im currently -playing- in a darksun campaign and am finiding the world to my liking and am now trying to gather published material on it. I have all the material from Dragon/Dungeon for 3rd edition as well as Athas.org material and have sufficent material for mechanics but am now looking for just background information before I set out to run my own game in the setting.
I have access to the old boxed set of the game and find it chcoked full of goodness but I have some specific questions that remain unanswered and am wondering if there are any older published products containing them.
Specifically
1) Did Athas at any point have actual dieties that granted clerical spells?
2) Is there any published material detialing areas other than the Table Lands
3) If there is material detailing areas other than the Table Lands are they as metal poor as the the Table Lands?
4) Is the offical reason for the metal poor nature the overabundance of mineing that has been hinted at or is Athas just a metal poor planet to begin with. (or both)
I know these questions have probably come up before, but forgive me as the boards lack a search function
1) Did Athas at any point have actual dieties that granted clerical spells?
No.
2) Is there any published material detialing areas other than the Table Lands
Well, Thri-Kreen of Athas details a bit of the Crimson Savannah, there's also Mind Lords of the LAst Sea which details the last sea, far to the north of the Crimson Savannah. And Athas.org is eventually getting everything out for the Deadlands.
3) If there is material detailing areas other than the Table Lands are they as metal poor as the the Table Lands?
Basically. Seems to be a world-wide epidemic
4) Is the offical reason for the metal poor nature the overabundance of mineing that has been hinted at or is Athas just a metal poor planet to begin with. (or both)
I don't know if there's been any official reasons for this, I know everyone has their own speculations. I think there was a population explosion of Rust Monsters during the green age that ate everything. They apparently ate so well that they all died off (probably from indigestion) so there's no Rust Monsters in the world now.
I simply attribute the lack of metal to a naturally metal poor world, that was over mined/exploited for mellenia (the time that iron and such has been actively used on athas (about 14,000 years) is several times longer than it has been used in quantity in the real world). There is still likely a good quantity of metal deposits around, just not of the type that can be easly reached or extracted with available mining/smelting technology. Alot the the metals that have been mined have long since been corroded, hidden away, or used in certain processes theat leave nothing to recycle. The various defiler metamorphosis spells cast by the sorcerer kings (past and present) alone could be responsible for a respectable chunck of the missing coin metals.
The whole rust monster idea does not seem very plausible to me (in fact, it seems downright absurd).
Absurd is as absurd does :D
No, seriously, rust monsters are indeed silly. The real reason for the lack of metal is that the undead tarrasque emprisonned below the City of 1,000 Dead - in the Dead Lands area - was extensively used to combat armies in the great wars past, and it ate all the metal off the corpses, leaving nothing.
The whole rust monster idea does not seem very plausible to me (in fact, it seems downright absurd).
Did I forget my [Sarcasm] tags again?