Share your ideas or thoughts. I have my own, but want to hear about others before sharing mine ;)
Share your ideas or thoughts. I have my own, but want to hear about others before sharing mine ;)
I think it went something like this. There was this Spelljammer ship full of halflings (and their pets which looked like little yellow cats and were sparky in nature), which crash landed on a watery world. They were traveling in a Krynn-produced gnomish ship and were lucky to stay alive through the crash. They quickly settled and tried to repair the ship but due to the peculiar design the ship produced a massive cataclysm (possibly when the helm exploded), whirling the astral and ethereal one into another and isolating the world. realising what they had done and that there was no escape, they settled into communities and the blue age started. Later, of course, the cats mutated into Athasian Pikachus and are in fact a pre-rebirth race.
Seriously though, if halflings didn't record it, who would? I assume there was nothing before the halflings.
Anything can have happened before that first King's Age. I assume the target period contained no psionics, no magic, no lifeshaping, and very little technology.
My guess is that the halflings lived as real-world island people, in balance with nature, until they developed a kind of symbiosis with creatures living in the sea, weird mollusques or some such things. These creatures possessed a natural ability to manipulate pith, and with it the halflings learned to manipulate all living things to meet their needs, even inducing the ability to manipulate pith into themselves, making them lifeshaped. (Or they took within their own bodies the corpuscles of that creature, basically mirrorring the ancient symbiotic relationship between eukaryotic cells and mitochondria.)
Recorded history starts with the 1st King's Age, and since halflings didn't spontaneously appear in the world I assume that several thousands of years passed before, time during which the halfling people rose up from primitive "cave men" to the ability to talk and write, and somewhen after that the 1st King's Age was established by them.
Anything can have happened before that first King's Age. I assume the target period contained no psionics, no magic, no lifeshaping, and very little technology.
My guess is that the halflings lived as real-world island people, in balance with nature, until they developed a kind of symbiosis with creatures living in the sea, weird mollusques or some such things. These creatures possessed a natural ability to manipulate pith, and with it the halflings learned to manipulate all living things to meet their needs, even inducing the ability to manipulate pith into themselves, making them lifeshaped. (Or they took within their own bodies the corpuscles of that creature, basically mirrorring the ancient symbiotic relationship between eukaryotic cells and mitochondria.)
Interesting. I can go along with most of that. Perhaps the world wasn't always covered in a vast ocean though. There may have been a period where the ocean that covered Athas was frozen? Maybe not entirely, but partially. Large ice burgs could have floated across the ocean and what little landmasses there were may have been covered in enormous glaciers which increased the tiny islands ground surface.
Darksun always seemed to have a bit of sci-fi flare to it, buried deep in the background. So stealing an idea from the Pern series, the halflings are actually not native to Athas. They came to Athas in one or more space ships (the Messenger, perhaps?), perhaps seeking a planet to colonize and found one fairly suited to their needs. It would make sense in a way, as the life on Athas always seemed so strange and alien in comparison to human-like (or halfling-like, your pick) species. Also, the actual time between the start of the calendar & the Green Age is pretty small (> 1000 years), which historically is a pretty narrow window for things to develop.
So the halflings quickly settled in, but Athas wasn't *really* well-suited to support a high-tech civilization. Or maybe, like the Pern settlers, they wanted to get away from tech. On Athas, they discovered animal life that could be easily tamed into the life-shaped tech, and since Athas teemed with the stuff, they completely abandoned tech in favor of life-shaping. Before their arrival, there was no sentient life, although the kreen were verging on it. Their new calendar was developed shortly after arrival, within a few years.
Anyways, just a thought.
I'll be the odd-man out. :D
Darksun always seemed to have a bit of sci-fi flare to it, buried deep in the background. So stealing an idea from the Pern series, the halflings are actually not native to Athas. They came to Athas in one or more space ships (the Messenger, perhaps?), perhaps seeking a planet to colonize and found one fairly suited to their needs. It would make sense in a way, as the life on Athas always seemed so strange and alien in comparison to human-like (or halfling-like, your pick) species. Also, the actual time between the start of the calendar & the Green Age is pretty small (> 1000 years), which historically is a pretty narrow window for things to develop.
So the halflings quickly settled in, but Athas wasn't *really* well-suited to support a high-tech civilization. Or maybe, like the Pern settlers, they wanted to get away from tech. On Athas, they discovered animal life that could be easily tamed into the life-shaped tech, and since Athas teemed with the stuff, they completely abandoned tech in favor of life-shaping. Before their arrival, there was no sentient life, although the kreen were verging on it. Their new calendar was developed shortly after arrival, within a few years.
Anyways, just a thought.
Pern. Cool :D. So the Black would just be between?
For my old DS games (dunno how I'm gonna approach it with the new ones), Athas lies at the end of history, with the cosmos a burned-out husk. It is an old, broken world and the Blue Age is actually the end of an ancient, Deluge-like cataclysm that drowned all that came before it. The rhulisti are all that remained of former civilisations, become strange and alien. The reason that there are no gods on Athas is that there are no gods at all anywhere - they have all long since died out and the planes themselves withered away to nothingness.
For my old DS games (dunno how I'm gonna approach it with the new ones), Athas lies at the end of history, with the cosmos a burned-out husk. It is an old, broken world and the Blue Age is actually the end of an ancient, Deluge-like cataclysm that drowned all that came before it. The rhulisti are all that remained of former civilisations, become strange and alien. The reason that there are no gods on Athas is that there are no gods at all anywhere - they have all long since died out and the planes themselves withered away to nothingness.
Uhh.. now there's a chilling thought. The Doomguard would be proud of you!
Pern. Cool :D. So the Black would just be between?
I suppose. Wasn't going for a direct parallel
For my old DS games (dunno how I'm gonna approach it with the new ones), Athas lies at the end of history, with the cosmos a burned-out husk. It is an old, broken world and the Blue Age is actually the end of an ancient, Deluge-like cataclysm that drowned all that came before it. The rhulisti are all that remained of former civilisations, become strange and alien. The reason that there are no gods on Athas is that there are no gods at all anywhere - they have all long since died out and the planes themselves withered away to nothingness.
Man, Athas can't catch a break! ;)
Man, Athas can't catch a break! ;)
Not in my games :D. Even worse, Athas itself was undergoing a slow disintegration, lacking any divine force to keep it together. In a riff on the old 2e concept of Sleeping Deep Dragons (from Monstrous Mythology), the pinnacle of the dragon transformation would involve a union with Athas itself, becoming a sort of global spirit of the land (this was years before I read RafoaDK, so I was rather startled to see the same idea appear there). This had been Rajaat's original plan - to restore Athas to purity and meld himself with the planet in order to save it. The Champions, being short-sighted fools, killed him and practically doomed their world. Borys' transformation was supposed to culminate with him completing what Rajaat began, but Borys could never bring himself to do it. Ultimately, it would have fallen to the PCs to carry this through, but I left the country and the game ended with a thoroughly enjoyable TPK instead. Well, enjoyable for me, that is...
For my old DS games (dunno how I'm gonna approach it with the new ones), Athas lies at the end of history, with the cosmos a burned-out husk. It is an old, broken world and the Blue Age is actually the end of an ancient, Deluge-like cataclysm that drowned all that came before it. The rhulisti are all that remained of former civilisations, become strange and alien. The reason that there are no gods on Athas is that there are no gods at all anywhere - they have all long since died out and the planes themselves withered away to nothingness.
I REALLY like this idea. It stays true to the original dark atmosphere of Athas, while providing it with much more historical depth.
It's interesting because I always thought of the Blue Age as the peak of Athasian civilization, but in this perspective it is simply a fragment of a greater civiliazation that no longer exists.
itf
An interesting question is whether the sun a different color. Granted, all recorded events link the changing of the sun color to the Pristine Tower. Could there have been another source or earlier version of the tower that changed the size or color of the sun to blue?
I thought only the blue => yellow change was linked to the Pristine Tower; I don't recall if it was ever firmly established if the yellow => red change was linked to the Pristine Tower. I could be mistaken.
An interesting question is whether the sun a different color. Granted, all recorded events link the changing of the sun color to the Pristine Tower. Could there have been another source or earlier version of the tower that changed the size or color of the sun to blue?
Blue stars are rather common, and if I'm not mistaken, very hot. Actually, that's what's been bothering me all the time. A big red giant radiets much less temperature than, say, a white dwarf. Why was the land scorched then? It should be frozen in ice.
One possible explanation is that the radius of the sun expanded, say, 100 times (not unnatural phenomena), so that Athas was now closer to the sun itself, yet it is still unclear weather the change would go from normal to hot or to colder. This is quite possible explanation. The images Brom drew showed the sun sometimes covering half the sky. That would indeed be a result with earth is our sun expanded a 100 times in diametar.
I thought only the blue => yellow change was linked to the Pristine Tower; I don't recall if it was ever firmly established if the yellow => red change was linked to the Pristine Tower. I could be mistaken.
I'm pretty sure it changed when Rajaat made the Champions thru the help of the Dark Lens and the Tower.
Blue stars are rather common, and if I'm not mistaken, very hot. Actually, that's what's been bothering me all the time. A big red giant radiets much less temperature than, say, a white dwarf. Why was the land scorched then? It should be frozen in ice.
Blue stars are generally considered uninhabitable, mainly because they emit too much radiation. And if Athas had an orbital position similar to Earth's (which is likely, given (IIRC) Athas has a 365-day year (with each day being 24 hours)), the heat from a blue sun would make the planet too hot to be habitable, much less allow liquid water on its surface.
And really, Athas' sun is not really in a "Red Giant" phase; if it were, it would have swallowed up Athas (our own sun is expected to grow so big it will swallow Earth whole). Likewise, much of the art, despite the art of the sun showing it as a big, red monster, really indicates a yellow sun. The light is both too bright and colors too 'normal' to be from a dark red sun; I think a red sun would cause around-the-clock low-light conditions and shift all the colors to reds. Plus it'd probably be dark enough, even at high noon, for stars to be seen.
Note: not a scientist, just an amature ;)
I'm pretty sure it changed when Rajaat made the Champions thru the help of the Dark Lens and the Tower.
That could be. Don't remember one way or the other.
Blue stars are generally considered uninhabitable, mainly because they emit too much radiation. And if Athas had an orbital position similar to Earth's (which is likely, given (IIRC) Athas has a 365-day year (with each day being 24 hours)), the heat from a blue sun would make the planet too hot to be habitable, much less allow liquid water on its surface.
And really, Athas' sun is not really in a "Red Giant" phase; if it were, it would have swallowed up Athas (our own sun is expected to grow so big it will swallow Earth whole). Likewise, much of the art, despite the art of the sun showing it as a big, red monster, really indicates a yellow sun. The light is both too bright and colors too 'normal' to be from a dark red sun; I think a red sun would cause around-the-clock low-light conditions and shift all the colors to reds. Plus it'd probably be dark enough, even at high noon, for stars to be seen.
Excellent, then you have simply confirmed my suspicions. Athas currently has a 375 day year, and it's nowhere said in any of the books that the days last 24 hours, in fact they can last 50 as far as i'm concerned. midday will still be midday.
My point: athas had originally had to be much further from the blue sun to be habitable in the first place. Let's say for the sake of argument it's orbiting the sun much faster than earth (it doesn't even defy newton since athas is much smaller than earth, only 15000 km at equator, it can move at the same speed at a higher orbit and still not float away). Then the sun expands and shifts starts emmiting much lower amounts of radiation. This can be explained as the energy was sucked into something halflings did. In that case, Athas should have become a frozen rock! And especially after it happened again at the end of green age.
Edit: I'm somewhat afraid the original designers of DS were not into astronomy at all.
Edit: I'm somewhat afraid the original designers of DS were not into astronomy at all.
Or they considered such things as being of little relevance to a fantasy game. Personally, my D&D games don't even take place in the same universe as ours, much less obey the same laws of physics. Folks are, of course, quite free to attempt to rationalise such things, but I feel that it may well prove to be a fruitless task as scant consideration seems to have been given to such issues when the 2e campaign worlds were being designed
.Excellent, then you have simply confirmed my suspicions. Athas currently has a 375 day year, and it's nowhere said in any of the books that the days last 24 hours, in fact they can last 50 as far as i'm concerned. midday will still be midday.
Well, don't take my word as canon or anything, just my very basic understanding about how stars work.
From what I understand, the trouble with blue stars is that to be sufficiently far enough from the sun to have semi-Earth-normal temperatures (even if they're too hot, for Athas), the radiation is still absolutely lethal. To be safe from the radiation, now your dealing with letheally cold temperatures.
Of course, that's a lot of science *as we know it*. Maybe conditions on Athas are different. Heck, maybe because of the moons or some other forces, Athas has a super-powerful magnetic shield that blocked that radiation. Sci fi is jammed with oddities like that, and if you want to view Athas that way, why not?
Or they considered such things as being of little relevance to a fantasy game. Personally, my D&D games don't even take place in the same universe as ours, much less obey the same laws of physics. Folks are, of course, quite free to attempt to rationalise such things, but I feel that it may well prove to be a fruitless task as scant consideration seems to have been given to such issues when the 2e campaign worlds were being designed
But! But! But! .... dang yer right....
Or they considered such things as being of little relevance to a fantasy game. Personally, my D&D games don't even take place in the same universe as ours, much less obey the same laws of physics. Folks are, of course, quite free to attempt to rationalise such things, but I feel that it may well prove to be a fruitless task as scant consideration seems to have been given to such issues when the 2e campaign worlds were being designed
In short, don't try to over-rationalize everything? ;)
In short, don't try to over-rationalize everything? ;)
Heh heh. Well, to quote Barsoomcore from Enworld:
"When consistency gets in the way of samurai gunslingers riding on dinosaurs, it's time for consistency to take a day off".
I follow much the same philosophy where gaming is concerned ;)...
It is documented that thri-kreen mythos of "hell" is depicted as being a frozen plane of cold and ice. Perhaps his is due to kreen genetic memory remembering a time when Athas was a frozen snow covered tundra.
Thoughts?
As for the Kreen remembering a frozen world. Insects can't live in a frozen world, that's probably why that is their idea of hell, not because they remember it. The world could have gone through ice ages however, I've no problem with that. It's just that bugs and ice don't mix. Of course you can always make them mix if you want to, but there is something very surreal and unsettling about insects living in a frozen tundra. If there were thri-kreen during a period when the planet expirienced an ice age they would have been driven to the tropics where they could survive. If the ice age came suddenly many might have died.
The colors are for effect. Blue conjurers up feelings of peace and healing. Yellow is familiar and strong. Red is angry and malignant. I've never attributed any science to that feature of the setting, it doesn't really make sense to try, because it doesn't seem to have any basis in fact.
As for the Kreen remembering a frozen world. Insects can't live in a frozen world, that's probably why that is their idea of hell, not because they remember it. The world could have gone through ice ages however, I've no problem with that. It's just that bugs and ice don't mix. Of course you can always make them mix if you want to, but there is something very surreal and unsettling about insects living in a frozen tundra. If there were thri-kreen during a period when the planet expirienced an ice age they would have been driven to the tropics where they could survive. If the ice age came suddenly many might have died.
There are at least 5 different types of insects known to live in Antarctica. However, what if kreen where a subterranean race early in Athas history and didn't come to the surface till the Blue Age?
There are at least 5 different types of insects known to live in Antarctica. However, what if kreen where a subterranean race early in Athas history and didn't come to the surface till the Blue Age?
Hmmm.... That could easily work :D
Recorded Athasian history starts in the Blue Age. What are people's thoughts as to the this period before the known Blue Age? Was it drastically different from the time of rhulisti superiority? Were there other races beyond halflings and kreen? Was the world completely submerged and covered in water?
Share your ideas or thoughts. I have my own, but want to hear about others before sharing mine ;)
I tend to work with the idea that the Blue Age is just what, for those that "know" the history of Athas, is anything prior to the Rebirth. In actuality, it was not just one age, but several. I have (very roughly) sketched out the idea that the Rhulisti had actually developed and advanced, much as humans on Earth have, however rather than developing machine tech, the Rhulisti had developed biological tech (lifeshaping). I place the time for the Rhulisti to have been around on Athas for probably close to 100,000 years before the Rebirth. I also think one of the contributing factors for them having developed biological, rather than mechanical technology was because Athas was a water-world. Mechanical devices are far more prone to failure in a mostly-water environment as Athas had been. The Rhulisti had spread across the world, and I also believe entered into space (and I'm not talking about spelljamming here, because I tend to work with the notion that spelljamming works in a different kind of environment, an alternative "plane" if you will). However I don't think the Rhulisti had gotten too far into space before the Brown Tide and the mass number of changes resulting in the Rhulisti basically giving up their homeworld.
As the Rhulisti were biotech specialists, I also tend to think that maybe some of them might have helped the Nikaal along in their development, while part of me also wants to consider the idea that the Nikaal were put into a sort of "wildlife refuge" -- a protected place which the Rhulisti had put aside to let the Nikaal advance on their own. The Kreen (or rather the Trin) were little more than giant insect predators that existed during that time period, non-sentient; it wouldn't be until after the nature-benders had been exiled before they began to be "shaped" into a sentient species by the exiles.
that aside, i wouldn't rule out an age before the halflings. i like the idea of an age of gods and such flooded out and destroyed in some massive planetary catastrophe that left only the halflings, nikaal and some primitive kreen scattered about the planet. i'd imagine a "dark age" as the remaining halflings lived isolated lives on vast island chains and archipelago...then as they began to expand they encountered their brethren on other islands and civilization began anew.
if history is any indicator than the recorded history of athas is only 20,000 years or so of time. that's quite small really, and could have been preceded by 20,000...50,000...100,000...heck even 1,000,000 years of unrecorded or lost time! cities sunk beneath the waves, washed away by floods. trees, animals, and plants drowned in the deluge. after enough time there wouldn't be any remnant of this long-lost era.
if this pre-history had advanced civilizations and gods, with the ability to smelt iron and work metal, then that could also be the reason why athas is poor in metals; and would also support the fact that the halflings developed life-shaping after this era had ended.
what if there was 20,000 years of pre-history where vast civilizations ruled the world? it's a pretty neat idea.
Or they considered such things as being of little relevance to a fantasy game. Personally, my D&D games don't even take place in the same universe as ours, much less obey the same laws of physics. Folks are, of course, quite free to attempt to rationalise such things, but I feel that it may well prove to be a fruitless task as scant consideration seems to have been given to such issues when the 2e campaign worlds were being designed
Indeed. The fantasy elements of the setting are better explained if we see the biology of living creaures in DS with the same eye as people in earlier centuries saw it: there's all important blood, then there's the brain, and eyes, and mysterious internal organs, but apparently there's no real need for cells, bone marrow, or DNA. Even the halfling knowledge of pith doesn't work that much like DNA, but rather how people from earlier centuries would have thought the "building blocks of life" worked.
Basically what I'm saying is that life in DS is a simplified and more brutish version of real-world chemistry and biology, and that principles like evolution exist but act infinitely faster.
So, the scientific reality of Athas is like that of 15th-century Earth, about. Except its the truth, its not a missconception. For example, pith really works like that.
(Heh, and stellar mechanics really are those of 15th-century Earth.)
The Pristine Tower was used twice to change the sun's color/size - once to get rid of the Brown Tide, then again by Rajaat. Although it was built by the halflings of the Blue Age, there's no reason to assume that the ability to change the sun was only "discovered" at that point in time; apparently in the Dark Sun universe, the sun must be fairly maleable by various forces (life shaping, magic, etc.). So, perhaps the Blue Age and it's Blue Sun was just the "next step" in a progressive series of sun-changing events.
My thought is that there was at least one age before that of the halflings, possibly with a sun that was cooler than the Blue Age sun (so, a different color), or the other option being that Athas was much farther away from the sun than it is in later years. At this point in time we have real gods - the possibility of which is hinted at in several books - and have real civilizations with "normal" clerics. As someone mentioned, the Thri-kreen version of Hell is cold, and is based on the 8th player of Baator; and if an Athasian race had enough contact with evil outsiders at some point in the past to have developed a theological view of "Hell" based on that, odds are the outer planes were much closer to Athas at that time than they are now, and quite possibly even the Gray didn't exist.
At some point in time in this "normal" fantasy world, a huge war erupts, gods take sides, and all sorts of new, destructive forms of magic/psionics/lifeshaping/technology/etc. are created. Someone figures out how to harness the power of the sun for their own ends, and the result is that it turns blue and much hotter than it was.
On Earth, geological history tells us that at various times in the distant past the sea level has been over 300 feet lower than it is currently, and given that Athas apparently had *a lot* more water on it than Earth does (based on decriptions of the Blue Age), a quick increase in global temperatures coupled with the huge polar ice caps Athas must have had at the time would have had a devastating effect on the planet, creating a Deluge-like scenario (as mentioned in other posts) and wiping out most life. For whatever reasons, the halflings and thri-kreen (since they're known to have existed, albeit in a more primitive state, during the Blue Age) survive while every other intelligent race, and most other creatures are killed.
Given the astrophysics discussions that've gone on in this thread, there's really no way around it - under "normal" circumstances, a blue sun would have eventually wiped everything off of Athas. So, this is where the gods exit stage left - knowing that this catastrophy will result in the end of all life on Athas, they collectively "rearrange" the cosmological make-up - moving the outer planes farther out, the inner planes even closer, the Gray springs into existence, etc. Perhaps the Gray is actually created, with its *real* purpose (at that time, at least) being to shield the planet from the heat of the sun - the books and repeated discussions on this forum have pointed out that the Gray pretty much surrounds the Prime Material, so perhaps it also has the cross-planar property of physically shielding Athas from the otherwise destructive heat of the sun.
Anyhoo, this results in the gods being lost to Athas, the surviving halfings go feral (as they do again in future ages), and over the millenia re-evolve/develop back into a civilized society - the Blue Age. However, they retain just enough memory of the previous age - probably subconscious, since there's obviously no mention of this in any DS materials - that when the brown tide comes they re-invent sun manipulation, and then during the Rebirth this same subconscious memory is tapped when they re-create races that existed prior to the Blue Age, and also is the reason why deity-worship returns to the world.
Another thought, which could fit into the above idea, is that the Pyreen were the dominant species prior to the Blue Age...
Other than debates about real world physics vs fantasy no one has any further thoughts?
My reply was in the middle of that debate, but had nothing to do with that debate...
My reply was in the middle of that debate, but had nothing to do with that debate...
I wasn't naming or singling anybody out. I was just trying to continue the thread without further physics debates was all ;)
My reply was in the middle of that debate, but had nothing to do with that debate...
Heh, my appolgies if things got a little off-track; the question got asked, so I gave an answer to the best of my knowledge.