Sundered Regions - East of the Silt Sea

What is a meta mage?

A defiler variant that can drain psionic strength to power their spells. I’ll post the prestige class soon.

1 Like

I always enjoy seeing people expand the known regions of athas and their original take on it, I would like to see more of yours if you have the time to post more here.
The meta mage is a very cool idea, and I loved how you justified its existence only in that particular area with the constant illithid threat, though I didn’t like the name to be honest…

1 Like

Glad you enjoyed it ouroboros. I very much enjoyed creating it and running this area years ago. I keep deluding myself that I’ll solidify the outline to an actual accessory one day.

I poached the name for the meta mage based on a fan made 2e kit. I was partial to the semi-alteration of “The Meta Mages of Marendol” and thought “Psi-Wizard” or “Mind Mage” were slightly cheesy. :wink:

1 Like

This is really interesting Sysane. I always wondered what the Dark Cupola was.

You touch upon mind flayers in Athas, a fascinating exploration.

I am very careful about extra-Athasian additions to the Dark Sun milieu, myself. I shall ponder Athasian illithids under the Dark Sun.

I also enjoyed the concept of a proto-Champion. I may have to entertain that character.

Thank you for sharing Sysane. Much appreciated.

/Nod\

2 Likes

The Dark Copula is an enormous dome of shadow that protects the Lands of Eternal Dusk from the rays of the crimson sun. Hindsight, I wish we made the dome a bit smaller, but it is what it is at this point.

My reasoning for including illithids ties back to the Black Spine adventure and the githyanki’s presence on Athas. My rationalization is they wouldn’t have built an entire prime material city without good reason unless it was to destory a large concentration of mindflayers. As part of my DS history I have it that rhulisti and illithids had a conflict at some point during the Blue Age. Illithid graft technology is very similar to life-shaping. For my DS lore I have it that the rhulisti unlocked the basics of life-shaping from “stolen” mindflayer grafts and illithid tadpoles.

My thoughts around a proto-champion is Rajaat wouldn’t have the Champion making process perfected on his first attempt. There were likely failures resulting in some horrendous abominations. Some mindless and others not so much. Its also a good lead in on how Rajaat discovered Champions needing to be accomplished in psionics as well as magic.

4 Likes

Reading the Illithiad and the life shaper materials at the same time it makes very real sense that the rhulisti were up to similar things. I like to think that the closed crystal sphere was put in place to stop illithid incursions into Athas space. I have always liked your work on the Sundered Regions.

3 Likes

Exactly Phil. I also think the rhulisti could be behind the Gray making it difficult to reach Athas via the planes. Possibly creating the Living Vortices to cause some Negative Material Energy to spill into both the border Astral and Ethereal. And thank you for the kind words :grin:

3 Likes

Yep. They basically threw up protective measure against the Illithids.

2 Likes

I actually ran the Illithiad adventure series in the Sundered Regions. Instead of trying to extinguish the sun they were trying to increase the Dark Cupola’s radius.

2 Likes

Nice idea. The Illithiad may be my favorite D&D supplement. Just perfect. I like to combine your Sundered Regions with some of the Crimson Sphere online material because I love Illithids as villains.

2 Likes

I purposely included the city of Stormport (the starting point of “A Darkness Gathering”) on the map knowing I was going to run that adventure series.

2 Likes

Brilliant stuff.

May I ask how you see this fitting against Daegmorgan’s Athas maps?
Where on that Anattan Wastes coastline map would this Sundered Region sit? I get that his maps are still not fully detailed, which gives some freedom of placement, but I figured you had a vision of where you wanted this to be. Hence my asking.

1 Like

Thanks neujack.

I originally envisioned the Sundered Regions being directly on the opposite side of the Valley of Dust & Fire/Cerulean Storm. I have a hand drawn map that included the storm that I’ll dig out and post at some point.

2 Likes

I created an INCAN themed sorcerer king, with SERIOUS info of the original mythos of this zone -southamerica (mostly Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador and parts of near actual contries-, you can see my post here An INCAN themed sorcerer king and his kingdom

1 Like

Okay. I can work with that. Thank you.

I’d love to eventually reconcile the Sundered Regions and Anattan Wastes, along with the Sundra Peninsula, as Brax’s “Equatorial Continent” (I think the name Anattan works fine for the whole continent) if we ever get to the continent post-Deadlands. Did you ever expand on the setting beyond the notes posted here, Sysane?

Heck maybe Maruk could even be merged with the inca sorcerer-king idea, as the sapa-inca were pretty big on Sun and Lightning imagery, though it seems like Maruk is more zoroastrian themed from a first glance?

Sadly no. Dream was to write a more defined expansion, but ability and time have prevented that.

What you did do is a fantastic jumpoff point, nonetheless, I particularly like the concept of the Metamages and their possible ties to gith :grinning:

1 Like