Useful stuff from RaFoaDK

[redking]

@Kalindren

The insight we got into Athasian Trolls was appreciated. These aren’t the uncultured savages of other D&D worlds, but thoughtful, erudite beings with a belief system that we’d never seen before. Abbey gives us just enough emotional investment in Windreaver and his people that Hamanu’s treatment of him, and Sadira’s inadvertant destruction of his essence, matters to the reader.

The Athasian trolls were good. If they were like the trolls in other worlds, there wouldn’t be much pathos in cleansing them because it is hard to imagine what possible contribution a standard D&D troll could make to the world beyond death and destruction.

@Kalindren

As for Sorceror Monarch status and templar spells, it’s clear that the canon changed as Dark Sun was developed.

The revised boxed set, Beyond the Prism Pentad, and Defilers and Preservers: The Wizards of Athas that changed so much canon. As for the revised boxed set, I think it is clear that Bill Slavicsek read the Prism Pentad books, and misinterpreted them, and this is how we ended up with the separation between Champion and advanced being metamorphosis (which I believe are one and the same - Champion being a title, and all of the Champions being advanced beings). Defilers and Preserves basically abrogated the whole concept of defiling by introducing necromancers and cerulean wizards that can draw upon unlimited amounts of renewable energy to the extent that preservers can be considered just as bad as defilers when compared to these magic users.

@Kalindren

Like you said Redking, templars would be very useful in the Wars, but I prefer that it was an accident of the process, not Rajaat’s intention

The Dragon Kings supplement says that it was accidental, and also that the vortices are current extinct.I nonetheless included a method to fashion a vortice in update for the metamorphosis epic spell seed - it isn’t easy though.

@Naggaramakam

I recall the author at one point clearly saying that one of her intentions in writing this was to actually CLEAR UP some of the prior conflicts in canon, and one of the ways she accomplished this was how Hamanu is EXPLICITLY an unreliable narrator: almost the entire story is from his direct perspective, and he’s very stuck in his own perceptions.

Totally agree. Lynn Abbey was doing her best to clear up the confusion caused by the revised boxed set and she wasn’t permitted to contact Troy Denning for advice either.