands) is essentially completed, resulting in the Crimson Savanna. The Jagged Coast becomes the Jagged Cliffs. Kreen expand rapidly across the Crimson Savanna.
71st King’s Age: Kreen begin to appear in the Hinterlands
72nd and 73rd King’s Age: Kreen enter the Tablelands and rapidly displace (or eat) many human or demi-human hunter-gatherer bands and smaller nomadic groups
73rd King’s Age: Kreen attack villages outside Tyr, Urik, and Raam. Hamanu goes beyond local defense, and sends out small elite armed parties (supported by templars and even sanctioned defilers) to hunt kreen across the northern Tablelands. Kreen packs retreat into the harsher deserts.
75th King’s Age: The system of dynastic merchant houses arises. Population and technological decline in the Tablelands stabilizes.
80th King’s Age: The desert runner culture of modern Athasian elves has become established. Ur Draxa is established by the Dragon, its initial population taken from the eastern shores of the Silt Sea.
80th-82nd King’s Age : Rise of the Psionic Conclave, centered in Balic. Over the next centuries, it becomes powerful in those cities with mortal sorcerer-kings (Yaramuke, Kalidnay, and Tyr) as well.
85th King’s Age: The limited settlements on the eastern shores of the Silt Sea are largely depopulated. Sightings of the Dragon begin in the Tablelands. People begin to be stolen by this monster, carried away into the heart of the Silt Sea for an unknown fate.
86th King’s Age: Aarakocra appear in the White Mountains, migrating from beyond the North where they are fleeing vast destruction.
88th to 91st King’s Age: Powerful human and demihuman groups, some sponsored by the Psionic Conclave, explore the Crimson Savanna and begin to establish settlements; with powerful magic and psionics, they are able to defeat kreen packs (isolated and disunited in this era). From a position of power, trade with some kreen packs begins.
90th King’s Age: The Dragon becomes a well-known threat in the Tablelands. His connection to the ancient king Borys of Ebe is no longer known (except to sorcerer-kings).
93rd King’s Age: A city-state of humans, demi-humans, and kreen appears under the rulership of an incredibly powerful preserver/psionicist known as the Great One.
96th King’s Age: Construction of the Chak’sa. Kreen develop their own art of life-alteration, loosely based on rhul-thaun life-shaping.
98th King’s Age: A magical catastrophe creates the warped area beneath the Jagged Cliffs known to the rhul-thaun as Rajaat’s Swamp. Death of the Great One.
100th-110th King’s Ages: Kreen society in the Crimson Savanna reorganizes.
110th King’s Age: The G’lathuk, the Kreen Empire, is fully established
117th King’s Age: Sielba becomes dragon-queen of Yaramuke
138th King’s Age: Kalid-Ma takes over Kalidnay
146th King’s Age: Fall of Yaramuke, death of Sielba
154th King’s Age: Fall of Celik
162nd King’s Age: Fall of Giustenal
173rd King’s Age: Kalak, a warlord, attains dragonhood in the far north
175th King’s Age: Kalak conquers Tyr
178th King’s Age: Chaos and revolt in Balic. The Psionic Conclave begins its retreat to its wilderness holdings/strongholds (and transformation to the modern Order) and mostly disappears from knowledge. Andropinis elected dictator of Balic, then attains dragonhood.
180th King’s Age: The Order assumes its modern form
186th King’s Age: Fall of Kalidnay