If you can find it in my spreadsheet I provide a reference to the book/source it is found in. However there were a few that were mentioned in DS products that were not native to Athas.
2 Likes
Took a second look, on my computer. I see that very exhaustive! Thanks its sooo cool! There are some great monsters in the the scarred lands creature collection 1&2 that would be a perfect fit in there.
1 Like
Love the list, have you seen the scarred lands creature collection 1&2?
This falls under the heresy category, but I have long felt that Hamanu should never have been a psionicist/defiler in the original system, and that the only requirement for an advanced being should have been psionics, given the importance it plays in Athas. Other classes should have influenced the overall look of the advanced being (ie defiler for dragon, preserver for avangion etc), but they should not have been a requirement for it.
With all of that, and with Hamanu described as the greatest warrior around, he should have been a fighter/psionicist and the lionoid form should have been his advanced being form, one that any high level fighter/psionicst could take if they could ever live to get that high a level.
2 Likes
Ive approached him that way. In my games. He feels to me like a second generation dray are. Rajjat had created the first sorcerer king and with their draconic forms came madness and corruption.
Hamanu was created after Rajjat had time to perfect the process.
Hence his dedication to Urick in a way that the other sorcerer monarchs dont give to their’s.
1 Like
The list is only creatures that were officially mentioned only in Dark Sun products. So if I could not find it in a DS book I did not add it.
3 Likes
You can do whatever you want in your game, of course.
However, officially, Borys taught the champions how to become dragons, not Rajaat.
1 Like
The Revised Campaign Setting states that canonically, but a reading of the PP gives the impression it was Rajaat. Either way, it doesn’t make a difference in a normal Dark Sun campaign.
1 Like
Admittedly that is where I got my perspective.
1 Like
You are correct, but I just want to spread the gospel of Dark Sun canon.
Of course, I have been known to stray from the faith on occasion.
2 Likes
You know what happens out in the desert where there are tribes where folk got religion.
Fire: Burn at the stake.
Water: Drown in a bucket.
Earth: Bury the neck down and leave for animals or the elements.
Air: Throw off a tall building or cliff.
It’s a hard life out there for Dark Sun heretics.
2 Likes
That was my question when I readed the Prism Pentad. He is not the only one becoming a dragon and seeming another beast, I remember another with a scorpion body. Anyway, the original 2e rules ignores it, the most conservative approach can be to treat this a spells (transmutations or illusions) used to mantain a symbolism. The most dareful is to consider the dragon transformation with same abilities but with a different form (chosen by those researching alternatives to the dragon form spells).
2 Likes
I think you are misremembering, there was no SK with scorpion body. You are probably thinking of Dhujakt, Nibenay’s son who was warped at birth by the Pristine Tower and the lower half of his body became like that of a cilops.
While a powerful defiler, he wasn’t an advanced being.
4 Likes
I’m fairly certain that each stage of Metamorphosis has to be independently researched by each person casting the spells (barring some artifact-level stuff - the structure at the bottom of thr Troll Grave Chasm or the Psychometron of Nerad, for instance) so it would not have been THAT much extra work to research a “custom” dragon metamorphosis - if that’s what Hamanu did indeed do.
1 Like
Lynn Abby had him as having a dragon form as his true form, and the lion form was an illusion
2 Likes
Yeah, it’s probably an illusion.
Maybe I’m misremembering because his mindscape’s form:
When the glow died away, Tithian found his attention focused on a mass of slime-covered flesh, shaped like a teardrop and banded with thick folds of skin. From one end of its body rose a tube-shaped torso, with a pair of corpulent arms ending in hooklike claws. The creature’s head was the only thing even remotely human, with a heavy crown of gold sitting atop a fine-boned brow. He had a broad nose with flaring nostrils and bloated lips that did not quite conceal the curved fangs hanging from his upper jaw. His eyes were bulbous and yellow, identical to those that the liveryman had addressed as the sorcerer-king of Nibenay.
The thing moved forward on six bandy legs, scuttling across the rippled sands of the kank’s mind with surprising speed.
About his physical form we have only:
When the second arrival reached the old man’s side, a pair of bulbous eyes appeared in the darkness. The orbs were golden yellow, with pupils as black and glassy as obsidian. Tithian could tell little else about the creature, for the gleam of the eyeballs was too faint to illuminate any more of its face.
“Make the kank speak, old man,” demanded a man’s voice, as quiet and as smooth as the frigid breath of night.
“The drone doesn’t speak aloud, Mighty King,” gasped the liveryman, weak and pained from having his ribs constricted by the kank’s mandibles. “It talks to me, and I repeat its words.”
The color of the eyes changed to scarlet, but the king did not speak. Instead, a harsher, chattering voice sounded from where the clattering legs had stopped. “If you came here thinking to dupe my father with sophistry, your death will be slow and painful.” The speaker remained concealed in the darkness.
1 Like
The last Prism Pentad book confirms Nibenay’s dragon form, but there is one more sorcerer-king with another animal like form, Tectuktilay:
…a remote avian man with a scaly, beak-shaped muzzle and recessed earslits;
About Hamanu himself, I’m not acquainted with 4e rules, but the authors had given a good use to the system to at least explains Hamanu lion form as a power:
