I will get the links for you soon, dealing with some stuff right now. Give me a few days…
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Here is my version of Ssurrans.
I’m not sure if you can access this drop box but here is the link to the Lizards of Athas homebrew that someone made. The ssurrans in his write up are a bit different.
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I will not have problem with idyllic image of pterranian society. This can be only fake image in outsiders point of view. This mirage, illusion, in deep real can have own skeptists, malcontents or wranglers.
We can look on Azuposi society (Forgotten Realms; Pasocada Basin). Also in theory idyllic tribes, but even here live second, hidden and ugly layer of population. Eg. Ikitipsa create network of dissatisfied. We can also look on ancient Payits (Forgotten Realms;Maztica). In theory idyllic society, byt crazy love of Tacal lead to great wars and first collapse of civilization in this region.
In seemingly utopian nations, tensions and negative emotions are hidden. But they always work. Even confrontation with true of world can lead to great changes. Eg. quasi-caste system can be inefficient and lead to some form of corruptions. So always are ways to painting face of this culture is style, that “something here is wrong” 
But I agree, that they have weak background. Players should discovers “how many races lived here before Cleansing Wars” not “how many races has survived Cleansing Wars”. Forgotten exterminated races and forgotten Rajaat champions, eliminated by others powers of world (some person maybe by druids before Eradication?).
What with Jozhal or Dray.
Jozhal as lizard-like-halflings with sympathy to magic can be nice.
Drays… do dray are fertile?
What general new races? IMO - the “enchanting beauty” of Athas is small numbers of races and massive genocides in own history. So this game don’t need new playables races
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IMO - the “enchanting beauty” of Athas is small numbers of races and massive genocides in own history. So this game don’t need new playables races
I’ve been debating this same question in my head for a future campaign. I can see some logic either way… On the one hand, you could explore the theme of “only the few survived.”
On the other hand, that humanoids handbook worked up by @Kamelion is SO good. And you can also imagine an Athas that is full of strange and brutal freaks. Cities full of not only humans, dwarves and elves but also thri-kreen, muls, half-giants, pterrans, nikaal, ssurans, aarakocra, jozhal, dray, tari. To me, that’s pretty evocative. The explanation is simply evolutionary biology: with so much wiped out by the Cleansing Wars, these obscure and unconventional races stepped in to the void to refill the world.
I might make the call in a Session Zero. If my PCs were interested in rarer humanoids, you could explore the ones that interest them most. If they have no interest, keep it simple. The races they choose could have storyline tie ins. The story arc of an Aarakocra character could take the players to Kurn… a dray exile who doesn’t know his origins could be the reason to explore New Giustenal, a Ssuran could take the party north in search of his homeland, or a Pterran PC could be the reason the party learns about the Great Rift early.
I really do see the logic either way though. Both ways “fit.” I think it comes down to what the individual DM and PCs feel inspired by.
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Wow. Some incredibly good ideas here. Hard to know where to begin.
Great thoughts on utopian society. However, some key issues with any utopian society on Athas. I would argue that a big part of DarK Sun is scarcity of resources and what it can drive a society to do. Athas has already tried “False utopia.” It was on the shores of the Saragar Sea. Read the original materials if you can. It feels completely out of place and jarring.
Excellently said.
Absolutely well worth exploring. There isn’t anything preventing someone from deciding catfolk once lived on Athas, were wiped out by an SK and then that SK fell. That’s a ruined civ well worth exploring.
I believe so. The original survivors of Guistenal were transformed long ago. That both first gen and second gen are still around, I believe that they must be reproducing.
Solid point. Still, the ones I listed are already integral to the setting and do feel it would not disrupt canon.
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I would add gith to that list personally,
A vitally important rule!
Gith should have own “Complete book”. IMO - too important “wild race” not to have a solid monograph on their culture, psyche and functionality.
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The Gith are a major race on Athas. They sweep out of the desert wastes from time to time, under the command of the ‘Gith Overlord’. See Dragon Kings (2E) for details.
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Yes. And therefore should have “more love”, own book or chapter. Maybe not great like a “Thri-Kreen of Athas” but something
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Something like the “Ecology of” series that appeared in Dragon Magazine over the years perhaps.
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You want a simple way to make pterans slightly more intersting? I have two words for you:
head crests!
Pterosaurs had very diverse head crests. In pterans they could be the result of-
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Polymorphism, or morphs based on regions (just like the aarakocra in the white mountains are white\silver\blue, unlike their more common blacker and brown kin)
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Sexual dimorphism
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The crests denotes the indevidual social status\role\both in the community
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Now if you want a really crazy idea, make pterax\razorwings the adult stage of the pteran, who with age gain wings and flight but become more animalistic and lose their intelligence in the process
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Form of deep changes of body in time is very interesting, fresh concept for playable races. Slowly transformation to wild being, during next phases of live person lost possibility to learing new things, in some aspects. You have to fast specialize (therefore pathes of live) because also fast you lost own potential to self-developmend.
But how make this good in game mechanic?
I wouldn’t bother - it’d be easier to say that when a pterran would normally die of old age, they instead leave to transform into a pterrax (and that any losses of physical ability scores from age are in fact the very early stages of the transformation)
That divorces the transformation from any necessary mechanics and attaches it to set of mechanics already defined for nearly every edition (old age).
(I, by the way, think this is a fun concept, but wouldn’t want to include it in an Athas.org ‘official’ product. I am will to help develop the concept here though. 
)
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No, I agree this is perhapse too wild and goes a bit against canon, since both pterax and razorwings have their ecology already described.
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I COULD get behind a subspecies of pterrans that do this, but you’d have to specify it as a non-standard thing (maybe post Lifeshaping/ Nature Bending sillyness)
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In terms of function in the lore, I liken them to orcs. And we know how much is written about orcs!
Dang! You brought some major guns to the fight! Persuasive argument AND visual aid.
Yeah, sure is crazy. raises a butterfly net Stay still buddy. We’ve got a nice rubber room for you…
Seems to me we are overlooking a basic and obvious possibility. Dark Sun already has characters who metamorphose. Dragons, avangions, clerics and druids to elementals. There is plenty of precedent for that.
In terms of game mechanics, I am thinking prestige classes. The life paths are the pterran way to force the youths into “acceptable” professions. For example, the warrior prestige class could develop one kind of crest, look a little more like pterrax and grow wings. Come up with different descriptions for each life path, a different crest for each, and so on.
As I recall, don’t we have a prestige class for thri kreen which does something similar?
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There’s the Tik-tik in PrC appendix 1, which makes kreen tougher or the Ta’chat-tho from PrC appendix #2 (wings & ancestral knowledge).
“Pterrans look more like humanoid pteranodons than they do lizards, indicating that they may be related in some way to the pterrax, a race of flying creatures found on the rocky barrens of Athas. Standing roughly six feet tall, pterrans have light brown scales for skin. Along with their two arms and legs, pterrans also have a short, tail-like appendage and two rounded stubs on their backs, which further hint at their relationship to pterodactyls.”
Reading the pterran description again, my crazy idea doesn’t sound so farfetched.
Maybe there is a fourth life path, “path of the wind”, usually taken by those that don’t conform to the rigid pterran society.
Older pterrans sometimes lose sentience and transform into pterrax on their own over a certain period of time, but for the most part, pterrans who rebel against the confines of their society (or simply don’t fit in any of the usual life paths) are transformed via secret ritual preformed by the elder druid and psion of the tribe to agitate into action the latent genes and force the transformation to occur all at once.
This isn’t viewed as punishment by pterran society (though the transformed individual may feel differently), but as a way to allow those members the freedom they seek and still be able to serve their tribe in a meaningful way.
The newly transformed pterrax are free to roam and breed with other of their kind, until captured and bonded to a warrior.
In pterran religion, the pterrax aren’t regarded as beasts, but as servents of the sky father, just as the pterrans view themselves as children of the earth mother. Pterran warriors refer to their mounts as “sky brothers”, and treat them as such, with any mistreatment leading to quick and sever discipline.
When a tribe of pterrans move into an area with no pterrax, they may transform some of their young who are about to choose a life path (15 year old) into pterrax to create a breeding population to serve the tribe.
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An interesting hypothesis. I believe that what is hinted in canon is that these two species are related in the same way that man is related to ape.
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