I have this idea that the Athasian Crystal Sphere travels through the Prime Material Plane on an inclined orbit; at times it is close to Water and the Positive plane, descending close to Earth and relatively equidistant between Positive and Negative, then down to Fire and Negative, before heading up through Air.
The Blue Age ended in the 8th Worlds Age; the Red Age began when Rajaat used the [Dark Lens in the 144th King’s Age. At 77 years per age, that means that each Age is roughly 10,500 years long (I’m fudging a bit for roundness sake).
That means that (In KA 191) FY 1 is about 3,600 years into the Red Age. This means there’s about 7000 more years of the Red Age, followed by what I will declare the Yellow Age, just because it is an easy color to use. The Yellow Age will see a reduction of undead (as we move away from the Negative Material Plane), but other than that? Who knows? A resurgence of life shaping? In its 42,000 year cycle (assuming the hypothesis is true), do things repeat? Does the next Blue Age see halfling life-shapers? Maybe humans rise to the top? Might thri-kreen be survivors of a previous Green or Red Age, who suffered through the Blue Age?
This is all speculative, of course. Just a neat cosmological idea.
This is an interesting take on Athas isolation. Would that imply that usage of the Lens effectively teleported Athas further along the described orbit, resulting in sudden changes to the environment and surface?
Not that the Lens teleported it, but that the change was inevitable, and that the usage of the Lens was either foreordained (and thus it would have been used in some way), or that its usage made the changes appear faster… things that would have taken centuries happened in years, for example.
IMO @nijineko makes a fair point - if the Crimson Sphere (Athas’ sphere) is metaphysically moving in relation to the other planes, and that movement is normally constant and steady, then time passed and distance moved in that orbit are effectively the same, and one would imagine it’d be a pretty smooth change.
So, given this metaphor, an abrupt change in the sphere’s cosmological “environment” like the one caused by Rajaat’s use of the Dark Lens really feels like it’d be a big jump forward along such an orbit. It doesn’t HAVE to have been, but i agree that the concept makes me think the same thing.
Fun speculation, I don’t have much to contribute at the moment, but a “Great Age” name for these larger time blocs is I think a worthy distinction due to the existence of the “King’s Age”
