Hello miss Abbey,
I'm writing you in response to a very old suggestion of yours, being that ''If anyone ever has questions about why things are the way they are in the books I wrote, I'll be happy to answer them -- I only hope you won't be too disappointed by my answers''.
I make fun of the issues others have about some of your novels by saying I sleep with The Rise and Fall of a Dragon King under my pillow...
I liked those you wrote about the world of Dark Sun, and I'm sorry to say I never got the privilege of reading the books you wrote on other circumstances and about other places, but I'll get around to them.
Your quote above is from a letter to a Dark Sun mailing list that as been copied and recopied over the years. Should have gotten a copyright on that one
It as resurfaced of late on many occasions in the DS Boards of which I am a member.
Now here is the crux of this email: I would like to know something about the Champions.
See, DS is still very alive and breathing, thanks to a talented team of designers and workers that I'm only sorry to say are not paid at all. This team as brought the game back in the saddle by converting its iconic rules to the new third edition, published on the official site, athas.org. Chief among these rules, they're not around to it yet, will be what TSR called the advanced beings, of which dragons and Champions are a part of. I'm sure you are, or at least were, aware of this when the novels were written.
I have asked myself many questions after readings of your books, a major one of them was the way Hamanu handled sorcery.
Here's my question: Hamanu's whims are sorcery; what does that mean?
When you described him capable of splitting is mind in multiple parts and sending them away to observe or inhabit the bodies and minds of others, it was understood that you used a psionic power that you found in the Psionic Handbook, which you listed as one of your references for the writing of your novels. But each time a wizard on Athas did sorcery he pulled energy from the land, he quickened sorcery, to put it in your words. You had the DS setting to read plus the novels by Denning. Yet each time Hamanu did sorcery, you never described him pulling energy from the land; when he needed it, he took the energy in himself. But the whims as sorcery? I love it, but what does it mean? Was he not unlike a magic item that produces magical effects without ever needing to be recharged or to pull energy from the land? Something Rajaat did that gave this ability to is Champions?
The team at athas.org wants to adapt many things from the novels, yours and others; among them is what happened to Sadira in Rise and Fall when she met Hamanu. Her connection to the Black was severed. Was he using a kind of godlike power that shouldn't have a place outside of novels, or did he cast a spell, or was it the effect of one of his whims...back to my question again.
I hope you will find the time to write back on this personal and cherished question, of the 'do I really want to know or should I let it at that...' type.
With regards,
Alexis Gervais (aka Pennarin)
Here is her reponse (obiously I failed to mention I knew of the issues mentionned in her second point):
Hi,
A few basic things you need to know. First, it's been quite a while since I was day-to-day immersed in DarkSun. I've relocated twice and my notes have gotten sketchier each time, so while I'll try to answer your questions honestly, today's answers might be different from the answers you might have gotten in 1995 or 1996.
Second, the Dark Sun years were not the brightest years for TSR. things were getting increasingly desperate within the corporate structure and desperation does not foster good communication. I had some input from the gaming side of the house for Brazen Gambit and Cinnabar Shadows, but Rise and Fall was written without any consultation with the gaming department...no, let me be honest and say it was written despite the gaming department. When I had questions, I had Troy Denning's novels, the basic box, a psionics handbook, the Dragon Kings supplement, and a poorly produced supplement that was supposed to translate Troy's novels into gaming terms. For the most part, then, I was on my own for the world building and making things up as I went. (The actual Rise and Fall deal was that if I could produce the book in less than nine weeks then the book department could bring it out without ever consulting the gaming department...it was part of a destructive civil war within TSR.)
So, your basic assumption -- that I was aware of what the GAMING department was doing with Dark Sun -- is wrong, especially for Rise and Fall. I never did fully grasp the difference between psionics and sorcery as the Sorcerer-kings manipulated them. I strove to have mechanics that were internally consistent for my own plots and (because the gaming department was never going to see the final manuscript) didn't worry over much about how they related to the game (which, I'd been told, was being overhauled into an SF setting with large numbers of technologically-advanced halflings coming back to Athas from their native planet...a scenario I found appalling.)
Now, as for the way Hamanu (and by extension the other wildly powerful npcs of the setting) used sorcery...as best I can recall, I messed around with the idea of obsidian with the idea that the dragon metamorphosis created living obsidian, which was, in and of itself, fuel for sorcery. Hamanu could suck the life out of anything, but usually he chose to suck the life out of himself (he was casually suicidal, among other things). Of course, the more he used himself as the fuel for sorcery, the further he progressed toward the mindlessness of a full-fledged dragon. Sorcery for Hamanu is still a lose-lose proposition: he could destroy himself or he could wreck Urik.
I'm not claiming that this structure works for the game, but it worked for the novels, and that's all I needed to care about. I truly expected the halflings-as-uber-aliens scenario to destroy the Dark Sun community and was just trying to finish Urik's story before that happened.
As to what happened to Sadira -- remember I was playing around with the powers of obsidian and the notion that Hamanu's "real" skeleton was being slowly converted to living obsidian. Hamanu thought the folks from Tyr were the greatest (and most dangerous) fools ever hatched because they confined Rajaat (a proto dragon) in lava which is nothing but potential obsidian, thereby giving Rajaat access to a virtually unlimited amount of sorcerous fuel. Hamanu and I also believed that Sadira didn't understand HOW her darkling magic worked. The way we understood it, when Sadira cloaked herself in shadow, she was effectively "borrowing" the same power that Rajaat had harnessed to make living obsidian. When Sadira and Hamanu confronted each other, and she attempted to use her "power" she was, unbeknownst to her, attempting to draw on the very fuel contained within Hamanu's living obsidian bones...but Hamanu was an expert at denying and/or manipulating the use of that power. You could think of it as a feedback loop -- she was sucking power out of him, he had a conscious thought to reverse the process and sucked the power out of her instead. The only reason he didn't reduce her to ash was that he still hoped she would ally Tyr with Urik.
I honestly don't know whether what I did should be considered a "godlike" power. To me, it arose naturally from my initial "messing around" with living obsidian, which I don't think was ever a part of the Dark Sun canon, but which I needed to make my story work. Actually, I needed a lot to make my story work. I don't think that the DarkSun creators really thought through the mechanics of the Sorcerer-kings. As a group they were more like gods or natural (albeit willful and malevolent) forces in the world and the deeper the creators got into the mechanics they more they (like me) had to fudge things.
I'm secretly pleased, though, that Rise and Fall found a receptive audience in the Dark Sun community, since it was such a subversive, under-the-radar project. It remains one of my favorite books -- having Hamanu in my head day and night for nine weeks was a truly life-changing experience -- whenever the going gets rough, I drop into his mind set and plow forward.
I hope some of what I written helps you and the other regenerators... good luck. (And if you're ever bored, you might check out the THIEVES' WORLD books formerly from ACE and currently being published by TOR. After all, the only reason I got started in Dark Sun was because the TSR editors assured me I could write the Athasian milieu because it was THIEVES' WORLD with elves.)
Thanks for writing...
Lynn Abbey
The part about living obsidian and Hamanu's bones (and those of all other champions) is an incredible insight.
When I mentionned that the team at athas.org wanted to adapt what happenend to Sadira, I referred to the post from Brax on the old DS board, at this link.
Just...
Wow.