Another interesting point related to planet size is how far away the horizon is on flat terrain. On Earth (if it were a perfect sphere) the horizon is ca 3 miles away. On a planet half the diameter, it would be much closer (instinct says 1.5m, but math is sometimes non-instinctive). 3m is already pretty close, let alone 1.5m.
Have you looked at the size of the City-States armies? At the power of a Sorcerer-King?
If the Dragon, Hamanu, Tec or any other SK would have the opportunity to establish their CS on a place with better temperature, and then probably with better resources, don’t you think they would? And even if you answer is no, why wouldn’t the members of the bandit states move north?
For me personally as a DS GM this is Simple: inertia and habit. Base psychological stuff of all living beings.
Any action such as you describe is certainly possible but at what cost or opposed reactions?
I’d certainly think that FY10+ there could be changes if you give that the Dragon is gone.
The way North is not the easiest for those from the Tyr region. The Trembling Plains might be easy enough as long as you stay way from the various Mantis people, but the near waterless Barrier Wastes with the scorching heat, freezing nights, and madness inducing wind can cause a problem. The Glowing Desert can be crossed with enough preparation and even looks beautiful, just try not to get lost. The Scorpion Plains hold nothing to fear for those immune to scorpion venom unless you are unsettled by swarms of flesh eating scarabs and other insects. The area around the Lava Gorge is a good place to skirt if you have a trouble with high heat, you just need to get past the many tribes of carnivorous Ssurran that inhabit the Scorched Plateau and make it to the mountains.
Once there it’s a simple matter of finding the single pass into Saragar or across the Border Guardians. The Border Guardians might not be able to stop you, but you have to get around Saragar’s Lawkeepers and Harmonizers or brave the Burning Plains. That’s between 2d6 and 8d6 damage before having to make a DC 15 Reflex save before being able to stop taking 1d6 damage per round (3.5 rules) and you may have to deal with that multiple times depending on where you cross and how big the world is for you. Oh, and your equipment is going to be burned as well, and there’s nothing to say there aren’t any fire based undead on those plains.
Once you get passed that, it’s relatively smooth sailing as you move into the Northern Canyon Lands with it’s vast grasslands. Of course before you get there there’s that niggling detail that every single expedition from north of that area to the south has disappeared, likely something to do with the Empire of Storm controlling all those tiny villages, but maybe not. After all, everyone worships rain, carries it’s symbol openly, bows down before the Lightning Guard, and prays from noon till rainfall every day since the Thunder Guard protects the people from being troubled by non-believers.
But let’s say you braved all that, you finally get to the Kingdom of New Dunswich, congratulations. That kingdom is eager to learn everything they can about the South and the people they sent down there. Just don’t be an elf since they are immediately put to death (thanks Albeorn aka Andropinis, for setting that up), or a half elf, or a wizard (the land has finally recovered and nobody will chance that again), or a cleric (nature is the only acceptable belief here, not individual elements). On the bright side, psionics are highly valued as are warriors of all kinds.
This all presumes it’s smaller groups taking the journey of course since it’s very typical for huge groups to travel into the unknown in search of a better place to live rather then sending out an exploratory group and seeing if they come back safely… An SK who’s spent thousands of years securing a power base, setting up wards to protect themselves from enemies, keeping an eye on the Pristine Tower to make sure nobody of consequence tries to claim it, and hiding from potentially more powerful beings outside the Tyr region and the other champions they may have betrayed also has more than enough reason to leave…
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Where do you get this lore from if I may ask? It sounds interesting!
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There is one glaring issue with this.
Any psychoportation, magical transference and flight makes these places super accessable.
Your list of problems doesn’t only assume that it’s a small group of people the one that travel north. You also assume that the travel occurs between FY1 and FY11.
SK have existed for thousands of years. They fought all the civilized races, around the world. And they won. They crushed their enemies and destroyed the world doing it. Then they gathered the remains of civilization they could find and each founded or claimed a city-state.
So, are you saying that they are so stupid that they chose the worst available place to have their CS? I don’t think so. I think they chose the best places to do it. And following that logic, the area north of the Tyr region should be inhabitable. Why? That’s the question I’m trying to answer.
I think you have the right of it.
Here is what I suggest. The Tyr Region is different from the rest of the Tablelands (as described in the Original Boxed Set, not the Revised Campaign Setting) in that there are a number of cities relatively close to each other. Outside the Tyr Region of the Tablelands, there are cities and civilization, but they the cities are spaced much further apart, because the environmental damage there was much worse than the Tyr Region.
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Northern Canyon Lands is E2 on the fan expanded map by Brian. He also mentioned the Empire of Storm and the some information about a newly peaceful kingdom based out of New Dunswhich, the same area Andropinis came from. I expanded that to include a bit of information about what that Empire actually looked like and what the Kingdom might look like.
Killer_DM:
Any psychoportation, magical transference and flight makes these places super accessable.
These are very long distances, in many cases inhabited by someone or something that is also psionic and typically a predator. Keeping up spells and psionics for the amount of time it takes to cross these distances, without knowing where you are going or what dangers there are… maybe I’m a mean DM, but my groups learned a long time ago to be careful throwing that kind of power around. It attracts attention.
Otello:
Your list of problems doesn’t only assume that it’s a small group of people the one that travel north. You also assume that the travel occurs between FY1 and FY11.
I don’t assume that travel time at all, but I do assume smaller groups. Sustaining large groups of people for extended periods of time on the move takes enormous amounts of resources and preparation, more than most are willing to do. There’s a reason hunter/gather tribes and herders are smaller groups. The SKs had many motivations beyond just “the best place to live” for other people when they chose the Tyr Region. It’s where civilization began, the place that had the most time to recover from the wars, the site of the Pristine Tower - potentially immense power that they would need and would want to keep an eye on and where Rajaat had lived for centuries, honing magic.
There was a rampaging Dragon on the loose, setting up a city make it defensible, the other option was to hope to outrun the ultimate predator with access to even more power than you had. Hole up somewhere, have a chance of people you worked together with before helping you, or try to make it on your own without support - and when I say alone, you certainly don’t have the ability to bring a large group of people with you and stay ahead of the Dragon if it chased you.
People who are scared tend to do one of three things, fight, run, or hide. Fighting the Dragon wasn’t going to work without substantial resources that could only be gathered by staying in one place. Running from it might, but where do you run to and what may you run into while you are looking behind you to make sure you aren’t being followed? Hiding from the Dragon might work for a little while, but where do you hide that he couldn’t find you if he wanted? The Dragon was something the Champions hadn’t seen before, as far as they were concerned it was the single most powerful creature after Rajaat but they had seen other Champions fall to “lower” beings they were supposed to destroy. When Rajaat was freed, they all fought him, because they were afraid of him and neither running nor hiding was a viable option.
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I don’t think we are going to agree on this topic 
The dragon was rampaging for less than a century. The SK knew of the existence of Saragar and were able to cross their defenses even just after being raised, during the Green Age. They don’t care about the Pristine Tower, or they would have armies guarding it. And the rest of the dangers you mentioned are not-canon, so I’m not going to address them.
For me it just doesn’t make sense that an habitable area, with lower temperatures, can exist north of the known world and is not being used by some of the most powerful creatures the world has ever seen. Creatures with massive power, armies and resources. Creatures who have been looking for ways to gain more power than their enemies for literally thousands of years.
They must know about the Kreen Empire, the Dead Lands and whatever places that exist beyond that. They travelled the full world killing entire species. If they don’t go back to that areas it must be because they are empty of any kind of valuable resource or too dangerous even for them.
That excuse/hand waving is not great DMing. To teleport you only need to have seen the place. Scrying exists in Athas… psionic and magical. Crystal balls, etc… These are all able to be done within the 7-12th level range easily.
The psionic teleport is actually pretty cheap. 70 PSPs to go 10,000 miles. 100 to go planet to planet. The moons aren’t outside the realm of exploration given the costs.
Wormhole is evilly efficient as well. A SM or lackey can simply open a path to wherever they wish (and they have ranged the known world) and send a platoon of half giants or elites to take resources, etc… The biggest issue is the lack of a larger map and contents to fill it. Which is exactly why I started this thread. I’d love to see a conceptualization of a larger Athas with less hand waving and the excuse of, “It’s all silt and worthless.”
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I also came to this before in another thread. teleportation effects ,make travel trivial at a certain level. The folks with money can get the means to make things happen.
Unless of course something has happened to make thing more difficult.
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This thread is getting interesting. A few thoughts:
@SeruZmaj - I agree. The dragon at least stymied travel and trade. Obviously the Merchant houses knew all about these distant lands, and so did the SM’s. But travel and correspondence slowed between them greatly. Now Borys is gone, trade is only starting to open up again, as the Tyr region seems to be heading in a downward spiral towards anarcho-capitalism as Merchant houses jockey to become the next despot. (but I digress…)
@Killer_DM is also right. Powerful magic and psionics makes correspondence and travel trivial… assuming they want to waste that much life energy on that without good reason. I could easily see the SM’s gradually losing interest in such far off places over time as meaningful exchanges with them gradually dry up, and their own local selfish concerns (and power moves) take priority.
It really wouldn’t take much more than a few banal reasons for relative isolation between regions. Time, distance, and geographical barriers alone would be enough. But then you could also factor in language and cultural differences which could exacerbate these barriers over time. And that’s even before we factor in the genocidal racism of the SM’s, and their disinterest in going back to old ruined battlefields from their Cleansing Wars past.
Of course, free agent magical/psionic power players have probably travelled far and wide, but they’re too rare (and generally too lacking in followers) to build bridges between distant lands.
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I think the biggest issue is that it’s hard to get into the mindset of a realm where most people have the potential for mental powers. This is so often overlooked in the writing for Dark Sun. Why move large armies across great distances? If you’ve ever been to Tyr… a psion can open up access directly into the city or just outside the gates assuming there’s a protection somehow MacGuffin-ed keeping such things out.
But if you as a DM let your players do it once? It kills that plot armor. Then you need a way to explain why Hamanu didn’t just open a line into the city of iron to take it by force from the inside.
This could also be used to fix some of the plot holes the more I think on it. Short on the levy? Maybe the Oba remembers a city the others didn’t far off the map and kidnaps droves of faraway strangers to make the difference.
Ran out of grain? A similar raid is made on another distant settlement. Perhaps each SM has a few of these they guard from the others as a way to keep their own home prosperous. This could even be used by some of the undead lords in the Obsidian Plain. In the 2E version, one of the rulers had a crystal ball as loot. He could easily have been raiding the lands of the living to garner his own supply of corpses.
Psionic portals take 6 PSP per person, plus the initial cost. even the most adept Psion or SK could only move small forces with Psionics, and an SK would not dare to destroy the oasis they have in their city just to move armies through defiling. Even with Trees of Life that would be a huge strain on the economy.
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Precisely. They wouldn’t do it without a good reason. And human inertia is a stronger deterrent than even a blade barrier or Borys.
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In 2E transporting multiple people is easy with more than one power.
Wormhole is the most obvious. The size of the portal can even be widened as per the power description. This allows the most bodies to be moved.
Dream Travel can take 5-8 or more people in an activation. Multiple psions using dream travel can bring a small force to a distant place quite easily.
Teleport Other is up to three people in a use. As per all psionic powers this is only limited my the number of PSPs your user has. Follow this with a standard teleport and there’s a person usable for a hasty exit.
Each City-State has psionic monasteries or colleges. My argument is that these types of travel are pretty common world-wise and would have to have been considered by every ruler. Since there’s little to keep such effects from happening as the rules were writ - unless you make your own caveats, like protection spells barring easy passing, powdered lead mixed into building materials, basilisk or drakes blood having the same effect, etc…
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Bingo! Some form of psionic lead lines walls, maybe some anti-psionic powdered gemstone in the mortar prohibits this. It still wouldnt stop an SK from Wormholing his whole army in a matter of a day with the assistance of Psioncists near an actual city but the cost would be astronomical.
One of the things I came up with is just that any from of dimensional travel is difficult due to the extra-planar issues surrounding Athas. Not impossible just harder.
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Regarding world size… Prime Material planes have been canonically stated to default to Earth-normal metrics (except where stated otherwise in the details of said Prime), which happens to include the use of science and physics, just by the way. This would mean that unless stated otherwise, a Prime defaults to Earth’s size, gravity, atmospherics, and so forth.
That is, among other things, why gunpowder does not work in Greyhawk, and natives of the Flaaness cannot survive for long in the Forgotten Realms without nutritional supplements, just to name a couple of recollections off the top of my head.
Gunpowder doesn’t work on Greyhawk???