Ok, so let’s look into the origins of this thing called the Preserver Jihad. In the past the thing that I had the hardest time understanding was how this Pyreen who had worked so hard to foster good relations with the nations of the heartlands and to teach all who came to him magic could turn in such a way as to have the war last 1500 years and not be put down in the beginning. In order to look at the reasons behind it all, I think that we need to understand how magic was able to overcome the power of psionics, and understand that nature of the situation at the time.
At the height of the Green Age psionics was the power that held sway over everything. However, since psionics was the power, it was controlled. Let’s face it, those who know how to fully master the Will and the Way need to train, and this then becomes a thing that only the rich nobility can truly afford. Merchant Houses, and other rich folks can train, but the vast majority of individuals right before the time Rajaat starts teaching magic cannot afford the training.
Enter Rajaat, who teaches anyone, and does not charge for it. This is the thing that makes the most sense to me, and the only reason that I can come up with that allows for magic to become a power over psionics. Magic, available to all who can master it, becomes a possible way to advance now for thousands who haven’t had the option before.
After training vast numbers of wizards over the years, Rajaat has mages serving as advisors and counselors to rules and heads of noble houses across the globe. Magic was growing and was a rival to the power of psionics. Also, up to this point there were no defilers. Why would a Pyreen teach people to take more from the land than needed? After a while, Rajaat finds the methods he needs, discovers the process for champion creation, and plans the Cleansing Wars. Before that can begin though, it would be better to take the power that you gave the world out of it before you begin. Besides, the Jihad can serve as a training tool for the Warlords. So:
From Faces of the Forgotten North:
Rajaat gathered his followers together and revealed to them the fact that there were those whom had take up the power that he had so freely offered and were now misusing this power. These wizards, these traitors to all others who practiced the arcane, would doom them all with their misuse of power unless they were stopped. He beseeched those gathered at the foot of the Pristine Tower to join with him and make this situation right once more in order to save them all. With cheers and shouts of victory, the war that would be called the Preserver Jihad began. The war began is secret, striking at those holdings of wizards who Rajaat said were abusing their power, and as the struggle escalated, all who opposed the War-Bringer’s will were seen as enemy sympathizers and were killed as well.
More on the jihad later...to over come with emotion to continue now.
Good stuff. You may be interested in the Hand of Rajaat (check my signature) PrC I created awhile back. It is strongly tied to the Jihad.
I have looked at it before. I liked it. It works for the feel that I envisioned.
How about the ideas behind what I am saying? Anyone else have ideas? The point (at least for me) is to find out how they started. What kind of world existed at the time and how did Rajaat convince people to be defilers who weren't necessarily evil to begin with. Maybe some loose morals, but not out-right-kick-zackles-cause-it's-fun evil. The title Jihad implies a belief of some kind, religious or otherwise.
The calendar has something crazy like 7 or 8 THOUSAND years between The Rebirth and the dawning of the age of magic. Considering that in real life, (and a gross simplification) it has only been 600 years since a medieval level of tech, and about 6000 years since the stone age, you can have Psionic Technology get pretty advanced in those 8000 years before the emergence of magic.
There's also been a few supplements that has given us clues to how advanced Psionics got. They've detailed things like continent spanning subways, automated street sweepers, world spanning communication. It almost makes me imagine a strange sort of Flintstones-like suburbia with enslaved psionic orbs taking the place of the dinosaur driven appliances.
We assume that magic took the world by storm because we imagine that before the Cleansing Wars we would have a society something akin to a standard fantasy world. The age of magic was about 1500 years long, and that is plenty of time for a world spanning cultural change.
Powerful Psionic devices would allow psionics to be policed. When Psionic Green Age society reached the centuries just before Rajaat's Preserver Revolution, I would think that enough of a 'psionics industry' existed to have heavy regulation of the development of psionic powers and powerful psionic artifacts enforcing those rules. Technology utilizing the psionic orbs was generating a lifestyle for the privileged races (Elves, Humans, Gnomes, Trolls) that was approaching the high Blue Age, and something our 21st century selves would be pretty comfortable with. (We could guess that less privileged races like Orcs, Goblins, and Wemics would be living in a 'third world' situation as well.)
Since psionic intelligences are immortal, they would have a strong stagnation effect on society if they were in any sort of position of authority. (See MLotLS) Maybe the high point of the Green Age I have been describing lasted for thousands of years with virtually no advancement. Regardless, in order for the Preserver Revolution idea to work, you would have to make magic a preferable option to psionics. So if psionics are strictly regulated by powerful authoritarian immortal intelligences, then when Rajaat starts teaching magic, people can take on a source of power that doesn't rely on psionic orbs at all.
Once you have powerful Mages running around, then I imagine a world wide turmoil as the psionic orbs and their infrastructures get overthrown by warlords and heroes and their Merlins. So once the High Psionics starts to recede into history, then a "neo-medievalism" would establish itself. And you would have a 'standard' fantasy world ready for Rajaat to start ruining.
When the Preserver Jihad started, their already was 10000 years of ruins and history on Athas. When the mages started assassinating and picking each other off, most of the large empires that were still around probably only saw a change of leadership and personnel and may not have had many warning flags get raised. Eventually the difference between Defiling and Preserving would be known, and mages all over Athas would be choosing sides and trying to kill each other. I don't think that the Preserver Jihad followed good vs. evil so much as defilers really hate preservers so the preservers hate back sort of mutual prejudice thing.
Eventually it would erupt in a full out mage war, with the races and empires of Athas pretty much out of the loop. I wonder if the world would pause and watch or would the nations of Athas fight along side.
I think in order to differentiate the Preserver Jihad and The Cleansing Wars the Preserver Jihad needs to be more of a mage on mage war. I am thinking of Ars Magica in style here. Maybe companions and friends would be involved, but not Empires.
So a few survivors aside, the Preservers get wiped out. Then Rajaat makes his Champions, turns the Sun red, and starts the genocide. We've pretty much established that enough Preservers survived to be a presence during The Cleansing Wars, so the Preserver Jihad wasn't a war of genocide, but more of a war to break the power structure of the Preserver organizations.
Okay... ramble over. Thank you for reading my brain dump.
What did others think of that story?
Concerning the other ideas written in this thread, I do not think the height of the psionic Green Age period was, in a sense, brought down by revolutions and wizard heroes once magic came along. I think the reference material points to an even greater "golden age" than before, and as such magic would have been integrated into the society of the time, rather smoothly.
But the assessment that arcane magic was such a widespread success because it wasn't government-regulated is, IMO, dead on.
I really like the poetry of The Wind Mages, and how the Defiler Warlords just couldn't keep up with them. That specifically, I would like to make new history. I'm obviously not endorsing the whole thing, because I haven't read it.
Second, in defense of the Magic Revolution.
There are two assumptions that I am working from that brings me to the Magic Revolution idea.
- When The Cleansing wars started, Athas was similar in character to a typical fantasy campaign. Meaning there is an approximately medieval level of technology, Mages are relatively uncommon to the general population, warfare uses mostly melee weapons, the economy was largely rural.
- 9000 years is a long time for there to be no progress and innovation. The Green Age started with the cast offs of the Rhulisti civilization, and they had powerful lifeshaping technology, flying machines, and were even advanced enough to send ships into orbit. (The Messenger) If Athas had anything resembling Progress even close to what we have on Earth, sometime in those 9000 years, Athasians should have recovered from the Blue Age and had a society advanced even by 21st century Earth standards. For example, Skyscrapers. It's just simple physics, stone, steel and no magic at all to build a building over 50 stories. With psionic lifts for elevators, surely 9000 years is long enough to figure out how to do it. Where are the skyscraper ruins? (don't say there wasn't enough metal, we established in earlier threads that there was plenty of metal to go around when fielding Cleansing Wars armies.)
If there was an advanced psionic infrastructure, how is it possible that we have no evidence of it in Red Age Athas? We have the Mind Lords of the Last Sea... That's it. The first map is about the size of Colorado and was reputed to be the center of Athasian civilization. Sure we have allot of ruins, but where are the devices? The roads? The aqueducts? The metropolises? The huge psionic orbs that cleaned the streets, or herded the Erdlus? Even inert, a few of them should be laying around. The libraries? Even in a genocide that took over 1000 years, surely they would not have all been pulverized. Why is it that all the ruins we see in the adventures look Medieval or Ancient World and not more advanced in architecture? Why is it that the supposed flying ship technology has been completely lost and now we have wheeled barges hanging out in the docks of Balic?
I don't think saying The Cleansing Wars destroyed it all is enough. If there were nations and empires going strong at the end of the Green Age that had the combined powers of Psionics AND Magic, how could a Preserver Jihad even get started? If green Age Athasians were so advanced, wasn't there some sort of secret service? As advanced as Athas would be if magic and psionics created a sort of Utopian society, could NOBODY sniff out Rajaat?? Champions are powerful to be sure, but an advanced empire covering a continent surely has enough resources to run counter a lunatic pyreen and a handful of demigods.
Unless, (and this is where I'm making a defense for the Magic Revolution) the mere introduction of magic into an advanced psionic society, destabilized it enough with new wars and power struggles where there was a near world wide recession, and the old psionic technology started to fall into disuse, 1500 years before The Cleansing Wars even began. Then with magic users (not just wizards and sorcerers) in power, psionicists didn't have the large schools that they needed to develop the epic skills required to run an advanced society. Psionicists just became Psions and Psychic Warriors, and occupied the same social echelon as the Wizards did. Society reverted to rural feudalism, and would have started to make another comeback, but Rajaat started his Preserver Jihad, and then the Cleansing Wars, stifling any domestic innovation and destroying Athas in the process.
Others have pointed on another thread, and I agree with them, that there were wide differences of social outlook during the Green Age. The very fact that those people had either various religions, or one big pantheist religion, and lived in city-states with their own laws and styles of governments, shows that despite the potential that high psionics brought the period that it is not everyone who took advantage of that potential. The government of then Saragar did do so, while that of Tar-elon failed to do so.
About your other argument about the paralells with modern day real world civilization, Exiled, I believe such a paralell cannot be made. Most fantasy worlds, and Athas seems to fit the bill, stop developping technologically speaking after a while. There need be no wars or such potentially limiting events to crush the advance. If I understand you correctly, the advent of magic is a factor necessary to explain why the Green Age period did not develop along real world lines. This, I believe, is a mistaken assumption. The technological level of development is preset by the game designers, who decided how far Athas could go. Same with other worlds. This translates into explanatory glimpses into a "golden" past. In one example in CbtSS, a psionic obsidian orb relates how the world worked in the past. Through such glimpses, plus what we see in The Cerulean Storm, Mind Lords, and the various post-revised boxed set histories of Athas' past, we get hints that there was a - perhaps - renaissance-level technological society during the Green Age. Even then, like I mentionned, the levels of technology were specific to each city-state, each domain of the ancients. Some had subteranean transit tunnels and guardian meorties, some had none.
You describe a medieval level of technology as for the period of the start of the Wars. If you look at Dragon's Crown's accounts of the siege of Akarackle (the fortress on the volcanic island) you'll see it had these immense ramparts, 20 feet high, forming a line that stretches as far as the eye can see in both directions. These, and the fact modern-day athasians can build psionic silt skimmers, human-powered and wind-powered heavy land vehicules used in war, and other mechanical or psionic marvels, shows just how far things would have went in the past. I'd say that Green Age technology was in many places as advanced as the Enlightenment period, and in others was mediavel.
Skyscrapers seem to have existed in the past. Towers were erected that were very tall (albeit they were not square and as sturdy as real skyscrapers), and one novel (The Darkness Before the Dawn) even describes buildings with 10 or more floors during the Green Age in some cities. The tallest buildings in such cities, and in places like Guistenal, have since crumbled unto themselves.
Again according to The Darkness Before the Dawn, some cities had buildings with central heating like the romans had, and aqueducs, marvels not currently present in modern-day Athas.
About an athasian secret service, the past was, like today, a disjointed period and apparently never ceased to be. City-states ruled, races ruled in some locales, dialects were rampant, what with all the races and city-state languages, there were clashing world views and clashing outlooks on life depnding on race, all things that prevented the Green Age to be anything but a giant melting pot where everything was possible but nothing could go very far uniformly. Some places, some cultures, went far, others didn't. In those circumstances a powerful group, unified under the banner of a single man (read the defiler forces at the start of the Jihad), could have incredible leeway among Green Age societies, attacking with impunity one locale without much reaction from neighbors who speak another language, worship another god or gods, boast members of various races, have different world views.
The same mentality would have applied during the Cleansing Wars. Cities would have declared themselves neutral, indicating they saw themselves as alone and not part of a greater construct called a "country", and thus did not help its neighbors who were attacked by the Champions. (Bodach did exactly that, albeit I have no clear idea if it was destroyed during the Jihad or the Wars.)
I believe the Green Age was a marvelous place of high magic and high psionics, in many ways as advanced as the Enlightenment period, in others at a medieval level, and in some characterisitcs - mainly the sense of belonging to a vast country like the greek city-states felt when they were invaded by foreign powers - even less advanced than the greeks.
Sorry if these ramblings are disjointed
Glad you like the ideas, but let's wait until I'm actually done writing it before suggesting that "someone" should rewrite it. Drafts are generally rough around the edges, and if that's a problem, I won't post them here.
I wasn't aware this was a draft. I thought it had been polished before by the guy who wrote it. Sorry for the missunderstanding.
Buried City
Heres my mental notes from my own game. In tomorrows session the PCs get to go there.
During the age of magic the Buried City was once known as Helios. Alone out of all the cities of ancient Athas it focused on arcane studies dedicated to path dexter. 3 great pyramids were constructed dedicated to the ancient faiths of Athas. The largest pyramid was called the sun pyramid while the smaller two were known as Ral and Guthay. It was believed the pyramids were also used to enhance the defences of Helios. A powerful diviner named Azorious (LN Preserver level 30+?)who was a former pupil of Rajaat dismissed by him was also able to penetrate the veil of time like the Mindlords of Saragar once had millenia before. Horrified by what he saw he erected a powerful mythal like effect around his city protecting it from defiler magic. Defilers were unable to draw power from the plants while withen Helios. See Lost Empires of Faerun for rules on Mythals. The mythal was tied to an orb and centered on the mystic powers of the 3 pyramids.
Throughout the age of magic Helios became more withdrawn from the affairs of the world at large. Throughout the Preserver Jyhad it provided a sanctuary for any preserver who wished to hide but decleared itself strictly neutral. With the mythal stopping defiler magic, its remote location and neutrality Rajaat turned a blind eye to the city for now. Azorious was also able to prolong his life into something close to near immortality and may have been the greatest preserver to ever live. While he never became an Avangion his notes on life preservation and magical theory were later recovered by agents of Oronis and formed a basis of a new spell. One day while the mystics were meditating on top of the pyramid-temples the sun changed colour to a harsh crimson red. Additionally travelers tales told of war being raged throughout the rest of Athas. The Cleansing Wars had begun.
Throughout the Cleansing Wars Helios once again decleared itself neutral. Non humans were also encouraged to leave the city so the champions would have no reason to come visiting. Whle Azorious was a preserver he was also a pragmatist and placed the welfare of his city above any ethical concerns he had toward the fate of non humans throughout the land. He also found himself unable to confront Rajaat due to lingering feelings of kinship. For some unknown reason Rajaat champions bypassed the city and left it alone. Perhaps Rajaat had his own private reasons or perhaps he was to busy secluded in the Pristine Tower but Helios was spared as no individual champion wished to challenge Azorious for so little gain. For whatever reason Helios survived the Cleansing Wars intact.
In the years immediately following the Cleansing Wars Helios underwent great hardship. Azorious's life preserving magic was starting to fail and the desert was advancing. Preservers had managed to stave off the effects of the dark sun upon Helios and its environs. However the the creation of Lava Gorge to the north and the legacy of the cleansing wars doomed Helios which Azorious and the senate now realised. They started to research a way to save the city when destruction incarnate showed up at the city gates. The horrors of the Cleansing War had now caught up with it as Borys the Dragon of Tyr was half way through his rage period reached the city. While unable to draw upon defiling magic the few remaining preservers were no match for his psionics and brute power. The mythal also didn't ward out Dragons (epic) magic. Azorious in failing health faced the Dragon alone and while unable to defeat him sacrificed his life to power his greatest spell yet- enchancing the Mythal so it was powerful enough to ward out the Dragon himself. The Dragon in his madness fled the ruins of Helios while the few survivors left the city and the desert sands swallowed the city. To this day in a hidden chamber in the pyramids, the Orb of Azorious maintains the mythal. The orb also contains the remnants of Azorious's shattered spirit.
The Buried City Today.
To this day the majority of Helios lies buried under the desert sands. The sands sometimes shift revealing fragments of the ruined city to the rest of Athas. Currently the 3 pyramids are visable as are scattered pockets of the city. Several sites are inhabited as water from the cities underground resivor continues to trickle to the surface. The factions include.
The Sundancers. An elf tribe lead by Adarian Sundancer (fighter 4/Psychic Warrior 12). This tribe is currently resting in the ruins as they offer reasonable access to water. The tribe is also looting the ruins when they get the chance and sell the items to other tribes or in Kurn and beyond.
The Golden Ones. Lead by the "Golden Mul" (Gladiator 5/Barbarian4/Sun Cleric4)this band of raiders is currently based around the pyramid of the Sun. The Golden Mul was originally from Tyr and raided the occasional caravan until defeated and left to die in the desert. Mortally wounded and hamstrung by a Kreen who ate his tendons he was "rescued" from the verge of death by a passing Sun cleric who judged his ordeal in the sun as a trial and taught him magic. Driven by revenge he passed another trial which turned his skin an amber gold in colour. 2 PCs survive from the party that left him to die ;)
The Unseen. A small band of Pyreen inhabit the ruins. They avoid everyone but secretly tend to the wards that still stand to this day. They are starting to suspect an undead presence somewhere in the city......
Game effects of the Buried Cities Ward/Mythal.
1. While withen 1 mile of the Sun Pyramid defiling magic doesn't work. Defilers may not draw energy from plants and the terrain is treated as obsidian. This applies to all magic spells except for epic spells. Defilers with access to alternate sources of power such as the black or the cerulean storm may cast their spells but are unable to defile.
2. All Dragons are unable to enter. This applies to all creatures with the Dragon creature type. This wards out the Dragon, most Sorceror Kings, and creatures such as wyverns, drakes etc..
and in the process erecting a stronger ward around the city. Merchants tales tell of a great beast leaving death and destruction in its wakes. The council has sent out several scouting parties to investigate although none have returned yet. Foolish rumours speak of the ravaging beast as the Dragon although such creatures are legendary and have never existed on the face of Athas. It has been almost 3 decades since the wars have finished and the land continues to die. In the Champions efforts to save us from the inhuman armies great swathes of land were defiled and crops have begun to fail.Yesterday there was a riot over food distribution. Several eminent preservers from the Academy have sent requests to local druids and water cleric to help but the sands continue to advance.
Day 272 Year of Silts Vengeance 164th Kings Age
The situation in Helios continues to worsen. I've sent my family to a nearby oasis to sit out the disorder. Civil authority has all but collapsed and this so called Dragon has been spotted less than a days travel from the cities gates. Current reports seem in indicate the great beast is insane from rage and is defiling the land at random. Several corpses have been retrieved from the outer villages and they seem to have been sucked dry of their lifeforce. Davidius from the council has requested my attendence as they are prearing the defences against the Dragon. Azorious himself has gone into seclusion and is preparing a spell of great power to drive off the beast forever. The so called Sorceror Kings cower in their cities to the south in the face of the Dragons wrath. If the Champions such as Gallard Gnome Bane, Keltis Lizard Man Executioner, and Borys the Butcher of Dwarves, were still here we would have nothing to fear. It would appear they were betrayed by the Sorceror Kings curse them all to the black. We've petitioned all 12 Sorceror Kings for aid but they're all to far away or busy. Oronis of Kurn is still rebuilding the city form the Cleansing Wars after it was sacked by Albeorn the Slayer of Elves. The usurper Daskinor of Eldaarich doesn't trust anyone espicially after he killed Daskinor Goblin Death and took his name.
Day 273 Year of Sits Vengeance 164th Kings Age
The city walls have been breached. The council confronted the Dragon at the South Gate and were evaporated by the beast breath- a cone of super heated sand. The few survivors fled and sought refuge in the academy. Spellguards from the academy passed my window bearing Azorious towards the Pyramid of the Sun and he was carrying his orb. Rumors persist he is over 2000 years old but it would seem his life preservation magic is finally failing him as he barely seems conscious. I doubt he was really alive during the time of magic but I have heard him talk about his former master who dismissed him. Refugees from the southern section of Helios continue to stream north and have overwhelmed the guards on the north gate and have fled into the desert. The Dragon continues to ravage the southern sections of the city and from here I can see beast climb the Tower of Divination. The defenders form the other 7 towers rain spells upon the Dragon but they seem to fail to penetrate the beasts hide. This will be my final entry until the Dragon is driven off. I must go to the academy and join my brethren and assist Azorious in his spell.
Jazreem Initiate of the 12th Circle
There was no flying ship technology. Here I'm presuming you mean flying silt skimmers. Andropinis is said to have been trying for years to develop such a contraption, without success. The only people who flew using flying artificial devices, then, were the rhulisti and their flying lifeshaped creatures.
I was talking about the rhulisti. Since the rhulisti culture is almost entirely unknown, but they didn't have widespread Magic or psionics but they had a life shaping technology. I take the presence of flying ships as an indicator that as a civilization they had to be quite advanced.
And is there anything saying there wasn't flying psionic devices? Or is there just things saying that Andropinis is trying to make them? Where does it say, 'there were no psionic flying machines in the green age'?
As a matter of fact, the only sign of "industry" I can find are the subteranean tunnels and their psionic ferry systems (crewed by a floater psion), tunnels which existed in other places besides the Last Sea, and the psionic orbs used to light and clean streets, and guard locales. Those are, by their very generalized design and reproductibility factor, signs of an industrial outlook during the high psionic era.
I agree. They are both great indicators of a high level of industry.
Others have pointed on another thread, and I agree with them, that there were wide differences of social outlook during the Green Age.
The government of then Saragar did do so, while that of Tar-elon failed to do so.
Who are the Tar-elon?
About your other argument about the paralells with modern day real world civilization, Exiled, I believe such a paralell cannot be made. Most fantasy worlds, and Athas seems to fit the bill, stop developping technologically speaking after a while.
Sure. I was trying to inject some reason into a fantasy world. So ultimately you can rely on the 'it's a fantasy world so that's how it was' argument, but I would rather try to come up with some justification to account for 9000 years that started and ended with pretty much the same thing. I hear your arguments for the disparity between the haves and the have-nots. The same thing can be said for real life with pygmies one one end and urban westerners on the other. I will address this below.
There need be no wars or such potentially limiting events to crush the advance. If I understand you correctly, the advent of magic is a factor necessary to explain why the Green Age period did not develop along real world lines. This, I believe, is a mistaken assumption. The technological level of development is preset by the game designers, who decided how far Athas could go.
Actually I'm not trying to say magic stymied technological innovation. I'm trying to say that the advent of magic brought ruin to an already advanced civilization. I think Rajaat was called the War Bringer long before the Preserver Jihad and the Cleansing Wars.
And I'm not going to just say; 'the designers made it that way so that's how it is'. I want to come up with a reasonable situation that would result in what the designers designed.
I'd say that Green Age technology was in many places as advanced as the Enlightenment period, and in others was mediavel.
That makes sense. We really don't know who did and who didn't have a high civilization. We can guess that Dwarves and Elves were lucky because they survived the Cleansing Wars. We can guess that Goblins, Kobolds, and Orcs were on the outside because they died out and their typical likenesses on other worlds are rather savage.
Some places, some cultures, went far, others didn't. In those circumstances a powerful group, unified under the banner of a single man (read the defiler forces at the start of the Jihad), could have incredible leeway among Green Age societies, attacking with impunity one locale without much reaction from neighbors who speak another language, worship another god or gods, boast members of various races, have different world views.
I can buy that. It makes allot of sense. But are you seriously going to stick to 'it stayed medieval because it was a fantasy world, and fantasy worlds are medieval', and not try to think of some sort of development? With the inclusion of the Rhulisti, I think the origins of Athas seems to have almost a science fiction origin, and needs a bit more explanation then 'just 'cuz.'
I believe the Green Age was a marvelous place of high magic and high psionics, in many ways as advanced as the Enlightenment period, in others at a medieval level, and in some characterisitcs - mainly the sense of belonging to a vast country like the greek city-states felt when they were invaded by foreign powers - even less advanced than the greeks.
That's easy to agree to. When do you see the downfall happening? With the Cleansing Wars? You don't see the introduction of Magic causing any chaos at all?
Did Athas ever develop nation states? In the Tyr region and beyond it just seems likecity states going back to beyond the rebirth. Also I wonder if there are green age ruins in the Kreen Empire. Parts of Athas in some ways had 18th century tech level or so but I don't think they developed gun powder. I wonder how advance Saragar or Giustenal were compared to other cities.
Mind Lords suggests that Saragar was part of a larger dominion, and even today, the different towns under the Mind Lords dominion goes beyond the city-state/client village relationship.
I'd venture that Giustenal was about as advanced as they come, given the presence of the planar mirror and the fact that it was a halfling city resettled to accomodate rebirth races.
WRotJC says that rhul-thaun today have "living, flying craft" (page 5) and "flying vehicles" (back cover). If anyone knows of sources that suggest that the Rhulisti could not have had air ships, speak now!
I would not posit that anyone other than advanced halflings used airships during the Green Age, but I can't think of a compelling reason why others would not have developed such technology. Generalized air travel conflicts with my picture of the Green Age, but I cannot disprove it from the currently published sources.
One could argue that if Andropinis is anywhere near to completing a flying version of an obsidian skimmer today, that surely such things must have existed in the Green Age. But according to the WJ, page 3, the sea of silt covers about 120,000 square miles and sits in the middle of the flat band of land that we call the Tablelands, which in turn (page 4) is incircled by various ranges of ringing mountains. This seems born out by the fact that the eastern shore of the sea of silt is about 300 miles due east of Tarelon and 100 miles west by northwest of Haakar, on the Isle of Morghaz.
In other words, unless the Wanderer's geography is completely off, we're talking about something that's smaller than the Black Sea. The major cities on our map, as best I can tell, were Giustenal and Bodach. Balic may also have been important. Tyr seems to be the only major human land-locked city that we absolutely know existed before the time of magic.
Under those circumstances, shipping by water would take care of a rich economy.
Now Mind Lords does say that Kovreset came from the area now called the Crimson Savanah, and if there were many human or elven civilizations down there, that might be reason for flying. But ... if you have advanced psionic civilizations, with obsidian orbs that use their power for human convenience, then there might have been obsidan spheres with the teleportation circle power. Once you've got a power like that, why would you even need mass flying?
Even if only two or three cities in the known world possessed something as powerful as a teleportation circle, those cities would probably also be the ones most likely to have the capacity to produce something like a flying machine. And while technology catches on fairly easily to other cultures, psionics isn't so easily easy to replicate.
And is there anything saying there wasn't flying psionic devices? Or is there just things saying that Andropinis is trying to make them? Where does it say, 'there were no psionic flying machines in the green age'?
I took the underground tunnels to be an indicator that Green Age minds did not think in terms of airplanes. They built straight, vast, unencumbered passageways that would allow for continuous acceleration without impediments like bad weather, lack of light, or uncontrolled traffic. A single platform ferries people back and forth across the land, taking an underground shortcut.
I'm not going to say that building such vast underground tunnels are the most logical of enterprises, but that's how fantasy worlds are. (Here's an example: Why would a people go to the trouble of scultping an entire mountain so it can look like a king's face? Wouldn't it be simpler to invent printing and send copies of the king's face into every home, or to have someone make hundreds of copies of a single statue of the king, placing it in every town square? In a fantasy world, it might be a more appropriate idea to sculpt the entire mountain.)
Who are the Tar-elon?
Sorry
Page 62 of the current version of Terrors of the Dead Lands. Its the Green Age name for what is today a ruin called Tarelon, on the bottom right of the original boxed set map.
Tar-elon wasn't a terribly advnace city, yet it had its greatness of sort. It stayed at its peak for the entire time of the Green Age, and only fell when the Champions came to its doors. This tells me that the Jihad was not like a terrible world war at all, but rather something that could be safely ignored if it did not affect your little corner of the world.
I think Rajaat was called the War Bringer long before the Preserver Jihad and the Cleansing Wars.
I do not think so. I believe he was the First Sorcerer to all, then became known as the Warbringer when the Cleansing Wars started. The origin of this title could be pinned down to an earlier period, perhaps the start of the Jihad, if one made an extensive cross-search of the various histories found in the supplements.
But are you seriously going to stick to 'it stayed medieval because it was a fantasy world, and fantasy worlds are medieval', and not try to think of some sort of development? With the inclusion of the Rhulisti, I think the origins of Athas seems to have almost a science fiction origin, and needs a bit more explanation then 'just 'cuz.'
Yes, I'm serious.
In SF there are civilizations that stay at, say, a medieval level of tech, for thousands of years. I do not presume to know at all what causes advancements in a society. I just know that on Earth things went very slowly for a long while, and only a few societies managed to continuously go forward. Some went far but stopped changing, and only one society - the European one - managed to continuously go forward at a faster rate than the others, which lead to eventual conquest of a large part of the globe. (France and its colonies, England and its colonies, Portugal, etc.)In a world where scientific technologies are impossible - electronics, light bulbs - I'd imagine that many of the other trappings of modern thought, such as ever-taller highrises, construction plants, banking, are also absent (albeit not inherently impossible).
When do you see the downfall happening? With the Cleansing Wars? You don't see the introduction of Magic causing any chaos at all?
I see it happening with the CWs. Before that the Jihad was a challenge for societies: Either get rid of your preservers, renoucing all affiliations with them, or suffer the consequences. Since the preservers were not a people but rather, one could say, a profession, then its one that nearly went extinct. The world adapted, a few places were raised to the ground, populations massacred (this is what happened to Bodach), but otherwise societies switched to welcoming and training defilers, simply putting defilers into the same roles preservers played. Complying towns heard of distant resistance and rumors of terrible massacres, soon to be forgotten.
Only when the Wars came did chaos ensue. The human cities and villages were bled for human troops generation after generation, their lifelong neighbors - peaceful trolls or gnomes - gone. The great cities that were multiracial either expelled their non-human population, creating a terrible rift in morale and job functions, or perished at the hands of the Champions.
If one looks at the state of the world as described in RaFoaDK, when Hamanu was human and before he rebelled agaisnt Rajaat, we see a world that is already far better than today's Athas. Most Champions are fighting far away wars and have stopped tapping local human populations for troops, so regular life is starting anew in what are now human lands. There is still grass and rivers and lakes, and rain. I believe that if Borys wasn't made into the Dragon and ravaged the knwon world for a 100 years, the Champions would have settled not in cities surrounded by deserts, but ones surrounded by grass and myriads of small, independant communities, villages, and towns. Everything that hadn't a Champion in it to protect it from the Dragon during that 100 year period is now gone, most of it in ruin.
WRotJC says that rhul-thaun today have "living, flying craft" (page 5) and "flying vehicles" (back cover). If anyone knows of sources that suggest that the Rhulisti could not have had air ships, speak now!
IIRC Rhul-thaun have primitive flying beasts, like pterodactyls, and have gas-filled whale-like living balloons.
But in one of the pictures in Windriders, you see a Blue-Age organic seadoo that doesn't look like an animal at all, i.e. like a giant sea serpent one would ride on its back. So if they had speedboats, why wouldn't they have airships? Its all too possible, just that modern-day rhul-thaun do not.
Mind Lords suggests that Saragar was part of a larger dominion, and even today, the different towns under the Mind Lords dominion goes beyond the city-state/client village relationship.
Cool, then maybe the cream of the cream was starting to develop beyond the ciy-state model and towards the nation state, which would have made any such people a great power of the age in its ability to hold vast stretches of land and a great number of people under one rule, compaired to its fractuous neighbors.
Under those circumstances, shipping by water would take care of a rich economy.
Mmm, yes, and in Brian's maps we get a better picture of the "central lands", we could call them, in that they comprise the Sunrise Sea at its center, and the Tablelands in the southwestern quandrant. Basically all of Green Age "central" - not counting far away lands - could have been in a crescent around the sea, using water ships for commerce.
But ... if you have advanced psionic civilizations, with obsidian orbs that use their power for human convenience, then there might have been obsidan spheres with the teleportation circle power. Once you've got a power like that, why would you even need mass flying?
Good point. This would not count as industrialized long-distance travel per say, but rather that every rich society could boast such circles and use them to travel to client villages or to allied cities. Since this is not described anywhere, it would have to be reserved for the very top, like Guistenal or Saragar.
Even if only two or three cities in the known world possessed something as powerful as a teleportation circle, those cities would probably also be the ones most likely to have the capacity to produce something like a flying machine. And while technology catches on fairly easily to other cultures, psionics isn't so easily easy to replicate.
Our minds are converging again. Good stuff.
I took the underground tunnels to be an indicator that Green Age minds did not think in terms of airplanes. They built straight, vast, unencumbered passageways that would allow for continuous acceleration without impediments like bad weather, lack of light, or uncontrolled traffic. A single platform ferries people back and forth across the land, taking an underground shortcut.
I'm not going to say that building such vast underground tunnels are the most logical of enterprises, but that's how fantasy worlds are. (Here's an example: Why would a people go to the trouble of scultping an entire mountain so it can look like a king's face? Wouldn't it be simpler to invent printing and send copies of the king's face into every home, or to have someone make hundreds of copies of a single statue of the king, placing it in every town square? In a fantasy world, it might be a more appropriate idea to sculpt the entire mountain.)
Yep. Truth is stranger than fiction, and much of what we call the real world is a product of human imagination.
But underground tunnels might be logical if you were rhulisti using life-shaping technologies that dug them for you, or if you were humans living in a city where rhulisti lived before, and the tunnels were already mostly dug out for you.
Page 62 of the current version of Terrors of the Dead Lands. Its the Green Age name for what is today a ruin called Tarelon, on the bottom right of the original boxed set map.
Tar-elon wasn't a terribly advnace city, yet it had its greatness of sort. It stayed at its peak for the entire time of the Green Age, and only fell when the Champions came to its doors. This tells me that the Jihad was not like a terrible world war at all, but rather something that could be safely ignored if it did not affect your little corner of the world.
Agreed. This is how a sophisticated city like Bodach could delude itself into believing that it's profession of neutrality would protect it. OTOH, that's not necessarily that different from a world war after all.
In SF there are civilizations that stay at, say, a medieval level of tech, for thousands of years. I do not presume to know at all what causes advancements in a society.
I suspect that progress is the natural state of the human mind, and that we should instead look to the factors that stop societies from progressing. Guns, Germs, and Steel makes a solid case that geography, i.e. lack of resources that prevent a society from advancing. Without certain plant and animal types you can't progress beyond the hunter-gatherer stage, and a lack of other nearby cultures at the same lattitude as you prevent effective trade (since plant and animals types can be shared across the same lattitude). I think also that a culture can structure itself to hamper progress. A culture that focuses too much power in the aristocracy and too much labor in the hand-to-mouth working caste, ends up with little means of progress. By cutting out the professional class, some types of feudal societies separated educational opportunity from a strong motive to work, and once you've divorced those two, your society goes nowhere, unless other societies are introducing new technologies. So if you combine an ultra-feudal society with a xenophobic government or an isolationist geography, and you're going to end up centuries behind other more open societies.
While the printing press was used in the west as a democratizing tool, that was kind of a fluke of history. China and Turkey had the printing press for centuries, but managed to keep it in the hands of the very powerful. You don't have to control who can read, when you can control who can publish.
I think that magic and high psionics would be easier to contain among the upper classes than technology. Technology has a trickle down effect. Once you're over the hump of developing it, it gradually gets cheaper and more accessible. Psionics has its natural prodigies, but psionic schools are very important. And magic, well, on Athas you don't see natural born magical prodigies.
I think the fact that we switch from the World's Age to the King's Age at the beginning of the Green Age is telling. Balic has a traditional republic system that might date to the Green Age, but I think most of these societies were run by kings. Some might have been powerful psionicists. Taskenir in Giustenal seems to have some aspects of a god-king, doesn't he? I think we should look at the Inca empire for a model for at least one of the societies, since the whole Athasian calendar seems based on the Inca calendar, with the two rotating wheels of years combined for the year name, etc.
I just know that on Earth things went very slowly for a long while, and only a few societies managed to continuously go forward. Some went far but stopped changing, and only one society - the European one - managed to continuously go forward at a faster rate than the others, which lead to eventual conquest of a large part of the globe. (France and its colonies, England and its colonies, Portugal, etc.)
Jared Diamond fixates on Geography as the sole explanation for this, but I think he fumbles when it comes to explaining why China was so advanced and then came to a stop. China shows that Diamond's determinist approach doesn't explain everything, even though it explains a great deal. Culture and social structure affect progress, and you can even see this in Diamond's second video if you read between the lines at what he's saying about the Hidalgo culture.
In a world where scientific technologies are impossible - electronics, light bulbs - I'd imagine that many of the other trappings of modern thought, such as ever-taller highrises, construction plants, banking, are also absent (albeit not inherently impossible).
Sometimes having one technology or advantage, keeps you from developing another. Necessity is the mother of invention, etc. Since airplains in our world started as a toy and convenience for the ultra rich and powerful, I'd bet that the existence of teleportation (even at a high price) would have prevented the rich from developing air-ships. When you posit a technology, ask, is there anything that the very rich people would have had, from divine magic or from psionics, that would make this technology unnecessary? If the answer is yes, then unless the culture was really really egalitarian (and it probably wasn't), then they probably would not develop the technology. The rich didn't see the need, and very few people focus their invention efforts on helping the poor.
I see it happening with the CWs. Before that the Jihad was a challenge for societies: Either get rid of your preservers, renoucing all affiliations with them, or suffer the consequences.
Agreed; that's how I see it as well.
Since the preservers were not a people but rather, one could say, a profession, then its one that nearly went extinct. The world adapted, a few places were raised to the ground, populations massacred (this is what happened to Bodach), but otherwise societies switched to welcoming and training defilers, simply putting defilers into the same roles preservers played.
Or got rid of wizards altogether, since any preserver has capacity to defile, and I can't imagine that the warlords would spare someone for capacity to wilt grass.
Only when the Wars came did chaos ensue. The human cities and villages were bled for human troops generation after generation, their lifelong neighbors - peaceful trolls or gnomes - gone. The great cities that were multiracial either expelled their non-human population, creating a terrible rift in morale and job functions, or perished at the hands of the Champions.
The WC suggests that the job was far from over by the time the champions rebelled against Rajaat. There may still have been a strong opposition, particularly in faraway lands, before the Dragon started eating everything.
If one looks at the state of the world as described in RaFoaDK, when Hamanu was human and before he rebelled agaisnt Rajaat, we see a world that is already far better than today's Athas.
Exactly.
Most Champions are fighting far away wars and have stopped tapping local human populations for troops, so regular life is starting anew in what are now human lands. There is still grass and rivers and lakes, and rain. I believe that if Borys wasn't made into the Dragon and ravaged the knwon world for a 100 years, the Champions would have settled not in cities surrounded by deserts, but ones surrounded by grass and myriads of small, independant communities, villages, and towns. Everything that hadn't a Champion in it to protect it from the Dragon during that 100 year period is now gone, most of it in ruin
But the Dragon's not the last culprit that we can blame, either; there's another major war after the rebellion that few people talk about: the eradication. Druids were forced into hiding, and whatever structural organization they had was broken. With language like "sands run red" in the timeline, this suggests more than a handful of scattered druids getting killed. We're talking about a lot of druids and druid allies. Why would SKs unite against druids? Obviously they had more power then than now. What powerful allies do you suppose that druids might have had?
Anyway, I'm glad I started this thread. I agree with most of the statements here, but here are some additions.
First: I think the Jihad hit a world that had no clue it was coming. Like I said in the beginning, I think it was centuries of careful assassination before anyone suspected what was going on. And then it was too late.
Second: I think that there are certain things that would be interesting for the Green Age as far as tech goes. Flying ships, Guardians used as weapons batteries, Guardians that do all the menial labor, making the poor only useful for some small bit of training until they are changed into Guardians. Then there are things that could be useful too. End of point: Like Brax said Need Equals Development.
Finally: I am in favor of few nations or empires, and more city-states and loose confederations. Perhaps the truth is that the Green Age had some definite advantages, but in the end it wasn't all peace and light. Athas, IMO, has always been a harsh world. The Wanderer just makes it seem better in the past because of the better environmental conditions (as we would think of it).
Sorry
Page 62 of the current version of Terrors of the Dead Lands. Its the Green Age name for what is today a ruin called Tarelon, on the bottom right of the original boxed set map.
Tar-elon wasn't a terribly advnace city, yet it had its greatness of sort. It stayed at its peak for the entire time of the Green Age, and only fell when the Champions came to its doors. This tells me that the Jihad was not like a terrible world war at all, but rather something that could be safely ignored if it did not affect your little corner of the world.
So you view the Preserver Jihad as more of an underground and cloak and dagger war. I think that if there are Wizards in positions of authority, that the ramifications of having them all killed off by defilers would have more of an impact then that.
Yes, I'm serious.
In a world where scientific technologies are impossible - electronics, light bulbs - I'd imagine that many of the other trappings of modern thought, such as ever-taller highrises, construction plants, banking, are also absent (albeit not inherently impossible).
Well then if your fundamental reasoning is 'just cuz' then I don't really have anything to say about that. But I would never say 'just cuz' because that is what I would start to expect from every rebuttal from my proposals. I also think it is a cop out.
Another idea that I don't think I will be wavered from is that cultures come and go, and over a time frame as long as teh Green Age, you would not have a singular progression of a single society, but you would have many many nations rising and falling. If The Cleansing Wars started on Earth right now, the rebirth would have happened sometime in 7000 BC. Did Canada exist back then? What about the rise and fall of Rome? How many artifacts do we still have around as evidence of that long ago?
Why would the cities in the Tablelands like Bodach and Guistinal have so long of an existence? And why for that long of a time would the culture of the tablelands be so consistent for so long? (Penn's answer, 'Just cuz') It seems to me that the ruins that are the result of the Cleansing Wars are simply the last version, and even though those cites were in the same location for millennia I don't find it feasible at all for the societies that lived in those locations to be consistent with a steady increase in culture and technology over thousands of generations to somewhere around a renaissance level of technology without any rises or falls. Earth history has many many examples of cultures rising and fading away, taking innovations with them only to be rediscovered later. In a fantasy setting Magic and psionic would make those losses more dramatic.
I think that the Green Age was full of rises and falls in many many cultures. I think the true peak of the psionic age was a long time before Rajaat's age of magic. By the time Rajaat revealed his magic, psionics was stagnant and restricted. Rajaat's magic caused upheaval that lead to another age of prosperity. But instead of a happy happy joining, I think it is much more suiting to Dark Sun for a conflict to be the result of the Time of Magic.
Before that the Jihad was a challenge for societies: Either get rid of your preservers, renoucing all affiliations with them, or suffer the consequences.
Since the preservers were not a people but rather, one could say, a profession, then its one that nearly went extinct. The world adapted, a few places were raised to the ground, populations massacred (this is what happened to Bodach), but otherwise societies switched to welcoming and training defilers, simply putting defilers into the same roles preservers played. Complying towns heard of distant resistance and rumors of terrible massacres, soon to be forgotten.
Only when the Wars came did chaos ensue. The human cities and villages were bled for human troops generation after generation, their lifelong neighbors - peaceful trolls or gnomes - gone. The great cities that were multiracial either expelled their non-human population, creating a terrible rift in morale and job functions, or perished at the hands of the Champions.
You don't think that rich city states and empires on other continents would be resistant the Jihad? Don't you think that some nations would be able to effectively resist the jihad?
Finally: I am in favor of few nations or empires, and more city-states and loose confederations. Perhaps the truth is that the Green Age had some definite advantages, but in the end it wasn't all peace and light. Athas, IMO, has always been a harsh world. The Wanderer just makes it seem better in the past because of the better environmental conditions (as we would think of it).
Agreed. although I'll bet that if you asked him, that the Wanderer would spout out a romanticized version of the Green Age that was more rosy and sweet than those that were there remember it. That's the nature of history.
So you view the Preserver Jihad as more of an underground and cloak and dagger war. I think that if there are Wizards in positions of authority, that the ramifications of having them all killed off by defilers would have more of an impact then that.
I like Chris' idea of it starting as a cloak and dagger war, but we're going to need to deal with the account in Defiler's and Preservers which suggests otherwise. Probably the versions are reconcilable. Just need to be careful.
Another idea that I don't think I will be wavered from is that cultures come and go, and over a time frame as long as teh Green Age, you would not have a singular progression of a single society, but you would have many many nations rising and falling.
Of course.
If The Cleansing Wars started on Earth right now, the rebirth would have happened sometime in 7000 BC. Did Canada exist back then? What about the rise and fall of Rome? How many artifacts do we still have around as evidence of that long ago?
Not much, but then we don't have meorties and Raaigs and other supernatural tricks. But I generally agree with you, although the analogy's not perfect.
Why would the cities in the Tablelands like Bodach and Guistinal have so long of an existence?
I don't know that all cities like them survived. Those were two old ones that did survive. We know for a fact that they did, since that's in the source docs. I'm sure that we'll come up with explanations, but we aren't going to disregard published material. Could also be that the cities were destroyed and rebuilt; that they weren't occupied continuously. Didn't Saddam Hussein rebuild a city on the foundations of Babylon or something like that? Places of historical and mythical significance tend to attract Kings and others that deal in myth for power's sake.
And why for that long of a time would the culture of the tablelands be so consistent for so long?
Ah, now there, I see no reason why it should have stayed consistent. I imagine that some races and societies had more cultural staying power than others, while others changed rapidly.
(Penn's answer, 'Just cuz') It seems to me that the ruins that are the result of the Cleansing Wars are simply the last version, and even though those cites were in the same location for millennia I don't find it feasible at all for the societies that lived in those locations to be consistent with a steady increase in culture and technology over thousands of generations to somewhere around a renaissance level of technology without any rises or falls. Earth history has many many examples of cultures rising and fading away, taking innovations with them only to be rediscovered later.
Yep! The tumbling pin lock, used by egyptians thousands of years ago, reinvented by Yale Corporation a century ago, etc.
In a fantasy setting Magic and psionic would make those losses more dramatic.
Or less. Hard to tell. On average I'd say that the losses would be less dramatic since your ability to learn from a ruin greatly increases with certain spells and powers. Even Modern archeologists have no such tools.
I think that the Green Age was full of rises and falls in many many cultures. I think the true peak of the psionic age was a long time before Rajaat's age of magic.
Agreed.
You don't think that rich city states and empires on other continents would be resistant the Jihad? Don't you think that some nations would be able to effectively resist the jihad?
As we've written it, Kurn did, and sat fairly unscathed until the Cleansing Wars. As I see it, Rajaat's Jihad focused on human cities and mixed-race cities. Elves of Athas depicts the elves as a people very much attached to arcane magic, and I've carried this back to the Time of Magic.
As we've written it, Kurn did, and sat fairly unscathed until the Cleansing Wars. As I see it, Rajaat's Jihad focused on human cities and mixed-race cities. Elves of Athas depicts the elves as a people very much attached to arcane magic, and I've carried this back to the Time of Magic.
That is an angle I never considered. Elf and Troll wizards existed, but since Rajaat wasn't focused on them and was going to kill them all anyway, why bother taking the time killing them?
That is an angle I never considered. Elf and Troll wizards existed, but since Rajaat wasn't focused on them and was going to kill them all anyway, why bother taking the time killing them?
Leaving the nonhuman cities untouched would help set the stage for the Cleansing Wars, since after driving wizards out of their own communities, humans would resent those non-human cities that were still using magic.
I don't think that arcane magic appealed to all the Rebirth races, or that all ever really had a chance to learn it, but I'd expect that the elves did; they seem to have an aptitude according to Elves of Athas.
Why would the cities in the Tablelands like Bodach and Guistinal have so long of an existence? And why for that long of a time would the culture of the tablelands be so consistent for so long? (Penn's answer, 'Just cuz') It seems to me that the ruins that are the result of the Cleansing Wars are simply the last version, and even though those cites were in the same location for millennia I don't find it feasible at all for the societies that lived in those locations to be consistent with a steady increase in culture and technology over thousands of generations to somewhere around a renaissance level of technology without any rises or falls. Earth history has many many examples of cultures rising and fading away, taking innovations with them only to be rediscovered later. In a fantasy setting Magic and psionic would make those losses more dramatic.
This to me seems to indicate you expect the Dark Sun setting to have been developped with any attention to realism and anthropoligical principles. It wasn't.
No ruins could possiblty last as long as they do on Athas, and stay explorable with readable frescos and findable relics. Societies can't speak languages that stay as unchanged as on Athas, for so long. The list of such problems is as long as my arm.
My answer to this, and to other of your points, is not really 'Just cuz' but 'The setting is flawed and limited in its realism, and with preset boundaries. In short, its a fantasy setting.'
So you view the Preserver Jihad as more of an underground and cloak and dagger war. I think that if there are Wizards in positions of authority, that the ramifications of having them all killed off by defilers would have more of an impact then that.
Not really. I didn't imagine assassinations before someone pointed out the possibility. I have no idea how the Jihad went on, only that accounts seem to point towards it not having been a time of war where cities were under siege and such (a few were, but it wasn't as widespread as for the Wars). A parallel might be the Jew massacre with the Nazis: When confronted with hostile forces they can't hold in check or outright turn around due to their own greater might, communities decide - willingly or not - that preservers are bad and either expel or murder them. A society that thinks it did a right thing, rooting out an ancient evil in their midst, is not a society that has the impression it was a victim of war. I presume that full-on propaganda entertained the masses during the Jihad, one part demonizing preservers, and another smaller one originating from the resistance. It would have been in people's best interests to believe the propaganda of the defiler forces, so most citizens would have believed that and thus taken part in mobs or illegal actions by the government to get rid of preservers. Etc...
You don't think that rich city states and empires on other continents would be resistant the Jihad? Don't you think that some nations would be able to effectively resist the jihad?
Probably that many places successfuly fought off defiler forces for generations, only to be brought down by far vaster armies during the Wars, or fell when their supply lines were cut due to the disruptions of the Wars, or themselves evaporated when their human population was called to war generation after generation.
I've imagined a domain of the ancients, founded by some of the first students of magic, called Teluri (see the lame but salvageable mention of that group in the Tribe of One trilogy). Those people would have been the first to fall during the Jihad, and entire domain of towns where magic took the place of psionics, to some degree (i.e. read good taste). This was a project me and Kamelion imagined, but it got dropped when we didn't have much time to put in it.
My answer to this, and to other of your points, is not really 'Just cuz' but 'The setting is flawed and limited in its realism, and with preset boundaries. In short, its a fantasy setting.'
"Just 'cuz" has more "flair" and says the same in fewer words.
When I run into DS discussions that I'm not interested in, I usually just say "I don't really care about those aspects of the story," or I don't say anything. We don't all have to be interested in exactly the same things.This to me seems to indicate you expect the Dark Sun setting to have been developped with any attention to realism and anthropoligical principles. It wasn't.
I'd rather not speculate what the different authors paid attention to as a group. My guess is that every author takes his or her own skills and interests to the table. Realism means a lot of different things, and a number of fantasy books have "realistic" aspects that most history books lack.
No ruins could possiblty last as long as they do on Athas, and stay explorable with readable frescos and findable relics. Societies can't speak languages that stay as unchanged as on Athas, for so long. The list of such problems is as long as my arm.
So far I see a list about 1/2 as long as my pinky fingernail. Please continue. I'm curious whether you'll pose a problem that doesn't have an easy solution by the time we reach the length of your arm. :D
Alot of things in Athas history don't make sense. The Tyr region is very small, and even with the map form the revised boxed set there is only a very small amount of land between the Silt/Sunrise Sea and the Kreen empire. Perhaps the remaining cities represent the last remnant of the Green age trapped between the Silt and Kreen. Heck we don't even really know if the Preserver Jyhad/ Cleansing Wars involved other continents or even if there are other continents.
Or even if there were continents at all. Look at the depths of the Jagged Cliffs. Consider that there were people in what's now the Crimson Savannah, and that Rajaat was down in those swamps during the Green Age, and that it was not underwater. Evidence suggests (even though this means I have to scrap my old maps) that there was no ocean in the Green Age. Just landlocked seas.
That helps explain a little bit more why some would be so desparate to restore the Blue Age.
But as for the size of the Tablelands (which according to the WJ surrounds the sea of silt), there was a time when most of Earth's civilization was crowded into an area that small. Combine some aspects of the fertile cresent, ~8000 years ago, with a small sea the size of the Black Sea, and hold off any sort of calamity for thousands of years, and that cradle of civilization area could develop into the power center of the planet. Europe, Egypt, India, and even China might never have developed as they did if the inhabitants of the fertile cresent hadn't .... well, defiled their lands by overfarming. People migrated out, taking their knowledge and their precious plants and domestic animals with them to other lands and cultures. Without that calamity on earth, things might have spread out much more slowly.
Europe, Egypt, India, and even China might never have developed as they did if the inhabitants of the fertile cresent hadn't .... well, defiled their lands by overfarming. People migrated out, taking their knowledge and their precious plants and domestic animals with them to other lands and cultures. Without that calamity on earth, things might have spread out much more slowly.
...and really, you could posite this to be the case with Athas as well. You don't, however, have a massive Thri-kreen empire blocking the migration of the people of Europe, Egypt, India, or China.
...and really, you could posite this to be the case with Athas as well. You don't, however, have a massive Thri-kreen empire blocking the migration of the people of Europe, Egypt, India, or China.
Yes! That's exactly the sort of thinking that we should be doing. If we look carefully at the setting, we'll find all sorts of reasons for things to be the way they are, and those ideas will create hooks for more stories and adventures.
Kovreset's history suggests that the kreen empire did not dominate those lands for all of the green age, but just the jagged cliffs would have presented a formidable obstacle for most people. And who knows if the same plants and animals would thrive across such a dramatic drop in elevation any more than they do on earth across lattitudes. And come to think of it, between the cliffs and the sea, and the ringing mountain ranges on the other side of the sea, the tablelands are pretty boxed in across lattitudes. Like I explained before, it's hard to spread civilization across longitudes, because the same plants and animals don't thrive.
Maybe the climate of the Green Age shifted throughout the period, allowing kreen to migrate and displace the crimson savannah inhabitants.
This is totally possible. About 500 years ago a thing started here called the little ice age. cold temperatures that changed the climate and agricultural attitudes across the globe. It's the reason we in the States like beer and not wine (though that's growing on us now ;)). There was even a year here during that period (17 or 1800's) that was called the year without a summer. During Napolean's invasion of Russia it was so cold that birds froze to death while flying. Athas could have had somethign similar here. The abundance of volcanoes alone could affect the climate. And that would be without the influence of any Magma Clerics.
Good stuff here guys.
Yes! That's exactly the sort of thinking that we should be doing. If we look carefully at the setting, we'll find all sorts of reasons for things to be the way they are, and those ideas will create hooks for more stories and adventures.
Kovreset's history suggests that the kreen empire did not dominate those lands for all of the green age, but just the jagged cliffs would have presented a formidable obstacle for most people. And who knows if the same plants and animals would thrive across such a dramatic drop in elevation any more than they do on earth across lattitudes. And come to think of it, between the cliffs and the sea, and the ringing mountain ranges on the other side of the sea, the tablelands are pretty boxed in across lattitudes. Like I explained before, it's hard to spread civilization across longitudes, because the same plants and animals don't thrive.
You agreed with Penn on the 'it's a fantasy setting so that's just the way it was' on the arguments against the introduction of magic causing an upheaval in the established psionic infrastructures, I am going to have to disagree with you on the spread of civilization not heading north and south because of climate shifts along longitudes for the exact same reason... 'it's a fantasy setting so you can place cultures anywhere you want.'
A mile high cliff the length of the west border of Colorado would wreak so much havoc on a weather system, I don't see how life on the tablelands is even possible much less having a verdant forest back in history.
Well the cliffs and the Kreen Empire explains West. What about the other directions on the compass?
You agreed with Penn on the 'it's a fantasy setting so that's just the way it was' on the arguments against the introduction of magic causing an upheaval in the established psionic infrastructures, I am going to have to disagree with you on the spread of civilization not heading north and south because of climate shifts along longitudes for the exact same reason... 'it's a fantasy setting so you can place cultures anywhere you want.'
But it's a published fantasy world, so you can't place cultures where they'd contradict published facts. I'm simply offering explanations for the way things are, why this one small area of Athas has been so important for all of recorded history. You complained about realism, and I offered some possible realistic explanations.
I didn't say that Athasian civilization could not have shifted north and south. Athas generally has very little seasonal change, although this might have been different in the Green Age. I'm simply saying that *if* our look at the facts of history as laid out in published DS books suggests that Athasian cities in this area lasted a long time, and that things seem unnaturally stable around here through the Green Age, that this is *not* unrealistic, given the circumstances and geography.
I don't think I will be wavered from is that cultures come and go, and over a time frame as long as teh Green Age, you would not have a singular progression of a single society, but you would have many many nations rising and falling.
I think you're right, and that's how I've written LC so far, with a number of cities appearing late in the Green Age, and some cities dissapearing by the middle of the Green Age. But if someone shows me sources that show that I'm wrong (like I found that I was wrong about placing continents on Athas), then I'll adapt the story to fit existing published facts, because I don't like contradicting published material unless it already contradicts itself, and even then I don't like it.
If The Cleansing Wars started on Earth right now, the rebirth would have happened sometime in 7000 BC. Did Canada exist back then? What about the rise and fall of Rome? How many artifacts do we still have around as evidence of that long ago?
Of Rome? Quite a few. And I suspect we'll still have quite a few Roman artifacts around in 5000 years. The reason that the great cities of 7000 years ago were destroyed is, like I said, they essentially defiled their environment with overfarming, turning the fertile cresent into something considerably less fertile. But you know what? They are still turning up artifacts from that period. Check out "Guns, Germs, & Steel."
Of Rome? Quite a few. And I suspect we'll still have quite a few Roman artifacts around in 5000 years. The reason that the great cities of 7000 years ago were destroyed is, like I said, they essentially defiled their environment with overfarming, turning the fertile cresent into something considerably less fertile. But you know what? They are still turning up artifacts from that period. Check out "Guns, Germs, & Steel."
Rome only goes back to the 9th Century BC, and that is about 5000 years younger then the time frame we are talking about. The oldest cities on earth are Sumerian from about 7000 BC and we have to dig them out of the ground and carbon date a bit of pottery and look at foundations. Damascus is supposed to be founded around 1700 BC, so in a fantasy setting 10,000 years is not a stretch at all.
Now you've talked about cities coming and going, and we know that some cities remained consistent all through the Green Age. You also seem to be thinking that those long-term cities had a consistent level of technology. And that is something I disagree with. Personally I think that the introduction of Magic would spark revolutions and large economic recessions would be the result. However, even without going into specifics over the course of 9000 years there is going to be events that effect the city will have golden eras and eras where things really suck. Can you at least agree to that?
And what do you mean no more continents? If anything, The Crimson Savanna would have been the ocean floor in the green age. You guys are familiar with continental shelves right? Then there is a continental slope. It can be almost cliff-like especially if next to a trench it can be very cliff-like. I don't see how else a mile high cliff makes sense. (Yeah, yeah Penn, I know it's a fantasy setting.)
Rome only goes back to the 9th Century BC, and that is about 5000 years younger then the time frame we are talking about.
I dealt with that fact already above.
The oldest cities on earth are Sumerian from about 7000 BC and we have to dig them out of the ground and carbon date a bit of pottery and look at foundations.
Yes, Sumeria was in that formerly fertile area I spoke of as Earth's cradle of civilization. Which I mentioned twice above, and explained that the only reason that Sumeria did not exist until today is that they overfarmed the land, rendering it arid. See sources above.
Damascus is supposed to be founded around 1700 BC, so in a fantasy setting 10,000 years is not a stretch at all.
We can think of believable reasons to make a city last 10,000 years.
Now you've talked about cities coming and going, and we know that some cities remained consistent all through the Green Age.
Or were rebuilt?
You also seem to be thinking that those long-term cities had a consistent level of technology.
Am I really? I had no idea that I was thinking that. What technology are you using to determine that?
And that is something I disagree with.
Does that mean that I'm supposed to counter-argue? What if I don't think that the cities had a consistent level of technology?
Personally I think that the introduction of Magic would spark revolutions and large economic recessions would be the result.
Magic isn't a technology. The trickle-down effect with magic is much slower than with technology. Rajaat only teaches non-humans "the most basic exercises," and it takes some time for apprentice to apprentice teaching to pass on. Only Rajaat's going to have the magic know-how to have whole schools (plural) of magic ... going consistent from the word "jihad" you might call them madrasas.
However, even without going into specifics over the course of 9000 years there is going to be events that effect the city will have golden eras and eras where things really suck. Can you at least agree to that?
Obviously. But probably not all over, all at the same time. I'd bet that some people people migrated to faraway lands and had no significant exchange with or even memory of the tablelands.
And what do you mean no more continents? If anything, The Crimson Savanna would have been the ocean floor in the green age.
It would be, if you assume there were oceans, but it *wasn't*. Extrapolating history requires you to know the sources well; at least read the source references in the posts that you're responding to. Rajaat did not create a fetid swamp at the bottom of an ocean.
You guys are familiar with continental shelves right? Then there is a continental slope. It can be almost cliff-like especially if next to a trench it can be very cliff-like. I don't see how else a mile high cliff makes sense.
I didn't either, while I assumed that there were continents and oceans in the Green Age. Then I realized, maybe the word "OCEAN" disappeared from the World Calendar in the 14th King's age for a reason ... maybe in the Green Age, you had landlocked seas rather than continents surrounded by ocean.
There are three possible approaches to Athasian history:
1. Discard believability. ("It's a fantasy.")
2. Discard the sources. ("that's just not believable; I can do better")
3. Discard your assumptions, and create a believable and interesting story that fits the facts.
3. Discard your assumptions, and create a believable and interesting story that fits the facts.
What you would call my assumptions is what I consider believable and interesting. And in this thread, the ideas presented about the introduction of Magic into the psionic Green Age is what I would consider unbelievable and uninteresting.. even though they may fit your second and first criteria.
What you would call my assumptions is what I consider believable and interesting.
No one that grasps the meaning of the word "assumption" could deny that you made an assumption, right here:
If anything, The Crimson Savanna would have been the ocean floor in the green age. You guys are familiar with continental shelves right? Then there is a continental slope.
There's no way on Earth, Athas, or Ral that you could make a statement like that without assuming that Athas had oceans like the earth during the Green Age. Mind Lords, Defilers and Preservers, wanderer's chronicle, and others disprove your conclusion about the ocean floor, so you might want to question that assumption, once you come to grips with the fact that you made one.
Your last few assumptions about what I believe flatly contradict my own statements on this thread. So stop telling me what *I* would call anything. It's like writing an athasian history. Start with by looking carefully with what's been said, before projecting.
You agreed with Penn on the 'it's a fantasy setting so that's just the way it was' on the arguments against the introduction of magic causing an upheaval in the established psionic infrastructures,
Wrong again. I challenge you to produce a quote where I said anything to the effect of "'it's a fantasy setting so that's just the way it was.'"
And in this thread, the ideas presented about the introduction of Magic into the psionic Green Age
Please be less obscure about who presented what, and which ideas you disagree with, because I don't think that you're keeping track of who said what.
Well the cliffs and the Kreen Empire explains West. What about the other directions on the compass?
See above.
Am I really? I had no idea that I was thinking that. What technology are you using to determine that?
Er.. the psionic orbs cleaning the street, the 'subway tunnel', and the flying ships. See sources above.
Does that mean that I'm supposed to counter-argue? What if I don't think that the cities had a consistent level of technology?
Over time. I have been talking about my idea where civilization and psionic technology over the green age grew since the rebirth, reached a peak equaling a near industrialized society sometime before the Age of Magic, and by the time Rajaat revealed his stuff, society was in a period of stagnation. Then the new mages help break down the ruling authority and founded a neo-medievalism. Which was the state of the world at the beginning of the cleansing wars and would be the majority of the ruins that would have survived to modern Athas.
I have been refuted with statements like Penn's 'it was Medieval the whole time, just 'cuz'. (See sources above) and your 'the Tablelands were consistent throughout the Green Age.' (See sources above)
Magic isn't a technology. The trickle-down effect with magic is much slower than with technology. Rajaat only teaches non-humans "the most basic exercises," and it takes some time for apprentice to apprentice teaching to pass on. Only Rajaat's going to have the magic know-how to have whole schools (plural) of magic ... going consistent from the word "jihad" you might call them madrasas.
I think Magic is a technology, just different from ours. In this context I define technology as: the sum of the ways in which social groups provide themselves with the material objects of their civilization.
I know Rajaat taught the best magics to humans, but I also account for the ability of people to make their own schools and learn things on their own.
It would be, if you assume there were oceans, but it *wasn't*. Extrapolating history requires you to know the sources well; at least read the source references in the posts that you're responding to. Rajaat did not create a fetid swamp at the bottom of an ocean.
I guess I wasn't clear. At times I tend to think faster then I type and I skip stuff. I was trying to say that the idea that the Green Age had no continents was surprising to me. Because the Jagged Cliff is reminiscent of a severe continental slope I have always considered to possibility that the Crimson Savannah was once the bottom of the ocean in the Green Age. (I know just about everything was the bottom of the ocean in the Blue Age)
I didn't either, while I assumed that there were continents and oceans in the Green Age. Then I realized, maybe the word "OCEAN" disappeared from the World Calendar in the 14th King's age for a reason ... maybe in the Green Age, you had landlocked seas rather than continents surrounded by ocean.
Original calendar uses "Ocean" instead of "Silt," and "Island" instead of "Desert."
Hmmmm... So by that line of thought, Silt and Desert since the beginning of the Green Age would mean that Athas wasn't all that green. There was enough Silt to warrant changing the calendar... maybe the silt seas have been there since the beginning.
The sources talk about how the Sea of Silt used to be an Sea of Water. I would prefer to have enough ocean on Athas to at least encircle the planet... maybe that's because I really like the idea the the elves were seafarers in the Green Age and I want to have a decent playing field for them.
I've imagined a domain of the ancients, founded by some of the first students of magic, called Teluri (see the lame but salvageable mention of that group in the Tribe of One trilogy). Those people would have been the first to fall during the Jihad, and entire domain of towns where magic took the place of psionics, to some degree (i.e. read good taste). This was a project me and Kamelion imagined, but it got dropped when we didn't have much time to put in it.
Cool! So now we have three groups of ancient preservers using different strategies. Which is consistent with the account that you pointed out to me in D&P.
Wrong again. I challenge you to produce a quote where I said anything to the effect of "'it's a fantasy setting so that's just the way it was.'"
Me:
When do you see the downfall happening? With the Cleansing Wars? You don't see the introduction of Magic causing any chaos at all?
Penn:
I see it happening with the CWs. Before that the Jihad was a challenge for societies: Either get rid of your preservers, renoucing all affiliations with them, or suffer the consequences.
Brax:
Agreed; that's how I see it as well.
And since Penn and I were talking about how the preserver jihad and the birth of magic effected society. I figured you two were in cahoots.
ErI have been refuted with statements like Penn's 'it was Medieval the whole time, just 'cuz'. (See sources below) and your 'the Tablelands were consistent throughout the Green Age.'
[that's a misattributed quote -- I did not say that.](See sources below)Magic isn't a technology. The trickle-down effect with magic is much slower than with technology. Rajaat only teaches non-humans "the most basic exercises," and it takes some time for apprentice to apprentice teaching to pass on. Only Rajaat's going to have the magic know-how to have whole schools (plural) of magic ... going consistent from the word "jihad" you might call them madrasas. [\quote]
And from that quote you get 'the Tablelands were consistent throughout the Green Age.'?? That's inane. Particularly since I said the opposite several times on this thread. I said that we can construct historical reasons why a FEW CITIES (bodach, giustenal, tyr) had more or less continuous existence for millenia. I said that magic isn't technlogy and thus that magical revolutions would have less short term impact than technological change. LESS change than on earth is NOT the same as "consistent throughout the green age.I think Magic is a technology, just different from ours. In this context I define technology as: the sum of the ways in which social groups provide themselves with the material objects of their civilization.
Which I rebutted already with that statement of how magic is taught, but instead you acted like I'd just said that it's "just a fantasy world"I know Rajaat taught the best magics to humans, but I also account for the ability of people to make their own schools and learn things on their own.
Yes, BUT given the specific constraints of magic, THAT TAKES TIME. Generations. Look how long it too Rajaat to get it all together.I guess I wasn't clear. At times I tend to think faster then I type and I skip stuff.
You should stop trying to respond to stuff you have not read.I was trying to say that the idea that the Green Age had no continents was surprising to me. Because the Jagged Cliff is reminiscent of a severe continental slope I have always considered to possibility that the Crimson Savannah was once the bottom of the ocean in the Green Age. (I know just about everything was the bottom of the ocean in the Blue Age)
Yes, I made the same assumption for years, even worked with Esme to make a really cool world map, and posited history for the other "contintents." But that crimson savannah and swamp bugged me ... why isn't it underwater. Went through the sources several times until it came together, and I don't see any other explanation.Original calendar uses "Ocean" instead of "Silt," and "Island" instead of "Desert."
Hmmmm... So by that line of thought, Silt and Desert since the beginning of the Green Age would mean that Athas wasn't all that green. There was enough Silt to warrant changing the calendar... maybe the silt seas have been there since the beginning.
But the early silt references contradict other official sources that make clear the sea of silt was new. I need to check for other silt references in sources other than the quasi-official timeline. If it was never in print and never an Athas.org production, it's more pliable if it contradicts printed stuff.The sources talk about how the Sea of Silt used to be an Sea of Water. I would prefer to have enough ocean on Athas to at least encircle the planet... maybe that's because I really like the idea the the elves were seafarers in the Green Age and I want to have a decent playing field for them
Then read the sources and see if you can come up with another explanation. And no skipping.
Me:
When do you see the downfall happening? With the Cleansing Wars? You don't see the introduction of Magic causing any chaos at all?
Penn:
I see it happening with the CWs. Before that the Jihad was a challenge for societies: Either get rid of your preservers, renoucing all affiliations with them, or suffer the consequences.
Brax:
Agreed; that's how I see it as well.
And since Penn and I were talking about how the preserver jihad and the birth of magic effected society. I figured you two were in cahoots.
So let's get this straight. I say that I agree that the Jihad used terror tactics to get the cities to kick out the preservers, and you read this as me saying,"'it's a fantasy setting so that's just the way it was.'"?
This is demoralizing. I can't believe I keep coming here in search of conversation. I'm about to give up.
See above.
I read what you wrote above. I don't need a jerky one liner.
Penn: I see it happening with the CWs. Before that the Jihad was a challenge for societies: Either get rid of your preservers, renoucing all affiliations with them, or suffer the consequences.
Brax: Agreed; that's how I see it as well.
Xiled: Aha! So Brax agrees with Penn that "'it's a fantasy setting so that's just the way it was.'"
When I asked you to reread the posts that you misconstrued, my intent was not to offend you. If I wanted to offend you, I would say something like ... [switching to email]
So let's get this straight. I say that I agree that the Jihad used terror tactics to get the cities to kick out the preservers, and you read this as me saying,"'it's a fantasy setting so that's just the way it was.'"?
Penn basically said that. You didn't. But Penn was saying that about how a medieval technology was consistent throughout the Green Age, I was disagreeing with him. That's when you entered the conversation, but in the parts that you agreed with Penn, I was attempting to address you both.
Maybe my words were too broad and chosen poorly, but I think you are too easily taking umbrage.
All I'm trying to do here is try to talk about how the introduction of magic caused an upheaval in Psionic Green Age society because I think that in order for the preserver jihad to be effective, the supposed powerful psionic and magicial infrastructure had to have been diminished in someway.
Yes, BUT given the specific constraints of magic, THAT TAKES TIME. Generations. Look how long it too Rajaat to get it all together.
There was 700 years between Rajaat starting to teach magic and the jihad. And the jihad took 1000 years. Plenty of time for some non-human masters of the craft to spring up.
Yes, I made the same assumption for years, even worked with Esme to make a really cool world map, and posited history for the other "contintents." But that crimson savannah and swamp bugged me ... why isn't it underwater. Went through the sources several times until it came together, and I don't see any other explanation.
Yeah I made a globe of that map. It's on my desk!
But the early silt references contradict other official sources that make clear the sea of silt was new. I need to check for other silt references in sources other than the quasi-official timeline. If it was never in print and never an Athas.org production, it's more pliable if it contradicts printed stuff.
The timeline is the only one I can recall. But don't QUOTE me on that!
Then read the sources and see if you can come up with another explanation. And no skipping.
I don't see how your map of the Green Age and accounts of the Green Age in the sources are inconsistent. Even with the cliff and the swamp.
Penn basically said that. You didn't. But Penn was saying that about how a medieval technology was consistent throughout the Green Age, I was disagreeing with him. That's when you entered the conversation, but in the parts that you agreed with Penn, I was attempting to address you both.
When you acted as if addressing us both, you addressed statements of Penns' that I totally disagree with. I agreed with Penn on the tactics used by the warlords to get people to kick preservers out.
I've said repeatedly that I think that technology was NOT consistent through the green age. Not consistent over time. Not consistent across cities at the same time. I'll add: not consistent across social castes, or across races. Some races were better at psionics, some better at magic, some better at neither, some (like the elves and humans) quite good at both.
I'll also add that the description of how the Planar mirror was forgotten for a while, suggests to me that Giustenal was abandoned for a time during the Green Age or time of magic, and then resettled by another people.
There was 700 years between Rajaat starting to teach magic and the jihad. And the jihad took 1000 years. Plenty of time for some non-human masters of the craft to spring up.
To grow up, yes. You know I've described that time period as Kurn's golden age -- I see those elves as the first culture-wide adopters of arcane magic. I was just saying that it didn't happen over a single generation. That's the difference between magic and technology. Most techs don't need to have people that have given their whole life to the discipline before some of the benefits start to percholate down to society. So the effect would have been dramatic, but less dramatic than some of the tech revolutions. I'm saying there was change over the thousands of years, but not the same level that you'd expect on earth in the same time period.
One obvious reason why is that they have great cities of a higher tech level than Rome, 7000 years ago. Higher tech levels + not screwing up the land (as happened around sumeria) results in longer lasting supercities than we've seen on earth. Now I'm starting to repeat what I said on the previous page. Gah.
A few things… Brax, you said on the previous page that this area was the focus of Athasian History. I am not sure that this is the case. South of the Dead Lands we have a Spider/Crab Empire that exists which attacks the Dead Lands with bugdead lead by the Scarlet Warden.
That's the present. Is that how it was in the Green Age?
The Crimson Savanna has a vast Kreen Empire, but there are mentions in the Kreen of Athas that a large body of that is to the west or north of there.
A large body of what?
We don’t know what is north of the Mind Lords. The reason (from a meta-gaming point of view) that we don’t have history from the rest of Athas is because it has yet to be developed. China’s vast history or the history of the Mayans would not be of much interest to the Roman Empire, due to the separations that exist. That does not mean that the cultures did not interact before they were isolated and people forgot about them. Just that they have developed separately, and no longer need to worry about their interaction.
The Mayans appear to have developed separately for the most part, but AFAIK archeologists still need to account for the cocaine that they found in one egyptian mummy, whether that was a hoax, etc. China OTOH clearly had indirect contact with Rome, trade through proxies.
All that I am saying here is that the area around that the tablelands is where things started, but there is a whole lot more planet out there that hasn’t yet come into contact with the tablelands. The people in ancient Babylon knew nothing of the ancient Celts because they were too far apart and there was no cross trade. This would be the same in Athas. (of course, the celts might not of existed at the same time as the Babylonians, but you get the point)
I'm saying that Celtic level civilization did not exist and could not exist until the Babylonian civilizing influences (crops and animals) were taken from the Babylon area to western Europe. That is why we use terms like "cradle of civilization." It seems likely that the Mayas developed it separately, but China and the Celts did not.
That's the present. Is that how it was in the Green Age?
No Clue. It could be. My point is that history only records what happens to a group based on what they do and who they interact with. If a group of humans fled the cleansing wars and went north, but then had no further interaction with the tablelands, then they would for all intents no longer matter to this athasian cradle of civilization. What we do with the areas around the "known world" and how we handle their inclusion (because groups on the edges of the maps would have interactions with those off the maps) could be interesting and new. However, they must still be DS and must not contradict already established rules. (no fairy kingdoms of clockwork toys that live in gingerbread castles, but maybe surfing druids :P)
A large body of what?
Sorry. Large body of water.
The Mayans appear to have developed separately for the most part, but AFAIK archeologists still need to account for the cocaine that they found in one egyptian mummy, whether that was a hoax, etc. China OTOH clearly had indirect contact with Rome, trade through proxies.
Well, one thing I think (but have no proof for) is that there was a previous civilization that existed that died out, before the Egyptians and Inca/Mayans and the group in Cambodia that all have pyramids along the same latitude or longitude or whichever imaginary lines run east west. Common ancestry, similar themes, different styles of development and a forgotten beginning. These types of elements work for parts of fantasy, but not for others. China and Rome had indirect contact, but they were both empires (and I did bring them up, so my bad for using bad examples) but I was trying to come up with city-states (since we seem to be in agreement that this was the common style of settlement during the Green Age. Few Kingdoms. Maybe an Empire that imploded) that were far removed and didn't even know the other existed.
I'm saying that Celtic level civilization did not exist and could not exist until the Babylonian civilizing influences (crops and animals) were taken from the Babylon area to western Europe. That is why we use terms like "cradle of civilization." It seems likely that the Mayas developed it separately, but China and the Celts did not.
My point (and I agree with yours, btw) is that the areas of "China" and the "Celts" on Athas are not the focus of existing material so we have no information about them. No one bothered to write down anything about these areas because they were considered fringe areas. In the US, our history cares nothing about the Mexicans living in California during the Revolutionary War. And the follow up to that is why would the US ever care about that area if, during the battle for independence the 13 colonies found out that Benjamin Franklin had a secret plan to bring about a Luxembourgian only world were all others were eliminated. That is were we are at with Athas.
When you acted as if addressing us both, you addressed statements of Penns' that I totally disagree with. I agreed with Penn on the tactics used by the warlords to get people to kick preservers out.
I've said repeatedly that I think that technology was NOT consistent through the green age. Not consistent over time. Not consistent across cities at the same time. I'll add: not consistent across social castes, or across races. Some races were better at psionics, some better at magic, some better at neither, some (like the elves and humans) quite good at both.
OK. Rocky road to get here not withstanding, I think we are in agreement.
I'll also add that the description of how the Planar mirror was forgotten for a while, suggests to me that Giustenal was abandoned for a time during the Green Age or time of magic, and then resettled by another people.
It would likely be before the time of magic because it is described as a psionic focus for planular travel. So hypothetically, if Giustenal was abandoned, then we have to think of a reason why. War, disease, famine are the most dramatic culprits. Taraskir ruled the joint when when Dregoth conquered Giustenal, and the books simply describe the gate being discovered by Dregoth in the Groaning City in a building that was revered by the local populous. So it would seem to me that Taraskir settled Giustenal during the Cleansing Wars, and built the place into a thriving city until Dregoth showed up. Maybe Taraskir was seeking the power and reputation that the ancient Green Age city would provide, but it's secrets were forgotten.
The books say that it was a city of many races with a high standard of living, then says Dregoth marched on the city. Does anyone find it a stretch to include a period of abandonment and resettling for Giustenal? If so, do we place the abandonment early in the Green Age, or during the Time of Magic?
I'll also add that the description of how the Planar mirror was forgotten for a while, suggests to me that Giustenal was abandoned for a time during the Green Age or time of magic, and then resettled by another people.
Or that the mirror was brought to Giustenal from some other location by some unknown being(s).
It would likely be before the time of magic because it is described as a psionic focus for planular travel. So hypothetically, if Giustenal was abandoned, then we have to think of a reason why. War, disease, famine are the most dramatic culprits. Taraskir ruled the joint when when Dregoth conquered Giustenal, and the books simply describe the gate being discovered by Dregoth in the Groaning City in a building that was revered by the local populous. So it would seem to me that Taraskir settled Giustenal during the Cleansing Wars, and built the place into a thriving city until Dregoth showed up. Maybe Taraskir was seeking the power and reputation that the ancient Green Age city would provide, but it's secrets were forgotten.
The books say that it was a city of many races with a high standard of living, then says Dregoth marched on the city. Does anyone find it a stretch to include a period of abandonment and resettling for Giustenal? If so, do we place the abandonment early in the Green Age, or during the Time of Magic?
As the Green Age gave way to the Time of Magic,
the under-region cities were abandoned and forgotten.
The planar gate sat gathering dust in a place that
would someday be called the Groaning City, silently
waiting for someone to find it. Centuries later, in the
days of the Cleansing Wars, the demihumans from
Giustenal established a sanctuary in the cavern. They
discovered the planar gate, and looked upon it as a
sign from their god.
As followers of Taraskir the Lion, previous king of
Giustenal who had fallen to Dregoth the Ravager, all
things leonine were held sacred by the demihumans.
While they had no idea what the planar gate truly was,
the image it showed them was seen as a revelation. The
mirror displayed a world of grasslands, with lions roaming
everywhere. The demihumans believed that the
entire cavern was blessed by Taraskir, and they lived for
a time in safety and peace.
Less than two decades later, Dregoth and his army
found the under-region and marched on the cavern
refuge. The demihumans battled valiantly but were
eventually destroyed, and the planar gate fell into
Dregoth's possession.
OK ... so it looks like I was partially right. The underground, blue-age original part of Giustenal was abandoned. What a headache -- there are at least four or five cities associated with Giustenal, and who knows how many societies. The thing is, though, historically, with big famous cities that appear to last thousands of years, this sort of confusion with naming is very realistic. Cities change names, or someone founds a city with the same name near the previous one or on the ruins of the previous one, etc.
I don't know this one source book as well as I know the others, since I never DM'ed this, and deliberately avoided it since I was a player in a campaign that used it, so correct me if I've got my facts wrong.
1. The Blue age, underground city, which was underground as well as underwater, later called "the groaning city." Might not even have been named "Giustenal." ().
2. The Rebirth mixed-race city of Giustenal, which appears to have been just the same halfling city-resettled. It may have been an above-ground city that connected to the earlier halfling one, but whatever it was, it clearly connected to the part that was built in the Blue Age, since the planar mirror was left in the Groaning City.
It seems likely that the above-ground portion of Giustenal was also built during the blue age, since at that time that surface would have been underwater. The blue age part would have been built over by the rebirth races, while the lower part was abandoned rather than rebuilt.
The text says that the mirror was abandoned and forgotten. Given the enormous power of the mirror, I'd infer that there was some sort of major regime change, or that upper Giustenal was completely abandoned for a while, since you don't just forget about something that powerful. Unless we suppose that some powerful resident of Giustenal had the mirror down there and did not tell anyone about it.... actually that makes a great deal of sense. If people had known generally that the mirror was in Giustenal, then even a regime change would not have caused it to be forgotten. So perhaps someone deliberately hid the mirror in the lower ruins after those ruins were abandoned, along the lines of Sysane's suggestion.
Task's followers held upper Giustenal for a time, and then during the CWs had to take refuge in the lower caverns.
So ... Task's followers were mixed race, just like the group that were set up in Giustenal at the Rebirth. Since Giustenal is on the sea, and since we have no reason to believe that the land was devastated *before* the Preserver Jihad, it's quite possible that there was an unbroken line ruling Giustenal from the Rebirth to the Cleansing Wars, just as the sources suggest is true of Bodach. That would make them incredibly powerful and important cities.
I think that Bodach was originally on the sea as well. Here's my reasoning: salt flats develop from a dried up sea. Since Bodach is close to sea level on a relatively flat plain (the tablelands), I think that the current Great Ivory Plain was part of the Sunrise Sea during the Green Age. That would give Bodach access to the Sunrise sea through the Estuary of the Forked Tongue. (under that theory, the mekillot mountains would have been islands during the Green Age).
As we've been developing the Jihad, Irikos sacked Bodach before the Cleansing Wars. That doesn't mean that the city ceased to exist ... but it could have. Wyan of Bodach could have been a warlord before Bodach was sacked, or he could have been born in Bodach under a new (probably Rajaat-friendly) regime.
As we've been developing the Jihad, Irikos sacked Bodach before the Cleansing Wars.
One problem with that is that Irikos dies sacking Bodach, AFTER participating in the Cleansing Wars (by the sources account, as the champion assigned to orcs - which is obviously wrong, but IIRC it is specifically stated as "champion" rather than "Champion", a minor difference, but could mean that he was merely a hero of recognition within the army fighting the orcs - either way he at least participated and lived to see the eradication of the orcs)
One problem with that is that Irikos dies sacking Bodach, AFTER participating in the Cleansing Wars (by the sources account, as the champion assigned to orcs - which is obviously wrong, but IIRC it is specifically stated as "champion" rather than "Champion", a minor difference, but could mean that he was merely a hero of recognition within the army fighting the orcs - either way he at least participated and lived to see the eradication of the orcs)
I agree with your interpretation of a champion rather than the Champion, and suggest that we extend the same logic to specific orcs rather than The Orcs worldwide. We know Bodach was a mixed-race city. They, and other cities, might have had an orc army or mercenaries or such. (I'm picturing Bodach as something like Carthage -- rich, powerful, very diverse, and more than a little frightening.) Makes more sense to target it as part of the Preserver Jihad. The Preserver Jihad's first purpose was probably to get rid of wizards that could have effectively opposed him, but may have helped to set up the Cleansing Wars in other respects as well. Assuming that Rajaat's purpose did not change, he'd want to take out the cities that united humans with other races, before he openly proposed cleansing non-human races.
Also, the comment about Bodach being "neutral" makes more sense in context of the preserver Jihad than in the Cleansing Wars. There's no way that Bodach could have imagined itself neutral during the Cleansing Wars as a mixed race city. It might have during the Preserver Jihad --- e.g., if it had defilers.
One problem with that is that Irikos dies sacking Bodach, AFTER participating in the Cleansing Wars (by the sources account, as the champion assigned to orcs - which is obviously wrong, but IIRC it is specifically stated as "champion" rather than "Champion", a minor difference, but could mean that he was merely a hero of recognition within the army fighting the orcs - either way he at least participated and lived to see the eradication of the orcs)
Any part of the Book of Artifacts can be ignored when said parts are duplicated in a Dark Sun book. As such, we can ignore that book's mention of Irikos being a Champion fighting the orcs, and instead focus of the Psionic Artifacts of Athas' mention of Irikos as a defiler warlord serving under Rajaat and sent to sack the Bodach of the CWs.
As for playing with 'champion' and 'Champion', I never bought that in any form. When a reference points to a powerful defiler serving under Rajaat and fighting during the CWs or against preservers, and says it's a
[c]hampion, it refers to a Champion of Rajaat.
Also, the comment about Bodach being "neutral" makes more sense in context of the preserver Jihad than in the Cleansing Wars. There's no way that Bodach could have imagined itself neutral during the Cleansing Wars as a mixed race city. It might have during the Preserver Jihad --- e.g., if it had defilers.
Totally in agreement. If there was a secret vote to detrmine what to do with this, I'd say to ignore the 'Champion' and 'orc' bits and go with defiler warlord - as mentionned in PAoA - and thus the Jihad, since those references are indeed better for that conflict than the later Wars for which there were no 'sides'.
Any part of the Book of Artifacts can be ignored when said parts are duplicated in a Dark Sun book. As such, we can ignore that book's mention of Irikos being a Champion fighting the orcs, and instead focus of the Psionic Artifacts of Athas' mention of Irikos as a defiler warlord serving under Rajaat and sent to sack the Bodach of the CWs.
As for playing with 'champion' and 'Champion', I never bought that in any form. When a reference points to a powerful defiler serving under Rajaat and fighting during the CWs or against preservers, and says it's a
[c]hampion, it refers to a Champion of Rajaat.
When a *Dark Sun* reference refers to a Champion, it generally refers to a Champion of Rajaat, yes. But as you pointed out, the Book of Artifacts is not a Dark Sun reference.
Totally in agreement. If there was a secret vote to detrmine what to do with this, I'd say to ignore the 'Champion' and 'orc' bits and go with defiler warlord - as mentionned in PAoA - and thus the Jihad, since those references are indeed better for that conflict than the later Wars for which there were no 'sides'.
Yep. Kind of hard to be a "neutral" city full of rebirth races during the Cleansing Wars.
(-4,312)
-King's Agitation
Rajaat begins a jihad against the preservers of Athas for the next thousand
years. Preservers across the land go into hiding while fighting a losing
battle against the followers of Rajaat.
Defilers and Preservers of Athas mentions wars between the 2 but during the cleansing wars (unless I haven't read the book closly enough- possible). Assuming one chooses to believe the above paragraph from the timeline I would suggest that the "Jyhad" wasn't an actual war like the Cleansing wars but more of a philosophical struggle which occasional violence making some preservers go into hiding. Even if correct the Jyhad would seem a relativly minor affair barely worth a footnote in the timeline as DaPtWoA seems clear that Defilers and Preservers were united at the start of the CW vs Rajaat and split later in the war.
Whether a bit of information is worth a footnote or a chapter simply depends on what you are focusing on. Most sources don't go into much detail about the preservers that opposed Rajaat, therefore the preserver jihad doesn't come up.
The timeline did not appear in print, so where it conflicts with published materials, or where it simply makes no sense, we don't have to follow it. The preserver jihad does not conflict with previous material, and it makes a great deal of sense; helps explain a number of things.
Even the wars name Jyhad sounds stupid in in the context of DS.
I have no idea how "jyhad" sounds, but that word does look stupid.
(I've never ragged on spelling on this forum, but if you are arguing that a word looks or sounds stupid, the spelling of the word is relevant.) The word we are talking about is jihad. Definition: righteous struggle, or holy war. Synonyms: "crusade", "kampf."
The line about the jihad helps make sense of other material, such as the seige of Haakar,
IMHO the war was just a side event in the Cleansing Wars or at best started in the lead up to the Cleansing Wars, not a war that lasted for 750-1000 years.
If your opinion is based on any sources, then bring them out.
The preserver Jihad is a good enough story on its own, and fits in so well with the other details, that even if the timeline hadn't proposed it, and Chris had made the whole thing up himself, or if others had proposed it on this list, I'd want to write it in to our projects. If you have any arguments that it doesn't fit the current sources, raise those arguments within the next week, before we do publish information on the Jihad.
Do I have permission to maybe work with someone else of my choosing, solely on the backstory part of Egendo? Working outloud on Skype or MSN audio might give a better result.
My last final gets done this Thursday. Thursday night and Friday I'll try to polish off everything Bruno needs me to get done for FFN, for his Friday evening deadline. After that, I start incorporating all changes, read over any concerns/issues like this one, make tough choices, and finish the thing off. I'll be offline as of Sunday, working this stuff up as we visit with family and doctors and hospitals out of state for my son, so I need everything in by Sunday.
IIRC Bruno changed the deadline to Saturday. Maybe that was only a one time thing, but that was the assumption I was working under sooooo...
And I haven't changed the backstory at all, save for a few minor edits for style and language.
I'm on Skype, if that helps
I know ;)
The Egendo story has potential, but its not there yet, why I'm kinda focused on that. If I can bring it one step closer to perfection, then I'll try. I'm fascinated with everything Champion/warlord/defiler/undead .... those that know me could tell you that :D
shoot me an email if you want to collaborate or want more input. plus I could get to "know ya"
I know ;)
The Egendo story has potential, but its not there yet, why I'm kinda focused on that. If I can bring it one step closer to perfection, then I'll try. I'm fascinated with everything Champion/warlord/defiler/undead .... those that know me could tell you that :D
Hey - Egendo's story is great - I should know; I wrote some of it!!! :D Well actually I really only did part of his backstory, doing rewriting and editing of Chris' initial history.
The Jihad is described, but not named, in several other sources besides the Timeline. There is the Revised Boxed Set, Preservers & Defilers, is an history lesson in the Dragon's Crown adventure, is mentionned in the Book of Artifacts, and probably in several others.
All of which more or less stated the Jihad happened in the Cleansing Wars.. Actually Preservers and Defilers states exactly this and was one of the last official books on DS to be released- more or less the final word on it. The revised boxed set doesn't include it in its timeline nor does it mention it towards the end of the Age of Magic. Heck the timeline says it lasts for 1000 years and yet on the timeline it adds up to 780 years. Alot can happen in 220 missing years- in real life thats close to the American revolution for example. According to the timeline Dregoth won't be available for the adventure Dregoths Ascension until free year 400 or so since it mentions that he spends the next 1900 years or so off world in -1500 FY or so. Every thing else as far as I can tell in the timeline is mentioned in other primary sources the timeline just adds dates to the events.
The reason I said Jihad was a stupid word in DS is theres no quasi Arabic culture for the word to come from. The same reason why DS shouldn't have Katanas, Ninjas, or Samurai
The reason I said Jihad was a stupid word in DS is theres no quasi Arabic culture for the word to come from. The same reason why DS shouldn't have Katanas, Ninjas, or Samurai
Who is to say that there were not?
With the massive wars that raged for several thousands of years (the Perserver wars and the Cleansing Wars) who is to know the true extent of the number of cultures that were lost and destroyed.
Whole races were destroyed - so it is an easy assumption that there would be certian cultures and societies that were also wiped out.
Who is to say that there were not?
With the massive wars that raged for several thousands of years (the Perserver wars and the Cleansing Wars) who is to know the true extent of the number of cultures that were lost and destroyed.
Whole races were destroyed - so it is an easy assumption that there would be certian cultures and societies that were also wiped out.
I knew someone would come up with this;) I'll concede the point but look out for my dinosaur riding reactivated DS Ninja/Samurai Warforged Pirate since we don't know what was wiped out. Or maybe not I think I'll leave that idea with the surfing Druids. To me the Preserver/Defiler war started in the Cleansing Wars and is still waging to this day due to the conflict between the Veiled Alliance/Sorceror Kings. The revised boxed set hinted that the SKs were thinking of new ways and Hamanu was trying to open discussions with Sadira so after around 3500 years give or take the conflict was going to cease on an organised level although the 2 schools of magic will never see eye to eye. I'm sure that somewhere in that timeline.
The Jihad ...is an history lesson in the Dragon's Crown adventure...
...and note that those events mentioned in the adventure involve Hamanu, who was not around until the end of the CW's, so the preserver war had to last until, at least, that point (and to me, the references to dragon magic seem to limit the viable time period as well).
The reason I said Jihad was a stupid word in DS is theres no quasi Arabic culture for the word to come from. The same reason why DS shouldn't have Katanas, Ninjas, or Samurai
Or Sensei, or a whole city-state based on Bankok? :D The reason that Dark Sun pulled off making a bunch of Asian cities while so many fans think that there's nothing Asia in Dark Sun is that some westerners are used to Asian themes being done in a cheesy way, and don't even recognize Asian themes when they aren't dripping with cheese.
The idea of Ninjas and Samurai don't seem terribly Athasian to me, but that's not because they are Asian; it's because the theme doesn't fit, any more than knights and courtly romance fits. We borrow some European stuff, but don't have Knights, even though we borrow the word Champion from European mythology and use it for Athasian purposes. Elves use Polynesian names, even though their culture has little to do with Polynesia. And if you think that it's pure coincidence that DS was initially written during a time when the term "ethnic cleansing" was in vogue in certain parts of the world, think again. DS has a lot of real world references, (hello Veiled Alliance cell structure) even though it stays a healthy distance from the whole alegory business. There's plenty of ugliness and horror all over the world, that you should not have to pick on any one nation or people for examples. No sense in leaving anyone out, either, when something happens that just screames "Dark Sun." You'd be surprised how many things I pull right out of my own city, Las Vegas.
The concept of "Jihad" fits the story. If you've got a good reason that it shouldn't be in, bring it up, fast!
...and note that those events mentioned in the adventure involve Hamanu, who was not around until the end of the CW's, so the preserver war had to last until, at least, that point (and to me, the references to dragon magic seem to limit the viable time period as well).
Hence the storyline we've been working out about a group of preservers (the wind mages) that managed to deceive Rajaat into thinking they were dead until after he'd shown his hand. Since Hamanu only barely defeated Windreaver less than a year before the rebellion, that's probably the time that I'd place the fall of Hakaar. Alternately, it could have been earlier, but not that much earlier.
The preserver Jihad appears not to have ended with the beginning of the Cleansing Wars, even though it began to pave the way for those wars.
Hence the storyline we've been working out about a group of preservers (the wind mages) that managed to deceive Rajaat into thinking they were dead until after he'd shown his hand. Since Hamanu only barely defeated Windreaver less than a year before the rebellion, that's probably the time that I'd place the fall of Hakaar. Alternately, it could have been earlier, but not that much earlier.
The preserver Jihad appears not to have ended with the beginning of the Cleansing Wars, even though it began to pave the way for those wars.
Well to me the "Presever Jyhad" never really existed or stopped. In effect its been going on since at least the start of the CW and hasn't stopped.
Heck the timeline says it lasts for 1000 years and yet on the timeline it adds up to 780 years.
Your numbers would require us to assume without evidence that the Preserver Jihad ended when the Cleansing Wars began.
Your numbers would require us to assume without evidence that the Preserver Jihad ended when the Cleansing Wars began.
How about the Dregoth one then which ends in FY 400. I use the timeline to fill out known details but once again who wrote the damn thing and howq well did they know DS? Lets be honest there were alot of flaws in 2nd ed and Dark Sun in particular. Contradictions, rules errors, random rule changes (Halfling Preservers hang on a minute). A few of these can be explained by the internal problems at TSR or poor communication between the authors. At the end of the day I don't pay much attention to a single paragraph in a non canon timeline that wasn't mentioned in any other primary game source/novel or covered in any history. Its not important to me and is easily ignored IMHO.
I have a Jihad Strike Team in my head that will be out after I finish helping with FFN. I'll post it then.
I use the timeline to fill out known details but once again who wrote the damn thing and howq well did they know DS?
I'm going from memory here, but I had thought that Kevin Melka put the timeline together back in the TSR days. Given that he was a DS designer and developer, I'm guessing he knew the setting pretty well
.At the end of the day I don't pay much attention to a single paragraph in a non canon timeline that wasn't mentioned in any other primary game source/novel or covered in any history. Its not important to me and is easily ignored IMHO.
Personally speaking, I've always seen the timleine as canonical, given its provenance. Copies were given out at GenCon (iirc), distributed over an old DS mailing list (by Kevin, I think, but not 100% sure), included in TSR material handed over to athas.org and hosted by WotC on their website under the section for previous editions (link here).
The timeline is an attempt by the late-2e designers to knock some of Dark Sun's contradictions into shape, incorporating bits and pieces from the novels. As Pennarin mentioned a short while ago (I think it was him), you need to look at a few sources to get an overall picture of DS history (WC, D&P, timeline etc) - any one source on its own is insufficient and shouldn't be judged singly or viewed as a final word.
I'm going from memory here, but I had thought that Kevin Melka put the timeline together back in the TSR days. Given that he was a DS designer and developer, I'm guessing he knew the setting pretty well
Personally speaking, I've always seen the timleine as canonical, given its provenance. Copies were given out at GenCon (iirc), distributed over an old DS mailing list (by Kevin, I think, but not 100% sure), included in TSR material handed over to athas.org and hosted by WotC on their website under the section for previous editions (link here).
The timeline is an attempt by the late-2e designers to knock some of Dark Sun's contradictions into shape, incorporating bits and pieces from the novels. As Pennarin mentioned a short while ago (I think it was him), you need to look at a few sources to get an overall picture of DS history (WC, D&P, timeline etc) - any one source on its own is insufficient and shouldn't be judged singly or viewed as a final word.
Well some of the timeline dates are a bit off but I'll concede thats probably being a bit nit picky. Unless Athas.org is planning an Arcane Age supplement like old 2nd ed FR it is more or less pointless spending much effort into developing previous ages of Athas. I've always viewed the Defiler-Preserver wars as more of a purge like the Jedi in Star Wars or a'la Highlander involving one on one battles (ambushes) or skirmishes between small groups of them.
Still I'm always interested to see what people come up with and realise more than a few of my ideas are wonky to say the least. Boy am I going to get hated when I post my final thread on Athasian Trolls.
Well some of the timeline dates are a bit off but I'll concede thats probably being a bit nit picky. Unless Athas.org is planning an Arcane Age supplement like old 2nd ed FR it is more or less pointless spending much effort into developing previous ages of Athas. I've always viewed the Defiler-Preserver wars as more of a purge like the Jedi in Star Wars or a'la Highlander involving one on one battles (ambushes) or skirmishes between small groups of them.
Still I'm always interested to see what people come up with and realise more than a few of my ideas are wonky to say the least. Boy am I going to get hated when I post my final thread on Athasian Trolls.
That is the route that I think that it started, and that is what I have written so far. It started small with assassinations, and then, after a few hundred years and people started to put the pieces together, it evolves into something more. Of course, at that point, all the big powerful threats to the defiler are eliminated. (take out the big threats first, it makes the rest easy)