Beyond the Silt Sea: The Anattan Coast released!

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After years of consolidating canon and fanon lore, and working with the Athasian Cartographers Guild to expand the world map, the Pristine Tower Development Group is finally ready to launch our Dark Sun Gazetteer series. Each book details a different distant region of Athas, providing both a compelling narrative as well as an overview of the key features of that region for DMs and lore junkies alike, and everything has been carefully researched to fit with 2e and 2e Revised canon.

For the first book in the series, we are exploring the Anattan Coast. Located beyond the Cerulean Storm on the far side of the Silt Sea, this region has been hinted at many times in lore, and has been mapped and developed by several different cartogophers and writers in our community over the decades. We’ve now consolidated all that amazing work and refined the lore into a single cohesive narrative.

Download our free netbook, join us across the Sea of Silt, and begin your expedition to the distant reaches of Athas today! https://athas.org/products/anattan-gazetteer

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This looks really cool!

I love how the map reflects what the original Wanderer’s Journal says about the Sea of Silt being a basin surrounded by Tablelands and then Ringing Mountains.

I’ll have to read through it and comment in more detail later.

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Thoughts so far:

  • I really like the idea that this area was exploited by the Dragon in a different way than the Tyr Region’s levy … though I kind of wish we got a description of the region at the time of the first boxed set or FY 1, rather than after the Dragon is already dead.
  • On the other hand, the expansion of mudflats due to Tyr-storms (“Dragon Squalls”) is really interesting. I wonder if this means more of the water escaping from the Cerulean Storm is moving east rather than west? It seems like the Tyr-storms in the Tyr Region aren’t changing things as dramatically, though they damage things.
  • Glad to see the Dragon Warriors and some of the kaisharga still being an active force post Cerulean Storm.
  • Interesting that with the lack of silt horrors, there are smaller, more edible creatures in the Silt Sea here.
  • The Meridional Forest is awesome! Some kind of anti-defiler protection… that’s a really interesting idea. I wonder if this is some kind of permanent version of the Preserver’s Scourge/Backlash spell… or if the life energy itself is corrupted somehow?
  • The Sundered Lands seem appropriately very desolate.
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Some more thoughts:

  • Altire the Seer: weird and cool. Some kind of dragon metamorphosis gone wrong? Huge and reptilian, but also mostly immobile… Generally failed dragon metamorphosis kills you, but maybe Altire researched the spell from scratch and got something different from classic dragon? Altire has “templar-like priests”, though. An extra Champion of Rajaat? Somehow stole a vortex from an early dead SK like Sielba, or grabbed one on his own before they went extinct? Somehow faking the process without real elemental vortex access, maybe through something like those defiler amulets in the 3e material that let you remotely tap a tree of life?

  • Tibbli: the ruler Yuddh is a “powerful sorceress” and described in quasi religious terms; she seems equivalent to a SK even if not one of the Champions of Rajaat. She’s said to have appeared “bearing the mercy of rain at her back”; is this just propaganda like the Oba’s or King Tek’s, or could she possibly be an avangion??? Probably not, though … the Dragon was involved in the region until his death, I don’t think an avangion could rule openly (Oronis didn’t switch over until long after the Dragon had abandoned the ‘Forgotten North’).

  • Myreth: creepy!

  • Thibban: interesting to see a Fire cleric ruler, especially one with a nastier aspect (where the elemental clerics are often presented as benign vs the paraelemental ones).

  • Dar’Lan: interesting and creepy, but a bit confusing. It says that those found guilty of conspiracy, insurrection, or treason become “utterly loyal” Reborn (sounds like the Mind Lords’ harmonizing), and others accused of crimes just disappear. But it also says there are remains of executed victims all over the place… where do these come from, if criminals are mindwiped or mysteriously disappeared?

  • Jua Wall: snow and ice implies these mountains are really tall, since the Ringing Mountains don’t have that and they’re high enough to lead to altitude sickness. Maybe Andes or Himalayas like?

  • Shereen: another mysterious SK-like ruler. Also, “many with unusual features, including mismatched or oddly colored eyes, discolored skin, extra fingers, or abnormally long tongues. These people are said to be “the blighted” and aren’t generally welcome outside of the valley.” I thought that kind of small scale mutation was pretty normal among Athasian humans, not really warranting comment? Or is that more a first boxed set element that got dropped later?

  • Lan: it says this is one of only two cities comparable in size to those of the Tyr Region. It seems like there’s more water available, due to the Great Spiral River, so why is the area not more populated? Was the Dragon harvesting people from here constantly? Or was the river nearly dry before Tyr storms started, so the agricultural potential really wasn’t that good? The area along the river is mapped as scrub plains not verdant belt …

  • Jiscenda: yeah, seems to be incredibly high elevation. Life-shaped oxygen masks are awesome.

  • Anattan Wastes: this is great. A genuinely barren land that looks like something that got hit even harder by the Cleansing Wars/Dragon’s Rampage than the Tablelands did.

  • Valley of Bones: presumably some massive Cleansing Wars battlefield?

  • Swarming Shallows: a silt horror breeding ground, awesome.

  • The Dragon’s Reach: I guess this is the extension of the continent shown on the Valley of Dust and Fire map?

  • FY1 map, with the Valley of Dust and Fire: this is awesome! It looks like there’s a lot more on the eastern side of the continent to be expanded on, too…

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