She lives in a giant tree. That’s her palace.
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Sure, but palace != ziggurat
Kalak lives in his Golden Tower and yet has a ziggurat.
I’m looking for the Oba’s equivalent of a ziggurat. I’ll go do some digging in City-state of Gulg book
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Kalak’s ziggurat served a specific narrative purpose. Unless Lalali-Puy is planning the same thing as Kalak, there is no reason for her to have a ziggurat.
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That’s what I thought. But then don’t some of the other SKs have a ziggurat or similar structure? Nibenay? Draj?
I don’t mean to get off topic. If the events of the Verdant Passage had happened with Lalali-puy instead of Kalak how would that play out?
I think we all think the only reason she has her forest is so she can just defile it as needed. And restoring Athas would only allow her to defile more.
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This:
Pg 62 Revised Boxed set
Behind the rhetoric, Lalali-Puy actually wants to help restore the vitality of Athas. The Gulgs have always had an enlightened understanding of the interconnected nature of all life, so they’ve always treated the forest as a precious resource that must be maintained and not depleted. This attitude comes right from the Oba herself, which may seem strange as she is a defiler of extreme power. Since taking over Gulg, however, she has learned to temper her use of defiling magic in favor of keeping her forest healthy.
Of course, this attitude was one of the contributing factors to the problems with Nibenay. The Nibenese saw the forest as a resource to be exploited, not a living thing that cares for its inhabitants as they care for it. Nonetheless, Lalali-Puy has made the first moves toward a peaceful existence with Nibenay, going so far as to teach the sorcerer-king how to preserve the life-giving environment of the Crescent Forest.
The Oba’s motivation isn’t entirely selfless. She believes that when the forests return to Athas she will be deified by all races, just like she’s been in Gulg. “Let Nibenay and Hamanu play as sorcerer-kings,” she has decided, “for in the end I will be as a god to all of Athas.”
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This paragraph indicates that more nature/trees will make the rest of Athas worship her like the people of Gulg worship her, not that she is plotting to restore nature just so she can defile it. The idea that more trees/nature will make people worship Lalali-Puy doesn’t really make sense at all when you think about it.
I assert that Lalali-Puy cannot do what Bill Slavicsek proposes that she is doing in the Revised Campaign Setting. Look at the prolific forestation spell (I did a 3.5e conversion here). Avangions can do it because they are able to generate more life energy than they draw. They are like a magical free energy device. A defiler like Lalali-Puy would have to power the prolific forestation spells with her own XP, through sacrifice of living creatures (either animal or sentient), or a combination of both to gather the energy to create the forests.
It would be interesting to find out exactly how many people use Free Year 10 as the starting point for their Dark Sun campaigns. For the people that do not, what is the point of referencing the Revised Campaign Setting, which is based on the metaplot of the Prism Pentad (and arguably botched or retconned what happened in the PP)?
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Your reference to the prolific forestation spell makes me think that you see the reforestation process as a magical one. However, what I understand from the Revised CS text, is that she’s working in a natural way, as we would do on Earth.
And if she’s able to make the Crescent Forest bigger, the people who lives on the reforested terrain would probably be assimilated by the Gulg culture, and would worship the Oba as their savior.
And yes, I’m currently playing a Free Year 11 DS campaing 
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You should look into what it takes to reforest a desert in the real world without magic. It isn’t easy and requires vast resources, and that is with all our modern technology.
The people left maybe. The lifestyle of Gulg cannot support the population numbers of other places on Athas. Its basically a plan for genocide, if you think about it.
Of course it will take vast resources and time, but that is precisely something the SK have in abundance. And they can use preserver magic when needed to overcome problems we would solve using our advanced technology.
And regarding the genocide… yes! That’s something I would expect from a depicable sorcerer-queen! “A lot of people will die, sure, but in the end, the remaining ones will adore me as their godess”.
It’s the same thing that Dregoth wants, but using a different approach: she wants power and thinks the best way to get it is by increasing her followers. And their followers would thrive with more natural resources.
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I always assumed defiling magic could be used to revitalize the land. We know there’s no higher moral power involved in defiling/preserving, just different approaches to harnessing life energy to fuel arcane magic. Defiling is a much more brutal, but also more overtly powerful method. So in theory what’s to stop a defiler from destroying one environment and using that power to revitalize another ecosystem? Preservers may be more precise and careful that they could probably manage this more easily, but I think it’s fair to say that the SKs are skilled enough defilers to be able to manage this despite its counter intuitive nature.
So if we go by that leap of logic, then it should also be possible to use dragon magic to wipe out entire populations to create new revitalized ecosystems. While these are leaps of logic, they feel a bit more reasonable when we remember the Oba has access to enslaved forest spirits and quite likely a spirit of the land. If anyone has the means to create such a ritual it’s Lalali-Pui (and probably Borys).
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Don’t forget that Sorcerer Kings and Queens could easily employ, enslave or buy the fruits of preserver magic. Just because they can’t cast prolific reforestation magic, doesn’t mean they wouldn’t harbor another mortal they can control.
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I actually use her as neutral in my Athas.
I’d be interested to hear more. Can you elaborate on this?
In my take of Athas there are a lot of sorcerer kings more then canon, because there are more city states. And not all of them were champions of Rajat. Some of the Champions actually turned from their evil ways, and the Oba is one of them. She is True Neutral and she is venerated by druids and her own clerics alike.
I actually think its hard to reforest a desert IRL because we’re shortsighted - we want it to happen like magic, but don’t have magic. Long-term, pushing grasses and some trees out a few inches or feet per year to take advantage of the nearby moisture retained by the forest and keeping the soil in place long enough to retain any available water is the exact natural process that would occur- its how/why dunes are retained in place.
Druid or preserver magic to accelerate plant growth or reinvigorate them when wilted would go a long way.
Given centuries, it’d have a real impact.
Also, i seem to recall that Glug/Nibenay have scrubland (or at least places with client villages) that extend away from the Crescent Forest, so there’s good-ish land to convert to forest already in place.
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More foliage would spawn defilers like maggots spawn on rotten meat. I’m not saying don’t do it. What I am saying is that the anti-nature forces are out there on Athas in a way that they aren’t in the modern world.
That doesn’t track. There’s already a forest and scrubland. Increasing each by 0.01% a year will not substantially increase (beyond a similar 0.01% increase) the number of Defilers destroying it, unless it’s undefended - and if many were working it, it would NOT be undefended.
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To beat desertification, you need to increase far more than 0.01%. And that is without defilers. The desert is constantly encroaching.
If there ever is a 5E Dark Sun I hope they draw a bit more from the West African kingdoms that the honorific “Oba” comes from. Gulg is not explicitly’ african,’ given the whole thing that Athasian city states are supposed to be a giant melting pot of postapocalyptic survivors from across the world all crammed together, but there’s a ton of really cool influence and mythology to draw from. The Mopti wall might already be a shoutout the the ‘Walls of Benin’, which were one of the largest wall systems ever constructed, reportedly being longer than the Great Wall of China, but highly concentrated and earthwork.
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I play the various ethnicities (of humans) on Athas as the nobility being representative of the founding stock of the city (that is, of each city), while the freemen and slaves are a melting pot people not representative of any particular ethnicity. So in this sense, a freeman or slave of Gulg would fit in in any city state, but a noble of Gulg would stand out in another city state. Ditto for nobles from Draj that visit Tyr, for example, but not for Drajian freemen or slaves.