What's Your History of Athas?

Setting
#7

…and at the risk of being contentious, I reckon it’s a good thing it did expand and change.

The Tablelands are about the size of Colorado, and the original boxed set and Prism Pentad had only one set of main villains and one arch villain. Even then, they managed to kill or contain half of them before the pentad series was up.

That is way too small of a vision for a whole planet to adventure on. As it is, the setting badly needs more geography and more villains. Sure, the Sorcerer Monarchs and Rajaat are something special (and I’m not averse to going back in the timeline a bit to use them), but it seems to me the setting has always suffered from lack of scope.

Indeed, the whole reason why I came back to Dark Sun was because of Athas.org’s extended timeline, and the Athasian Cartographer’s Guild’s world map.

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#8

I agree. Increasing the hex size by 150% from 30 mi2 in 2E to 75 mi2 in 4E was a good move. That said, I’ve always been curious about the Tablelands Sorcerer King titled “Magnate”, but the Revised Campaign Setting wrote him out of the setting.

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#9

Agreed. The conceptual sweep of the setting is/was grand, but the original developmental scope wasn’t terribly big.

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#10

It raises interesting questions. Do you have pop up SMs periodically? Defilers who’ve managed to somehow temporarily amass power and a way to empower templars? Are these ‘little SMs’ actually Arcanamachs used as stalking horses by SMs and ‘loaned’ templars, to draw out pretenders, give plausible deniability to raids against cities and other nefarious schemes?

Could there be a few dozen/a few hundred lesser Lieutenants of the Champions (think Borys to Egendo) who somehow acquired a small portion of their bosses abilities and who sometimes appear out of stasis or the like? If that’s the case you could argue a full on Champion SM can grant 7th level (2E) or 9th level (3E) spells, whereas Lt SMs might only be the equivalent of Demipowers (so up to 5th lvl spells).

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#11

Yes. It wouldn’t happen often, and quite rarely in the Tyr region compared to the Tablelands beyond the Tyr region. The Sorcerer Monarchs are the top dog Sorcerer Monarchs of Athas. Furthermore, they seem to have some sort of relationship with the Dragon. This relationship might be as simple as a protection racket, but whatever it is, the Dragon does not tolerate upstarts in the Tyr region. As for what happens elsewhere in the Tablelands, the Dragon doesn’t care because it’s mostly destroyed and there are only small settlements (note: I consider the Tyr region cities to be far larger than the canon numbers. Most of them over 100,000 people strong).

They could be. Some Sorcerer Monarchs might be outright fakes, relying on a real Sorcerer Monarch to empower his or her templars. It would be a quid pro quo relationship.

If I was following the Rajaat narrative, I’d just make all of his associates, like Irikos, champions capable of granting templar spells to followers. I wouldn’t go back to the bad old days of 2E demipowers being limited in the spells that they can grant, however.

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#12

That also solves the problem of Merek the Wrong from DSE1. His communique to Hamanu reads like that of an equal to equal, not a ‘mere’ upstart defiler lord to a Sorceror King.

It did get quite silly - 5th level for DPs, unless you were on their home plane, in which case you could get 6th. 6th lvl for Lesser Powers, unless you were on their home plane, in which case you got 7th lvl spells. We aren’t going to cover hero deities!

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#13

In my history, true SMs are those who can grant spells via an elemental vortex link. Only a few of the vortex still exist, having been inadvertently during the Cleansing Wars or wasting away afterwards due to the planetary wide defilement and spread of silt (they require a balance of elements that no longer exist on Athas except in a few places) and all of them still alive were originally bound to a sentient being (replacing the link to Athas) in the Pristine Tower either by Rajaat himself, or the combined arcane and psionic might of the rebellious champions.

Others who claim the title of SM are free to do so (typically outside of the Tyr region) use other kinds of Templars. Spell pools, psioncs, dominated people, clerics, druids, wizards… they don’t typically have the capability of stopping their templars from casting a spell (Spell Pools are an exception for those bound to the SM) but a vortex connection with access controlled via a true SM is beyond them unless they manage to somehow bind one of the few surviving vortex.

Rajaat for instance can act as a channel for power (the original spell pool), Tithian acts as a patron for Rain, but they are for all intents and purposes rain clerics. So there are options, but not typically an option to become a true SM.

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#14

Yeah, the FN -meta plot of Doyte Mal Payne becoming a Dragon and ruling a Bandit State village tracks with this idea. I’d imagine that eventually he might even topple the other BSs, enslave/absorb their people and form his own city-state, given enough time and lack of SM hassle.

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#15

I keep it simple; I pretty much only use the basic 2e Box-set, along with most 2e products like Dragon-Kings, ; I like to keep things traditional and pure and most of my DS games are set in the past. I’ll use the map from 3e for my general information in case the players want to travel and the world map, below, in case they really, really want to travel; I use 4e for the maps of the City-States and I’ve actually never played or ran 4e, but one of these days I might.

I don’t use any of the mega-plot from the Prism Pentad; however, my players actually read the novels and, they are willing to drive 50 miles and spend the entire weekend, and I mean, the ENTIRE WEEKEND, sans sleep, playing Dark Sun.

I, on the other hand, like to keep it a post-apocalyptic Tolkienesque game. I’ve even ran Dark Sun using other gaming systems like R. Talsorian’s Cyberpunk 2020 and White-Wolf’s World of Darkness (Werewolf and Mage: the Ascension).

That reminds me I have to make my map of the City of Wonders.

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#16

Do we have a timeline when the backstory events of Dragon’s Crown happened? Is it possible that Merek the Wrong was active when Hamanu was just another of Myron’s warlords, and not a Champion yet?

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#17

I’m not aware of one, or whether anyone’s put something together. The key lore comes from Merek’s letter to Hamanu, detailed on p.24 of Book 2:

Hammanu [sic],
Tomorrow we will begin the assault on Akarakle. By sun ascending, I will control the largest deposits of obsidian on Athas. By morning, the red and black will fly over Akarakle and Haakar’s head will adorn the battlements of my new home.
Glad tidings,
Merek

So Hamanu must have been Champion by this point - perhaps only just elevated. Before his elevation he’s a no-one in Myron’s army. He’s certainly no one a powerful defiler warlord with his own army would taunt. Manu of Deche goes from being I’d guess the equivalent of maybe an Army Captain (so one of many) to being Hamanu the Champion almost overnight.

I mean the real reason is that the lore hadn’t been fleshed out fully at this point and the design team weren’t speaking with Troy Denning on what he was doing. But, retconning this, you could say Merek had a chunk of Myron’s army, took it to the Road of Fire to take down Akrakle, perhaps to prove to Rajaat that he should elevate Merek (after all, one Champion has just been killed by the Warbringer, why not his replacement) and got things terribly wrong (pun intended). At that point Hamanu hadn’t yet finished the trolls and hadn’t built up the village of Urik, so the obsidian taunts don’t quite ring true, unless Merek was a precog.

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#18

Yeah, i read that before asking.

None of that makes any logical sense, except from the standpoint of the writers of Dragon’s Crown thinking they were being cute, but not bothering to do thwir homework first (which I’m sure is actually true, given what went on with Lynn Abbey).

Manu wouldn’t go from zero to hero to replace Myron, that’s insane. It’d make much more sense if he was a warlord of similar power or standing as Merek, and they were maybe rivals.

If the iron supplies ran out by then and obsidian was what they were using for weapons, securing that supply before Manu secured the Smoking Crown would a great reason for a dig like that.

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#19

There is a non zero chance that Hamanu was one of Myron’s templars. Sure, he might have been a farmer’s boy when young, but the rest of his narrative is self-serving. The more likely scenario is that Hamanu was inducted into Myron’s army as a templar, found out about the existence of Rajaat, worked to undermine Myron in Rajaat’s eyes, then replaced Myron as champion. Then Hamanu rewarded Rajaat with treachery in turn.

One hint that this could be true is the strictness of how Hamanu keeps his templars in line. Hamanu know the wages of treachery.

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#20

I diverged.

Raajit was a sorcerer/ess (it was never made clear) on Earth, who travelled to Athas in the early Middle Ages, taking with them several villages to begin populating Athas. Their goal was to work on and complete the Godhead ritual in peace and quiet. Humans originally worked in relative harmony with the planet’s inhabitants, the Thri-Kreen, though there were farmer vs hunter/gatherer conflicts. When Raajit eventually came to the conclusion that they could not use Thri-Kreen to power their ritual, they had no more use for them. Champions were created and the Thri-Kreen were driven off the Tablelands (for the most part) to allow for more rapid human expansion. (My version of the Cleansing Wars). During the wars, Raajit and the Champions created variants of humanity to fulfill particular roles in the conflict - Elves, Dwarves, Gith, Giants, Hoblytan. Some hundred or more years later, Raajit was ready to attempt Godhood, but the Champions, realising that this meant the death of most of Humanity to ‘feed’ the ritual, rebelled and Raajit was defeated / imprisoned - this battle was the event that ‘defiled’ Athas and turned it into the desert it is now. (My version of end of the Green Age). The Champions / Dragon Kings as they now were, fragmented and settled in their cities to deal with the devastation of the planet - and many promptly began work to replicate the godhood ritual for themselves.

My players, spaceship borne travelers from the ‘modern world’ arrived and were promptly comprehensively turned over by Nibenay. It took them four (real time!) years before they felt strong enough to try Athas again…When they arrived, Hamanu had already destroyed Yaramuke, Kaud-ma had failed an attempt at Godhood, Dregoth had been foiled in his attempt (and was now a Lich), Kalak was holed up wounded in the Ziggurat. Andropinis had returned and ruled Balic Raam had Alalech-re and … and Raajit was still trying to get free. There is still a massive bounty for any captured / killed offworlders, and the planet is protected by a deadly magical / psionic barrier. The players always have to go ‘disguised’ and the use of any ‘technology’ attracts the sort of attention that ends with Dragon Kings / Templars poking your corpse.

I run a heroic type campaign so, over the years (I’ve been running for over 30 years now) players have been involved in taking down Dregoth (with Hamanu’s help), finishing off Kalak (he was wounded…) and being around when Hamanu and Nibenay were forced to ally to deal with the return of a rather vengeful Raajit.

Despite my playing fast and loose with canon, I have used / integrated a massive amount of material from this site and would like to record my gratitude to all those who have built it into the fabulous resource it is today. In my ‘scenario’ the age of the Dragon Kings is coming to an end and they aren’t all happy about it, though some, Hamanu, for example, recognises that their time is ending. But if and when it does, out in the wider world, there are Thri-Kreen Khanates who remember the slaughter of the Cleansing Wars, and there are still many millions of them, out on the plains…

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#21

Ah - a fellow space traveller. I wouldn’t mind a one off adventure similar to Tale of the Comet in Dark Sun, but most of the forum dwellers hated the idea. Alas!

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#22

My ‘universe’ uses planets that each take from existing games - so I have a Shadowrun planet, a cyberpunk planet, Cthulu, Bloodshadows and so on… took me years to figure out how to integrate Athas without destroying so much of what is special about it! (Though I expect many will consider what I have done to be sacrilege anyway!). I have an Astral plane to run D&D type stuff where technology just does not work, but Athas is more fun because they have all the technology, but are absolutely paranoid about using any of it (with justification!).

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#23

I already shared my vision of Athas history here:

However, as a resume:

  • Nature-masters brought people from other planets to repopulate Athas. That’s why races and civilizations are the same as in other settings. They spread and populate vast regions of Athas.
  • Zik-Chil are mutated nature-benders, which also made the thri-kreen intelligent to be used as a weapon.
  • Rajaat was a nature bender/Zik-Chil creation. He shared the same vision that bringing other races to Athas was an abomination. That’s why he started the cleansing wars.
  • The surviving civilizations moved back to the Tyr Region, as the ultimate habitable place.
    -North is the Ecuator and it’s too hot to live.
    -South, you have the Dead Lands. What’s beyond that? Maybe some civilization still exists in the South Pole
    -West, the Kreen Empire, still hating other races due to their genetic-memory.
    -East, was blocked by the Dragon and Ur-Draxa until very recently. Now, some old lands and some old city-states will start to enter into play.
  • All the history from the end of the Blue Age to today, took more or less 1500 years.
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#24

I don’t have a custom history of Athas because somehow out of the dozens of different game systems used for hundreds and hundreds of game sessions over a span of thirty plus years of roleplaying, I’ve somehow never managed to play in or run a Dark Sun game before.

But if I did, I would probably go with that one heresy I proposed over in the heresies thread with Athas being a Thri-Kreen planet where halfling-gnomish starfarers arrived via giant colony sleep-ships with their genetic biotech and gene libraries to terraform the planet and adapt themselves as needed, explaining all the races and what eventually became lifeshaping.

Probably add in the heresy about the undead as a druidic method of drawing the poisons out of the land and being sent out into space to form a planetary defense and environmental control shield.

Likely make “magic” a degraded form of psionics for those who are seeking a shortcut to power wherein a familiar (which is actually the spirit or revenant of a past person that is desperately trying to avoid death or complete ancient imperitaves) is forcibly opening the target “wizard/sorcerer’s” psi channels at the expense of draining their vitality to feed the familiar spirit’s lifeforce… thus explaining the drive to defile, and defiling itself in a purely psionic way. As “magic” can only be used at the whim of the familiar, which fact is carefully hidden from the caster, spells are the activation protocol and signal to the familiar. This allows me to remove any and all magic from the story, without changing the story elements that appear to be magic to the reader.

Tweak it so that the SK’s have fused with their familiar spirits as part of the “becoming an advanced being” falsehood (actually the ritual is designed for the familiar to take over the host, plus forcibly channeling ancient genetic knowledge via psychometry and attempting to apply it on the fly to themselves via micro-voyance and micro-kinesis, etc.), and the mixture of memories drives most of them insane, regardless of which spirit survived the process.

I wouldn’t know what parts of the story to tweak, since I’ve never read any of it. I am only vaguely aware of story elements due to all of you, and what is alluded to in the rule books.

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#25

Something similar is on my list.

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#26

It seems to me that the obvious and unavoidable intent of Mr. Baker in the writing of the masterful Dragon’s Crown adventure set was that Merek the Wrong was another Champion of Rajaat. Indeed, as we point out in this thread, Merek refers to Hamanu as a peer. Indeed, the text refers to Merek as a “defiler warlord.” This was also the term used to describe Irikos in the Book of Artifacts, and as we all know, Irikos was assigned as the original Orc Plague, as Book of Artifacts makes perfectly clear.

That Merek is some sort of subordinate is not a tenable argument. Merek is described in Dragon’s Crown as commanding legions, and wielding dragon magic (10th level spells). “Defiler warlord” meant Champion of Rajaat at this early time in Dark Sun’s publishing history, and as Champion of Rajaat is an almost cult-like title likely only recognized within Rajaat’s inner circle, we ought not to expect many of their enemies to deign to use such a title, or even necessarily know of it.

Merek, like Irikos, is fascinating to me. And it is interesting that both Merek and Irikos were destroyed by rival preservers of the time, Merek by the defiling magic of Haakar at Akarakle, and Irikos by an unknown but obviously very powerful sorceress at Bodach. Many of us here in these forums over the years have preferred essentially god-like Champions of Rajaat, a la Lynn Abbey’s depiction of Hamanu in R&FoaDK. I have not favored this. Ascribing to them such radical power is outside of Troy Denning’s narrative, makes them all but unassailable to any PCs that might ever encounter them, and is well beyond the limits of their game mechanics, at least as the game might work in 2nd Edition.

The “defiler warlords” of Rajaat may have been ageless, but they were not immortal gods. At 21st level, their hit points were not yet off the charts, and may not even have yet broken 100 hp. Disasters and mortal mistakes were still risks, their PSP pool was not endless (and could be rather finite if pressed with many lesser psionic foes), and they could not employ endless 9th level spells, but rather had but a few. Poor generalship or overconfidence (as seems to have been the case with Irikos) could spell their end.

I ask, what race do we think Merek was assigned to terminate? Dragon’s Crown does not say, or I have missed a buried hint. But this notion that he was but a “captain”, or some other subordinate officer under a Champion, was absolutely not what Mr. Baker intended. No “captain”, in any sense, commands legions, plural. He was a Champion of Rajaat, plain and simple.

Obviously our sense of the timeline for Hamanu, being a latter-day Champion, feels off somewhat in the reading of Dragon’s Crown. Indeed, there is a mismatch. Retcondor however can swoop down, and suggest that the siege of Akarakle was much later in the history of the Cleansing Wars.

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