Races from before the Blue Age - Downloaded from the Wizards Community, all coding removed by Solauren

Races from before the Blue Age

Post/Author/DateTime Post
#1
darksunlord1
Oct 13, 2007 16:55:09 This is all flavor-text, just to get some ideas out.
I must warn that I don't intend to make stats myself, I just want to see what others think about what was before the Blue Age.

Begin
On the material plane of Athas, in the beginning, there was the Blue Age, when Athas was free from the touch of Magic, and Psionics had not developed yet.
People who know this age all known that the only intelligent life were the Halfling, the Rhulisti. As far as anyone can tell, the Rhulisti were alone.

There were others.

The Rhulisti were only alone in the Tyr'agi region, now simply called the Tyr region. The other sentient species around are in the following situations.

Jo’le: Creatures once physical, now incorporeal, these beings had mastery over memories and dreams, as well as other mental feats, making them better candidates for being the first psionic beings indigitous to Athas.

No information on the Jo’le or their godminds exists on the surface of Athas, all of it sealed in puzzle boxes only found at least 1 mile under the surface. All puzzles are guarded by Bound Echoes, are the remade quintessence of a powerful being (a sort of a psionics-based undead). Originally, becoming a Bound-Echo was in fact looked upon as one of the highest honors in their society. There was Jo’leians who trained for their entire life for this.
Bound-Echoes of this sort still guard important relics and sights.
Sadly, the Bound-Echoes guarding the puzzles boxes were forced into this, and were altered so they would be more powerful and also so that they would be forced to serve the will of the creatures that had imprisoned in the first place.

WHO ARE THE GODMINDS?
They are the closest thing to a deity on current day Athas. This is because Godminds can supplement their energy resources by tapping into the subconscious minds of sentient beings. This is similar to the standard worship-into-power; however, the godminds are keen on civilization and progress of technology, the arts and philosophy, among other things.
This does not mean that all the godminds, or perhaps none of them, are peaceful, wise, and intelligent. The godminds on a whole wish for the above-said concepts; however, they do not all agree on the same things, much less the same way to reach their intended goals. Also, some Godminds experimented with other types of mental energy as a form of sustenance
The Godminds, in one aspect or another, have floated in the Crystal Sphere for at least 200 million years, and spent the last 60 of that, until about 600,000 years ago, when the Godminds came to Athas and fell asleep. The Godminds bore the form of massive crystal structures at that time, and would remain so until the ancestors of the Jo‘le had evolved, which occurred of an accelerated rate. These ancestors bore a similar genetic relationship as Earthling Humans had with Cro-Magnons.
The Godminds would stay asleep until 90,000 years prior to the Blue Age. The Jo’le had figured out that the crystalline structures were not only alive, but sentinet. The Jo’le did a fairly good job of studying these being. By the time the Godminds awoke, the Jo’le had been using psionics for some time.
For reasons not yet recovered and understood, the Jo’le sought to separate their minds from their bodies.
They were successful.
This sundering resulted in the creation of the Goo-Bano, a completely-physical species who could not use psionics. They also could not dream, and they had lost the ability to create art of almost any sort. While the things the Goo-Bano lost were felt by all of the original Goo-Bano, their children and their children’s children were cursed to remember the pain that their predecessor suffer. The one thing the Goo-Bano had over the Jo’le was that the Goo-Bano possessed a level of technology that could be compared to earthling science-fiction. The Goo-Bano did not have the capacity to use psionics; however, they could create things that could.
Roughly 30,000 years prior to the Blue Age, the Goo-Bano, both seeking revenge for the Jo’le’s abandonment, and for the chance to study the Jo’le.
The Jo’le were defeated by the technological wonders of the Goo-Bano, and also because the Godminds had vanished. To this day no one knows what happen to the Godminds.
Upon winning, The Goo-Bano imprisoned all Jo’le and everything on the surface of Athas that borne the taint of the Jo’le. The Jo’le and their relics were put in extremely remote places, even putting a third on the moon!

How was that? I'm sure there are holes, but this is the first draft!
Please help me improve this
#2
xlorepdarkhelm_dup
Oct 13, 2007 17:20:58 Interesting idea. However, I personally don't have the beginning of Athas be the Blue Age. I believe the Blue Age to be a considerable time after the beginning of the world, it's just the furthest back anyone can potentially have heard/known about. I don't believe Athas had started as a Water World, but may potentially have had a composition much like Earth (water/land ratio), and had been connected normally to the outer planes, etc. It may have even had deities associated with it. Some cosmic-level accident however resulted in the Grey, sealing/shutting off Athas, and the like... long (millenia) before the timeline of Athas even starts.

I tend to see the Rhulisti as being a race that developed along similar lines that humans on Earth did, except rather than mechanical technology, they had biotechnology -- lifeshaping, etc. At some point, they may have caused the events which melted their ice caps, etc, and made Athas into a water world. Much of the history before the Blue Age was destroyed at the beginning of the Blue Age (when the waters flooded the world), the survivor Rhulisti developed a whole new society, one which may have expunged any record of their being the cause of the world being covered in water (and rather, claiming it always had been covered in water). This would still be potentially several thousand years before the Athasian timeline starts.
#3
thebrax
Oct 13, 2007 18:29:04 To my knowledge, there are no official sources that even suggest any undead creatures dating back to the Blue Age. Because of this, I've tended to think of the Grey as something dating back to the Rebirth, at the earliest.

Otherwise, I tend to agree with Xlor. The beginning of the Blue Age calendar of "World Ages" is too convenient ... species don't just spring into place with a world government. Unifications (to borrow another concept from *Firefly*)are usually violent, especially unifications that erase everything that came before.
#4
darksunlord1
Oct 13, 2007 23:08:44
Interesting idea. However, I personally don't have the beginning of Athas be the Blue Age. I believe the Blue Age to be a considerable time after the beginning of the world, it's just the furthest back anyone can potentially have heard/known about. I don't believe Athas had started as a Water World, but may potentially have had a composition much like Earth (water/land ratio), and had been connected normally to the outer planes, etc. It may have even had deities associated with it. Some cosmic-level accident however resulted in the Grey, sealing/shutting off Athas, and the like... long (millenia) before the timeline of Athas even starts.

I tend to see the Rhulisti as being a race that developed along similar lines that humans on Earth did, except rather than mechanical technology, they had biotechnology -- lifeshaping, etc. At some point, they may have caused the events which melted their ice caps, etc, and made Athas into a water world. Much of the history before the Blue Age was destroyed at the beginning of the Blue Age (when the waters flooded the world), the survivor Rhulisti developed a whole new society, one which may have expunged any record of their being the cause of the world being covered in water (and rather, claiming it always had been covered in water). This would still be potentially several thousand years before the Athasian timeline starts.

Any advice or ideas?
#5
Duke5150
Oct 14, 2007 5:17:19 i like it, but i think there were a few ages before the blue age, i think athas had a cataclysmic event that brought about an Ice age, then the ice melted due to some event and brought on the blue age.
#6
xlorepdarkhelm_dup
Oct 14, 2007 21:34:41
Any advice or ideas?

Not sure, not overly fond of too many "other races" on Athas besides the Rhulisti during the Blue Age, or before that, it's me personally, but I tend to see "humans on Earth are the dominant/sentient species without another one in the mix" as a concept for the Rhulisti. Honestly, I think one of the fundamental "overdone" qualities of fantasy is that there are myriads of races which all clog up the worlds. Athas, to me at least, started with a single race, which transformed itself into most of the other races (exceptions being Kreen, possibly the Nikaal, if you go with the notion that they aren't a rebirth race, but were some barbaric waterborne race during the Blue Age, and the Gith). I like the idea that multiple sentient species on Athas is more of an effect of willful change by the former dominant species, than something that occurred naturally (this also is one of the reasons I'm fond of the Kreen having been "manipulated" by the nature-benders).

I'm far more willing to the inclusion of new Rebirth races, and then there is the possibility of sentient species that could have been descendants of lifeshaped creatures.
#7
thebrax
Oct 15, 2007 0:51:41 Hehe. Maybe the xicchil were on a spacecraft that forced the Gythyanki into a space landing, somehow resulting in the psionic event ;)
#8
xlorepdarkhelm_dup
Oct 15, 2007 8:17:16 lol
#9
darksunlord1
Oct 16, 2007 0:51:46
i like it, but i think there were a few ages before the blue age, i think athas had a cataclysmic event that brought about an Ice age, then the ice melted due to some event and brought on the blue age.

Dude, I was actually thinking of doing that! Thanks!
#10
darksunlord1
Oct 16, 2007 0:54:08
Hehe. Maybe the xicchil were on a spacecraft that forced the Gythyanki into a space landing, somehow resulting in the psionic event ;)

As I understand it, an offshoot of the Gith races, probably githayanki, crashed on Athas, and for some reason went primeval.
#11
thebrax
Oct 16, 2007 1:15:38
As I understand it, an offshoot of the Gith races, probably githayanki, crashed on Athas, and for some reason went primeval.

That's right. But now , you know the rest of the story. ;)
#12
Sysane
Oct 16, 2007 7:37:52
As I understand it, an offshoot of the Gith races, probably githayanki, crashed on Athas, and for some reason went primeval.

For the record, the githayanki didn't crash land on Athas. They held a stronghold city located beneath the Black Spine Mountains known as Yathizor. The Githzeri let off with some sort of psi-bomb which left the githiyanki near mindless.
#13
thebrax
Oct 16, 2007 15:04:40
The Githzeri let off with some sort of psi-bomb which left the githiyanki near mindless.

I don't think that "near mindless" wording would go over too well with my Gith buddies. ;)
#14
--agares--
Oct 22, 2007 7:20:38
i like it, but i think there were a few ages before the blue age, i think athas had a cataclysmic event that brought about an Ice age, then the ice melted due to some event and brought on the blue age.

I remember another thread about an hypotetic Athas' future ice age, but I think that this idea of an ice age BEFORE the Blue Age is better.

Maybe in this "White Age" there were other intelligent races, but maybe there were no intelligent beings at all. Only beasts, like in Earth millions of years ago.

About the Githyanki, maybe some of them survived after the Black Spine events (maybe the queen Tirint herself), and can be another wild card in the Tyr Region.

If the destruction of Dregoth's Planar Gate is canon, the Dread King may be searching for another item to travel across the planes, and reactivate the Nightmare Gate can be a good option.

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 darksunlord1 Oct 13, 2007 16:55:09	This is all flavor-text, just to get some ideas out. I must warn that I don't intend to make stats myself, I just want to see what others think about what was before the Blue Age. Begin On the material plane of Athas, in the beginning, there was the Blue Age, when Athas was free from the touch of Magic, and Psionics had not developed yet. People who know this age all known that the only intelligent life were the Halfling, the Rhulisti. As far as anyone can tell, the Rhulisti were alone. There were others. The Rhulisti were only alone in the Tyr'agi region, now simply called the Tyr region. The other sentient species around are in the following situations. Jo’le: Creatures once physical, now incorporeal, these beings had mastery over memories and dreams, as well as other mental feats, making them better candidates for being the first psionic beings indigitous to Athas. No information on the Jo’le or their godminds exists on the surface of Athas, all of it sealed in puzzle boxes only found at least 1 mile under the surface. All puzzles are guarded by Bound Echoes, are the remade quintessence of a powerful being (a sort of a psionics-based undead). Originally, becoming a Bound-Echo was in fact looked upon as one of the highest honors in their society. There was Jo’leians who trained for their entire life for this. Bound-Echoes of this sort still guard important relics and sights. Sadly, the Bound-Echoes guarding the puzzles boxes were forced into this, and were altered so they would be more powerful and also so that they would be forced to serve the will of the creatures that had imprisoned in the first place. WHO ARE THE GODMINDS? They are the closest thing to a deity on current day Athas. This is because Godminds can supplement their energy resources by tapping into the subconscious minds of sentient beings. This is similar to the standard worship-into-power; however, the godminds are keen on civilization and progress of technology, the arts and philosophy, among other things. This does not mean that all the godminds, or perhaps none of them, are peaceful, wise, and intelligent. The godminds on a whole wish for the above-said concepts; however, they do not all agree on the same things, much less the same way to reach their intended goals. Also, some Godminds experimented with other types of mental energy as a form of sustenance The Godminds, in one aspect or another, have floated in the Crystal Sphere for at least 200 million years, and spent the last 60 of that, until about 600,000 years ago, when the Godminds came to Athas and fell asleep. The Godminds bore the form of massive crystal structures at that time, and would remain so until the ancestors of the Jo‘le had evolved, which occurred of an accelerated rate. These ancestors bore a similar genetic relationship as Earthling Humans had with Cro-Magnons. The Godminds would stay asleep until 90,000 years prior to the Blue Age. The Jo’le had figured out that the crystalline structures were not only alive, but sentinet. The Jo’le did a fairly good job of studying these being. By the time the Godminds awoke, the Jo’le had been using psionics for some time. For reasons not yet recovered and understood, the Jo’le sought to separate their minds from their bodies. They were successful. This sundering resulted in the creation of the Goo-Bano, a completely-physical species who could not use psionics. They also could not dream, and they had lost the ability to create art of almost any sort. While the things the Goo-Bano lost were felt by all of the original Goo-Bano, their children and their children’s children were cursed to remember the pain that their predecessor suffer. The one thing the Goo-Bano had over the Jo’le was that the Goo-Bano possessed a level of technology that could be compared to earthling science-fiction. The Goo-Bano did not have the capacity to use psionics; however, they could create things that could. Roughly 30,000 years prior to the Blue Age, the Goo-Bano, both seeking revenge for the Jo’le’s abandonment, and for the chance to study the Jo’le. The Jo’le were defeated by the technological wonders of the Goo-Bano, and also because the Godminds had vanished. To this day no one knows what happen to the Godminds. Upon winning, The Goo-Bano imprisoned all Jo’le and everything on the surface of Athas that borne the taint of the Jo’le. The Jo’le and their relics were put in extremely remote places, even putting a third on the moon! How was that? I'm sure there are holes, but this is the first draft! Please help me improve this
#2 xlorepdarkhelm_dup Oct 13, 2007 17:20:58	Interesting idea. However, I personally don't have the beginning of Athas be the Blue Age. I believe the Blue Age to be a considerable time after the beginning of the world, it's just the furthest back anyone can potentially have heard/known about. I don't believe Athas had started as a Water World, but may potentially have had a composition much like Earth (water/land ratio), and had been connected normally to the outer planes, etc. It may have even had deities associated with it. Some cosmic-level accident however resulted in the Grey, sealing/shutting off Athas, and the like... long (millenia) before the timeline of Athas even starts. I tend to see the Rhulisti as being a race that developed along similar lines that humans on Earth did, except rather than mechanical technology, they had biotechnology -- lifeshaping, etc. At some point, they may have caused the events which melted their ice caps, etc, and made Athas into a water world. Much of the history before the Blue Age was destroyed at the beginning of the Blue Age (when the waters flooded the world), the survivor Rhulisti developed a whole new society, one which may have expunged any record of their being the cause of the world being covered in water (and rather, claiming it always had been covered in water). This would still be potentially several thousand years before the Athasian timeline starts.
#3 thebrax Oct 13, 2007 18:29:04	To my knowledge, there are no official sources that even suggest any undead creatures dating back to the Blue Age. Because of this, I've tended to think of the Grey as something dating back to the Rebirth, at the earliest. Otherwise, I tend to agree with Xlor. The beginning of the Blue Age calendar of "World Ages" is too convenient ... species don't just spring into place with a world government. Unifications (to borrow another concept from Firefly)are usually violent, especially unifications that erase everything that came before.
#4 darksunlord1 Oct 13, 2007 23:08:44	Interesting idea. However, I personally don't have the beginning of Athas be the Blue Age. I believe the Blue Age to be a considerable time after the beginning of the world, it's just the furthest back anyone can potentially have heard/known about. I don't believe Athas had started as a Water World, but may potentially have had a composition much like Earth (water/land ratio), and had been connected normally to the outer planes, etc. It may have even had deities associated with it. Some cosmic-level accident however resulted in the Grey, sealing/shutting off Athas, and the like... long (millenia) before the timeline of Athas even starts. I tend to see the Rhulisti as being a race that developed along similar lines that humans on Earth did, except rather than mechanical technology, they had biotechnology -- lifeshaping, etc. At some point, they may have caused the events which melted their ice caps, etc, and made Athas into a water world. Much of the history before the Blue Age was destroyed at the beginning of the Blue Age (when the waters flooded the world), the survivor Rhulisti developed a whole new society, one which may have expunged any record of their being the cause of the world being covered in water (and rather, claiming it always had been covered in water). This would still be potentially several thousand years before the Athasian timeline starts. Any advice or ideas?
#5 Duke5150 Oct 14, 2007 5:17:19	i like it, but i think there were a few ages before the blue age, i think athas had a cataclysmic event that brought about an Ice age, then the ice melted due to some event and brought on the blue age.
#6 xlorepdarkhelm_dup Oct 14, 2007 21:34:41	Any advice or ideas? Not sure, not overly fond of too many "other races" on Athas besides the Rhulisti during the Blue Age, or before that, it's me personally, but I tend to see "humans on Earth are the dominant/sentient species without another one in the mix" as a concept for the Rhulisti. Honestly, I think one of the fundamental "overdone" qualities of fantasy is that there are myriads of races which all clog up the worlds. Athas, to me at least, started with a single race, which transformed itself into most of the other races (exceptions being Kreen, possibly the Nikaal, if you go with the notion that they aren't a rebirth race, but were some barbaric waterborne race during the Blue Age, and the Gith). I like the idea that multiple sentient species on Athas is more of an effect of willful change by the former dominant species, than something that occurred naturally (this also is one of the reasons I'm fond of the Kreen having been "manipulated" by the nature-benders). I'm far more willing to the inclusion of new Rebirth races, and then there is the possibility of sentient species that could have been descendants of lifeshaped creatures.
#7 thebrax Oct 15, 2007 0:51:41	Hehe. Maybe the xicchil were on a spacecraft that forced the Gythyanki into a space landing, somehow resulting in the psionic event ;)
#8 xlorepdarkhelm_dup Oct 15, 2007 8:17:16	lol
#9 darksunlord1 Oct 16, 2007 0:51:46	i like it, but i think there were a few ages before the blue age, i think athas had a cataclysmic event that brought about an Ice age, then the ice melted due to some event and brought on the blue age. Dude, I was actually thinking of doing that! Thanks!
#10 darksunlord1 Oct 16, 2007 0:54:08	Hehe. Maybe the xicchil were on a spacecraft that forced the Gythyanki into a space landing, somehow resulting in the psionic event ;) As I understand it, an offshoot of the Gith races, probably githayanki, crashed on Athas, and for some reason went primeval.
#11 thebrax Oct 16, 2007 1:15:38	As I understand it, an offshoot of the Gith races, probably githayanki, crashed on Athas, and for some reason went primeval. That's right. But now , you know the rest of the story. ;)
#12 Sysane Oct 16, 2007 7:37:52	As I understand it, an offshoot of the Gith races, probably githayanki, crashed on Athas, and for some reason went primeval. For the record, the githayanki didn't crash land on Athas. They held a stronghold city located beneath the Black Spine Mountains known as Yathizor. The Githzeri let off with some sort of psi-bomb which left the githiyanki near mindless.
#13 thebrax Oct 16, 2007 15:04:40	The Githzeri let off with some sort of psi-bomb which left the githiyanki near mindless. I don't think that "near mindless" wording would go over too well with my Gith buddies. ;)
#14 --agares-- Oct 22, 2007 7:20:38	i like it, but i think there were a few ages before the blue age, i think athas had a cataclysmic event that brought about an Ice age, then the ice melted due to some event and brought on the blue age. I remember another thread about an hypotetic Athas' future ice age, but I think that this idea of an ice age BEFORE the Blue Age is better. Maybe in this "White Age" there were other intelligent races, but maybe there were no intelligent beings at all. Only beasts, like in Earth millions of years ago. About the Githyanki, maybe some of them survived after the Black Spine events (maybe the queen Tirint herself), and can be another wild card in the Tyr Region. If the destruction of Dregoth's Planar Gate is canon, the Dread King may be searching for another item to travel across the planes, and reactivate the Nightmare Gate can be a good option.