What the post says. There were some great expansions to Athas done on http://ds.daegmorgan.net. It seems a shame it was never completed, including the other continents. There were also a ton of ideas thrown out (someone saved them in a doc I downloaded to my googledrive) for some of these areas – like an elemental theocracy that worships drakes on the far western side of the continent, that I’d be interested in fleshing out more.
Secondarily, I’d be interested in redoing some of the city maps to make them more realistic – most of the maps have this horrible fantasy city map habit of having way too few buildings for the supposed populations. I think the idea is that it’s too much work to draw them all, and that each building is supposed to represent a block or more. I’d like to try for something better, also for any new city states created.
Would be nice, but nay, I wouldn’t want the world of Athas to be ever, “Finished”. Each DM, if they have a new idea for a Region Beyond Tyr, they should do it and not necessarily rely on pre-made maps. It’s a garden unplanted.
I would love to help. In particular, I’ve been obsessing and collecting all the world maps and data about the genre for several months now since I got back into Dark Sun.
Not long ago, I got it into my head the dream of reconciling all the world maps into one big expanded map with full information of everything everyone has done to date. Perhaps even something like the interactive map made by Digital Wanderer: http://www.digitalwanderer.net/darksun/
I 100% agree with @Ral.of.Tyr that no D&D map should ever be fully filled out in too much detail, but I’ve always found giving DM’s some threads to start with is never a bad thing. Otherwise, people would never spend money on gaming supplements.
Speaking of maps, is it possible when the sun changed color that it also expanded and potentially impacted Athas glancingly or shifted its orbit?
I kinda had an image of a small chunk of the sun’s corona impacting Athas or maybe the molten partial remains of an inner planet this leaving a moon sized crater surrounded by mountain ranges… something that would leave that side of Athas airless but trap the remaining atmosphere on the far side via the mountain ranges. And probably give it a wobbly orbit, unless the enough mass was added to that side to offset the non-spherical shape resulting from such an event.
Not sure how compatible or not such an interpretation would be with existing lore… after all, that version would cause an ice age on the surviving side with all the material thrown into the sky and orbit from such an impact.
After all, insofar as we know in real life a star changes color when a certain fuel is exhausted, and while I like the idea of drawing upon the star aging it which would be VERY thematically appropriate, the color changes don’t match up… unless we instead throw in some change in the atmosphere or something in orbit between Athas and the star for at least the “out of order” color changes.
Anyway, just curious about feedback from people who have been working on world maps as to if such an interpretation is feasible or not. I’m not set on it by any means, just thought it would be interesting.
That’s a pretty interesting idea – so would the idea be there’s a sealed area with atmosphere within the mountain range/impact crater, or is the atmosphere on the outside of the crater?
I imagine that the impact point is where the crater is, and the ripples and thrown debris form rings of mountains and shattered crustal barrens around the crater, probably burning off or at least evaporating most everything on that side… once it cools, it may outgas to some degree as the mantle and crust settles, possibly forming pockets of poisonous atmosphere in the lowlands and lower caves, with obsidian everywhere and lava tubes galore after the eruptions stop and the crust seals over again. Thus the livable (by non-modified humanoids) atmosphere would be on the other side of the planet, trapped by the rings of mountains and forming the known parts of Athas. I even had visualized survivors mutating to an extreme degree and a sort of Jungle and Miasma forming in said poisonous atmosphere pocket and crevices ala Kaze no Tani no Naushika sort of vibe.
