I know this - therefore I wrote “planned betrayd by Rajaat” (probably I used the wrong grammar - so I’m sorry) 
I am skeptical of the rule of “Rajaat’s power and madness as Deus Ex Machina; universal solution”. This can creates a risk of abusing this fact.
I would love to integrate Mike Fleming’s Spiral Lands from his “Oblivion Game System” for the other side of the Silt Sea, in addition to Sysane’s work: “Altire the Sage” is in my mind a well-written example of a fandom dragon that doesn’t mess with the delicate power balance of the sorcerer monarchs- Rajaat’s chief politics guy, who received a faulty prototype dragon transformation and is a giant, immobile beholder-like blob of scales and teeth, with his main power being incredible “clairvoyance”, he’s a “non-action” sort of villain content to rule over his own little fiedfdom but powerful enough to have a mutual “non-interference” clause with Borys. I’d probably add him actually being an efficient example of a cleansing war figure, with surviving eastern demihumans basically being people he stuck on “reservations” and hadn’t gotten around to purging yet, and with Rajaat imprisoned, he just let them go.
Indeed, though Jessie Hieneg, over on the DS discord, made an excellent point- Rajaat is basically an eco- fascist, and fascists are, well, idiots. He isn’t really as smart as he thinks he is and probably just assumed he can fix all the damage he’s done through sheer willpower and his super-unmatched awesome magic powers. To be fair, he invented Preserving as well as Defiling, so he definitely knows how to restore land as well as destroy it.
Very much a
Similar concept had Master from Fallout (1)
Don’t you dare compare him to hobbit hitler 
There are actually several precursor races in Star Drive — one is the Stoneburners, the others are the Glassmakers, Those who Think, and the Starweavers. I think you might be able to rewrite the Primordial War as the conflict of these forces, and see the Stoneburners as the pregenitors of the Ilithids, beholders, neh-thaluggu, other mythos races, kreen, neogi, and aboleth. I honestly didn’t like the fact that 4th edition added its cosmology to Dark Sun – I think it should be its own thing. I honestly think the 2e era was much better at fluff than anything that came after it. That’s why I’d prefer to work on the Spelljamming and Stardrive connections rather than focus on 4e Dark Sun (I also don’t like that 4e got rid of the Kreen empire as a real thing). There are some other Star Drive races, like the psionic Fraal, that would work as occasional visitors or players in the history of Dark Sun. I could imagine an underground lair of Thaal (the evil Fraal) who were left by their masters and are sleeping in bioorganic pods.
I don’t remember if much was detailed about Stoneburner tech besides that it was bioorganic, but I’ve thought of it as similar to the black oil from X files and the engineer black oil from the Alien franchise – as well as somehow connected to the tenebrion seeds of Arcana Evolved and idea from Lynn that magma is somehow connected with draconic magic. All these sorts of black/superheated, vaguely organic concepts could somehow go back to the Stoneburners.
Another idea – what if the Anguiliians, Psurlons, and Ixitxachitls were all connected to the Stoneburner race, and there were silt-breathing variants that evolved that still have extant realms deep in the open silt between the continents.
I personally think it’d be more interesting to trace all these different aberrations to another, more-frightening precursor psionic race that was squid-like, but the size of krakens and able to travel with worm holes or just fly through space. There might be some remains of them somewhere in the deepest silt or underground – sort of like the primordial concept in 4e, but its own lore.
Here are some other ideas – what if we expanded, on the other continents, the concept of alternative energy advanced beings – like an avangion who uses Cerulean energy, or a ‘dragon’ that draws on one of the paraelemental planes? Another area of the world could be some advanced being/elemental lord city states that are fighting an alliance of paraelemental dragons. I know some didn’t like the alternative energy sources, but I think you could fix the issues if you made each corruptive or dangerous in some fashion – use of shadow magic has the risk of your shadow coming alive and eating you, cerulean energy has a change of trapping you like Titian and sucking your mind into the storm – something like the Storm from Accordlands – the grey can slowly turn you into an undead, etc.
I sort of liked the speculation in some old threads here about additional allies of Rajaat – for instance, a precursor or founder of the Zik’Chil that might be a godlike kreen naturebender or a group of super-powerful paraelemental priest/defilers, or similar figures that might have pursued genocidal wars in other parts of Athas.
You mean Player Characters, by chance?
Probably planned on dumping the life force from all the Cleansed back into the land? Or was that actually ALL a hoax and he used it for something else…?
Yeah probably something like “use the souls/life energy of all the people killed to epic-preserver magic Aths back to tropical and the sun back to blue.”
That’s possibly over complicated. Rajaat invented and mastered Preserving, he can likely switch between Preserving & Defiling at will, so he could just cast rejuvenating spells to heal the land afterwards.
That makes no sense.
As magic is pulled from life energy, every spell cast DEPLETES the available pool of magic by converting that life energy into some effect, which is then gone forever. Regardless of if you kill the plants and creatures or not. It’s gone and you can’t get it back. Unless you suck or kill more living things, which isn’t solving the problem.
Where is the life energy supposed to be coming from to put back into the land?
Denning specifically addresses this in AMBER ENCHANTRESS I believe, through Sadira’s inner dialogue. If she does not defile, a single spell will weaken the plants but in a day they will be back to normal.
This is because plant life takes its energy from a renewable source: the sun.
So no, there’s no finite energy for wizards to use. Like, a trillion spell levels, with modern Athas being down to a million. Plant presence is the only limiting factor for preserving. Defiling takes the plants out for like a hundred years.
So it’s possible to temporarily weaken plants by casting a spell that produces an effect that betters the plants. It’s time consuming, slow work, and it’s the basis for the druid-themed wizard spells in Preservers & Defilers: The Wizards of Athas
In other terms, a dedicated sub-epic preserver can revitalize a patch of land, without help from a druid or spirit of the land.
According to the 3.5e Athas dot org version, a preserver with psionic abilities can do this as a psionic enchantment (or dragon magic, or whatever you want to call it).
Well there you go… more reasons why mechanics need to match the lore correctly.
And would that be why some people try to skip to using the sun directly? But I seem to recall someone saying that solar stuff didn’t turn out well?
Sadiria’s supposed to be a Sun mage and a bada$$, right?
No idea.
You guys would have to tell me, since you all are the lore people and I’m the just mechanics guy.
I just vaguely recall something being mentioned about someone using sun related stuff. More stupid magic huh? Too bad it’s not a Solar Psi…
According to the books, Sadira was given her magic by the shadow people with some esoteric explanation about how the shadow and the sun are interlinked.
Does that make her a shadow mage?
Ugh… (gets out a shovel)
From Beyond the Prism Pentad, pg 25:
Further:
“At the Pristine Tower, Sadira gained the ability to draw magical energy to power her spells right from Athas’s crimson sun. During the daylight hours, Sadira’s powers increase as the rays transform her into a sun wizard (use the second set of statistics). The circumstances surrounding her original transformation were unique, so it’s doubtful any other sun wizards can ever be created. When empowered by the sun, Sadira’s skin turns ebony and her abilities and physical strength increase. At night, she reverts to her normal self.”
