Greetings fellow desert dwellers!
You’ve encountered them countless times on the wastes, you’ve fought them, perhaps you’ve even traded with them, but what are the reptilian peoples of Athas really like?
We at the Pristine Tower Development Group will be shortly releasing our new book Scale, Tail, and Claw - The Reptilian Peoples of Athas. In preparation for that, I wanted to give you all a visual sneak preview of what we have in store for you.
The book will be released by the end of this month. In the meantime, enjoy, and just ask if you have any questions!
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At the end of the month? And it’s still October over in the States isn’t it, so next coupla days? 
I’m wanting to incorporate some type of lizardfolk/ssurran in my campaign as low-level denizens of a certain broad area of the Tablelands, so very much looking forward to this release.
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Looking forward to read
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Sadly, no. We totally missed the chance for a October 33rd release date.
Glad folks are excited for this release - the team worked really hard on the content.
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Looks awesome – I saw in the excel file of open projects that there are some kind of ‘unusual’ pterrans in the Drakes Tail Peninisula. What is the plan, if any, for that area, and does this volume shed any light on that?
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Maybe it will, maybe it will…
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There are plans for that area too…
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I think I read one thing that this area was supposed to be an elemental theocracy of some kind – is that still the general idea (I guess the pterrans generally have an earth elemental focus, though maybe there could be subspecies that were associated with the other elements and paraelements, and the earth-centered ones are only those that the Tablelanders have met so far, at the very least there could probably be ones that were elementally aligned with magma and sand/silt as paraelements tangential to earth).
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More druidic focused, but yes. The main reason for that is that drakes are considered traitors by the elementals, so druids with their commitment to Athas and their affinity for beasts are a more natural choice as allies.
From the elemental drakes monstrous entry:
“Drakes are not natives of Athas. The first drakes used tremendous psionic powers to travel from their home elemental planes to Athas, where they found a world much to their liking. Many generations of drakes have been born on Athas since that time.”
“Other natives of the drake’s elemental plane tend to look down on them as deserters or creatures who abandoned the pure elements for this lesser plane. Encounters between drakes and other elemental beings are always tense, often unpleasant, and sometimes violent. Drakes never return to their native planes. Most, in fact, have never been there, being the descendants of drakes who immigrated to the prime material plane centuries ago. Elementals and drakes from the same plane almost always come to blows when they meet on the prime material plane. Oddly, contact between elemental beings from different planes is perfectly normal with none of the aforementioned animosity.”
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So it’s going to be Pterran druids worshipping Drakes, or allied with them somehow? Are there city-states there like in the Tablelands? I’m very curious to read about the different varieties of Pterran.
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The book gives you a lot of room to play with their cultures.
As for the Drake’s Tail Peninsula, I saw it as an opportunity to give the spotlight to other rebirth races like the aarakocra and pterrans, plus some new races like genasi and elan. As for settlements, I envisioned them as hidden cities, originally because they needed to avoid the drakes who were devouring their inhabitants, and later when the drakes became their allies and each dominion became devoted to a single type, there was a need to defend against the other dominions. As a result there are no real roads crossing the peninsula and the location of each is sort of a known secret.
The planar boundries between the elemental planes and Athas are very thin in peninsula for some reason, allowing for the forming of manifest zones. The drakes favour these areas and each dominion works to expand them at the expense of other dominions.
This is the gist of my ideas, but keep in mind things vould change along the way
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