I was going through some gaming books to find an adventure to translate to Dark Sun. It’s just something I do for fun. I was going through an adventure called the Horns of Sinmesh. It’s in (something) by Necromancer games. Morlocks play a big part of the adventure. It did make me think about the morlocks of Pathfinder. In that system they are the Underdark answer to human. Drow to elves, duergar to dwarves etc.
For those who are not familiar, morlocks are degenerate subterranean humans. They are devolved to have great low light vision, flexible etc.
I started wondering if Athas has morlocks. They are not there canonically, but nothing contradicts the possibility. Here are the pros
In the Pathfinder universe, morlocks got their origin from Starfall a cataclysmic event that drove some communities underground. While not the primary target of such, the Cleansing Wars certainly wreaked more than enough havoc for that.
A weak, declining group of former humans can be seen as thematically appropriate to Dark Sun.
Easily adapted. There is nothing in their lore or game mechanics which would cause any problems. In fact, making them in Athas would easily use things like psionics or appropriate divine magic.
Cons would be….
When one thinks about it, morlocks do have some vicious competition. Hej kin, dune freaks, dark spiders, gith (under specific circumstances).
The mindhome folk can operate in a similar (but not exact) niche. Could be some redundancy there.
I would not create an underdark for them to inhabit. I would have them from a specific ruined area, like Kalidnay or Bodach. I looked up some pics of them, from Pathfinder, and they are creepy little monsters. Of course, their leaders should be psionicists and they hate the sun.
They mostly come out at night, mostly.
See what I mean? They’re perfect little monsters, and all the more dangerous for it. I think the whole meenlock transformation plays into life-shaping and the mutating effects of the Pristine Tower too
Oh, that’s irritating and funny - turns out i thought we WERE talking about Meenlocks.
Duh.
Yeah, love those hideous little guys.
Morlocks? I don’t care for the logical implications of underdark races in DS, but if you’re going to have some underdark goodness on your Athas, morlocks seem fine - though personally I’d juat use mongrelfolk instead.
What about Hejkin? I am not saying that Athas has a widespread Underdark, but Athas definitely has deep cave systems. Black Flames even had a city inside a mountain if I recall correctly.
Call it amplified racial proliferation concerns. Every race we add to the Athasian underdark makes the ecosystem more complex and life-supporting by necessity.
Do morlocks fit Dark Sun? Sure, IMO. Do i like what their existence imples about the underdark? Nope.
Morlocks are just degenerated humans. An easy way to whip up a morlock race is to give them 3 humanoid HD and darkvision, but otherwise human and having the human subtype. Perhaps the morlocks are all male and need human females to procreate. I am pretty sure that is a trope, but I forget what it is called.
I did some digging into this. Why are we talking Morlocks when the D&D equivalent has always been Grimlocks? I know Morlocks exist (certainly in 5E) but AD&D adapted the concept to Grimlock’s, replete with Illithid servitor race elements aeons ago. As both Morlocks and Grimlocks are descended from devolved/evolved humans, they could exist in a few dark caves - Rajaat presumably wouldn’t have bothered with them during the Wars. Unless Grimlocks were also slaves of Athasian Mind Flayers and got used as cannon fodder against Barien.
Barien the Mind Flayer Dessicator, a fan created Champion dedicated to eradicating the Athasian Illithids. I forget who created him but I believe he was the only Champion who not only failed, but got converted into the race he was assigned to destroy - ceremorphosis if you know your illithid biology.
There might be more about Barien on here - maybe in the Wotc board dump. It was before I found DS forums online so it’s all a bit sketchy to me. One of the more informed grognards on here might be able to shed more light on Barien.
Having read part of the archive of the old WotC DS boards it appears to have been (I think) Jihush nish (probably butchered his name) that came up with the name Barien.
I came up with the titles of Pennarin (Doppelganger Eradicator) and Barien (Mindflayer Dessicator)
For years I thought it was me, and perhaps it was, but something I wrote in a thread lets me think it was another person. The last thing I can think of is perhaps he came up with the concept of a dedicated Champion, and I with the name and title.
