Whelp time to redraw Green Age Ulyan on my own map 
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Do post/share that map somewhere. Would love to see that or read about how you are using Ulyan / the Green Age.
Posted the very, very wip in the world maps thread, I believe I used nuejack’s dead lands revised map from the link there as the basis for Ulyan. I had to add in a lot of locations from SoTDL manually as best guesses such as Sagramog, this new map is much better lol
Perhaps one of the most confusing things is how exactly Ulyan fits in with the Sunrise Sea to the east- presumably the sea was level with the tablelands, but the tablelands are ‘1000 ft’ above Ulyan, and Neowar’s Ladder apparently 'rises to the coastal cliffs" so eastern Ulyan rises 1000 feet in a series of cliffs, but the tops of those cliffs are…coastal? How does the sunrise sea not spill down into the basin? As neat as the concept of a high-elevation sea spilling down into Sagramog is, its pretty silly. Add a ‘coastal city’ like Biga Fy Te in and it gets even more confusing.
In this newer version are the Deadlands still growing? If so, is it still a slow rate?
Hey @Killer_DM:
No, they’re not growing. The boiling ruin/obsidian flow was a one time event. They would grow though if the gate is unblocked.
That runs contradictory to the original SotDL text. I can look up the exact line later.
I’m sorry for the confusion.
That old map that’s suddenly gained popularity was an alpha test for a map I was working on with Jhonny based on my own conversion of Dead Lands from the old 2e material and the DLoA netbook. The problem was, I’d done a lot of work on that without knowing that the Dead Lands book had already been mostly finished for 3e elsewhere. So when I finally gained access to the 3e conversion, I had to start again on the map.
The .pdf you see now above in this latest version is my effort to set things right with that confusion. This map is now correct to the Secrets of the Dead Lands manuscript we’re working with, and also the surrounding lands finally resolve the question as to how big this obsidian really is.
As for the depth measures— only where the main lands touch the dead lands does it have that deep cliff. on the eastern, western, and southwestern frontiers the heights vary. By the time you get to biga-fe-tye, the land slope has gone up so that the obsidian is only just above “sea/silt level”. Similarly, most of the Zagath homeland is close to silt level. This is the way a large but thin amount of blackglass spilled into the silt sea.
Now this latest map here is meant to stir discussion. If I’ve missed anything let’s talk about it now, so I can get a finalised version and then try to politely ask Jhonny to help me one more time…
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I just ran a check on the current manuscript, the closest you get is page 7:
The larger mysteries of the region are seeds for a longer, protracted series of adventures. While this zone is a slowly expanding evil, seeking to encroach ever farther into the surrounding wastelands,
Thing is, this could be interpreted in many ways. I take it as influence, not the literal obsidian. Besides, there is a 1000’ shelf blocking it from the Endless Dunes, and the obsidian has been cold for nearly 2200 years (stable enough to build very big cities on it).
Bear in mind this is not the 2e document. A LOT has been added and tweaked since then, by two different teams before our current team ever got a hold of it. Plus, we’ve been making small adjustments to harmonise it with the Faces and Adventures books, and fix issues they never thought through with the geography.
That’s a shame, because it was in the opening paragraphs of the 2E text. It felt as if part of the mission statement.
The reality, however, is that the Dead Lands are genuine and growing, sluggishly but certainly, with all the patience of the immortals who inhabit them.
Yeah. I had to get used to a lot of things changing about the Dead Lands when I switched to the 3e manuscript, and started working from here. (For one thing, there are a LOT more factions and sub-factions…)
But in the end, I found the changes are a net gain. Having it be more stable makes for good exploration and intrigue-based campaigns, rather than existential threat “it must be stopped” types of games.
This section of the 2E text is also very open to interpretation. Is it the geographical Dead Lands or the ‘influence’ that is growing? And even if it’s the geographical Dead Lands, sure that could happen but only in the sense that there will be more undead moving about the borders which eventually move out of the Obsidian Plains.
I haven’t read anything definitively or conclusively non-ambiguous about growth or expansion, not in the original 2E text, not in the 3/3.5E texts that previous Athas.org teams worked on, nor in the one our team is working to finish. The same can be said from one popular other source, which is Gerald Arthur Lewis’s DLoA Netbook
What I have read over and over again is that a hold came to the obsidian flowing through the gate from the para-elemental plane of magma due to the interference of the Seventh Tree (a giant-ass Tree of Life). It literally says in the text that its roots block the gate and the cooled down magma 500 feet below the City of a 1,000 Dead.
There is also a section on ‘what if the gate would be opened again’ which describes with a counting daily projection what would happen to the Ulyan basin, the sections in it, and following that the Tablelands. This section is literally given as cataclysmic event, a campaign killer, or at least total game changer depending on the actions of a high-level party.
All the things that are there lead me at least to interpret that line of text from the 2E version not in the geographically expanding obsidian plain sense, but in the political / undead ambition / motivation sense of the inhabitants of the Dead Lands.
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And that is precisely it. Thank you.
This gate could be opened, and then all hell would break loose again. But for now it’s plugged up, and the lands themselves have settled themselves geologically, with all sorts of interesting geographical and even geopolitical consequences.
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Hello everyone!
I wanted to give some updates on the Dead Lands Project as it stands today (27 Sept 2021).
Secrets of the Dead Lands: We finally finished the main map. There were a few details/contradictions we needed to work out, but that’s been done. Now all that’s left is making sure the images we want are in the book, and our final checks when the other books are done.
Faces of the Dead Lands: All the character stats have been finished, and we’re on our second pass now to ensure quality control, descriptions, items, spell lists, skills, etc. are all hunky dory. But that’s still continuing apace.
The Emissary: We’ve decided to leave it a completely separate document from Adventures in the Dead Lands for IP reasons. But beyond that, the 3.5e update is nearly finished, including rebalancing the encounters’ ELs so it works as a challenge for a 14th level party in this edition (as was the original intent). All that’s left are a couple of details, a couple of maps, and the same final checks we’ll apply to the others.
Adventures in the Dead Lands: We figured if we want you guys to playtest this properly, we needed to give you some ways to do so. And so we’re aiming to develop 5-6 more adventures at various levels which will bring your party into the Black Basin, and give them special things to do while they’re here. (You know: come for the obsidian, stay because…well…you’ve been eaten by a giant zombie…) We’ve just selected the adventures we’ll be using from a long list of candidate ideas, so development is focusing on them now
Either way, we’re still aiming to have this handed over to the Templars for release by the end of the year. Cross your fingers/antennae/bones/tentacles/etc. that this may become the perfect gift for your sweetheart on Valentine’s Day!
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Hello everyone!
Just in time for Halloween, here’s another general update on the Dead Lands books:
The Emissary is in its final editorial pass, and we’re just finishing up the last of the major maps now. Once that’s finished, we plan to open up beta testing. If you are interested in joining us for being the first to test-run the adventure please PM me!
In the past month, we’ve managed to gain the assistance of one of the original team who worked on the first 3e version back in 2007 (woot!), and we’ve been benefitting from their wealth of knowledge with the material and development history. This individual (Austin) is helping on the final passes of Secrets of the Dead Lands.
Development on Faces of the Dead Lands continues apace. We well into our second pass through the content, and have more staff than ever working on the back story and stats content for the 220+ NPC’s in that book. We want to make sure all the characters are properly balanced for use in your campaigns, but our quality control pass is taking longer than I had previously anticipated. The goal of course is to make this product as good as it can be on every front.
This means our dates for submitting to Athas.org are now looking like this:
Early December - The Emissary
End of February - Secrets of the Dead Lands and Faces of the Dead Lands
It’s a small change, but we feel it’s the way to guarantee you all getting a product you’ll be happy with.
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What I can do, however, is share the covers!
This whole project will feature a lot of art from a lot of talented artists and graphic designers. And we’re hellbent on raising the level of presentation.
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Looking forward to reading these, and enjoying some dark sun art! Thanks for the effort! Back to lurking.
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Merry Christmas/Happy Holiday Season everyone!
I’ll give a quick update while we’re here.
As many of you may know, the beta version of The Emissary was released on time for early December. If anyone is willing and able to run their party through this before mid-January, I’m happy to still have you onboard for the beta test. Just PM me your email address.
As for Secrets of the Dead Lands and Faces of the Dead Lands, we’ve pretty much finished up all the art we’re intending to add, and we’re slowly but surely closing in on finishing up the mountain of stats and NPC backstories as well (241+ separate NPC entries in 3.5 edition takes time, you see.) We’ve also started our organisational and cohesiveness pass. In hindsight, it’s easy to see why this was so hard to finish previously-- nobody ever really grokked just how big this thing was.
Seriously…Between Secrets and Faces you’ll have over 550 pages of content! Add in the Emissary as well, and this would have been a boxed set!
As for the schedule, it does seem we’re still on target for our previous target of the end of February.
And of course if anyone wants to lend a hand, we still have plenty of writing and imagery to do here. 
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@neujack Out of curiousity, does the Emmissary require reading the entire boxed set? Finishing 550 pages of documents and running the whole module could be a bit of a challenge in that timeframe.
Not at all. It’s why we got it out before the core DL document. Everything needed to play it is inside the adventure.
Although, it depends if you wish the adventure as part of a huge campaign. All the undead denizens will be described in the DL main docs.
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