1- which succeeded, but his mind was emprisonned into the spheres which powered it. The mindless dragon destroyed the Ciity of Kalidnay and rampaged through the Southern Tyr Region before being stopped by the collective might of the Dragon (Borys of Ebe), Kalak and Hamanu.
2- which failed, and the ensuing magical backlash destroyed the city. However, it also opened a rift between Athas and the demi-plane of shadow (i.e. Ravenloft) and Kalidnay and its inhabitants were displaced there.
Originally posted by Shei-Nad
Kalid-Ma attempted a full dragon metamorphosis...
1- which succeeded, but his mind was emprisonned into the spheres which powered it. The mindless dragon destroyed the Ciity of Kalidnay and rampaged through the Southern Tyr Region before being stopped by the collective might of the Dragon (Borys of Ebe), Kalak and Hamanu.
2- which failed, and the ensuing magical backlash destroyed the city. However, it also opened a rift between Athas and the demi-plane of shadow (i.e. Ravenloft) and Kalidnay and its inhabitants were displaced there.
Kalid-Ma had nothing to do with going to Ravenloft, that was all thanks to his high templar Thakok-An who was in love with him.
She sacrificed her whole family in Kalid-Ma's name, in hopes this would earn his love.
In doing so she attracted the power of the Demi plane of Dread which took her and Kalid-Ma's body into the demiplane and created a domain for her. It also mentions that one or possibly two of the obsidian orbs containing Kalid-Ma's essense/mind is in the domain as well.
This is all in both versions of the Ravenloft material, except the first one mistook Kalid-Ma for a woman.
Domains of Dread was the rewrite and correct version, and is a 2nd ed. product.
I never actually read much of that ravenloft material (as I don't have it), so I assume it was linked with the destruction of the City-state when Kalid-Ma's essence entered the Orbs (I do have the psionic artifacts of Athas though).
I'll try to see if I can find the domains of dread to take a closer look (got lots of rpg friends, one of them is bound to have it... ;))
Besides, I like the idea that Kalak had a hand in stopping Kalidnay and in the ensuing chaos managed to nab up some of Kalid-Ma's reasearch material (or at least a few of Kalid-Ma's associates to drain the info out of) for Kalak's own rapid transformation.
At last, consistency! I hadn't thought about that, Mach. Here, have a half-eaten cookie.
1. Definitely 1.
Originally posted by NytCrawlr
Kalid-Ma had nothing to do with going to Ravenloft, that was all thanks to his high templar Thakok-An who was in love with him.
She sacrificed her whole family in Kalid-Ma's name, in hopes this would earn his love.
Actually I am incorrect here. She sacrificed her family in order to give him the life energy he needed to become a full dragon, in doing this the residents of Kalidnay weren't suppose to be harmed, along with the environment.
In doing so she attracted the power of the Demi plane of Dread which took her and Kalid-Ma's body into the demiplane and created a domain for her.
Also to clarify Kalid-Ma's body is unchanged, i.e. he hasn't gone through any transformation other than the one he received via the Pristine Tower.
It also mentions that one or possibly two of the obsidian orbs containing Kalid-Ma's essense/mind is in the domain as well.
I was wrong again. This is something I had in my campaigns and no where official does it back me up. I had two within the domain and had them being the trigger for the only way of opening a portal between the Kalidnay domain and Athas prime.
I plan to write an article cleaning up this contradiction as well, once I finish the Irikos/Kalak one, which should be shortly.
Kalid yu turgus um urgus!
Kalid yu turgus um urgus!
Kalid yu turgus um urgus!
Hey it works! Somebody here should now where that came from! Afterall, I found that chant here. Switching to Kalid makes it sound very Dark Sun. Just a thought, Kalidnay in Ravenloft should speak a very different and difficult language to learn by the natives of Ravenloft. Even their magic language would be different.
Originally posted by Shei-Nad
Thanks Nyt!
I never actually read much of that ravenloft material (as I don't have it), so I assume it was linked with the destruction of the City-state when Kalid-Ma's essence entered the Orbs (I do have the psionic artifacts of Athas though).
I'll try to see if I can find the domains of dread to take a closer look (got lots of rpg friends, one of them is bound to have it... ;))
I'll send you a copy if you'd like anyone else interested let me know. Hypothetically of course [email]Gr8ScottImsol8@aol.com[/email]
Originally posted by xlorepdarkhelm
Just bear in mind - Kalidnay doesn't exist in the new Ravenloft material released by S&SS (IE: White-Wolf).
Correct, but nor does Soth and his domain and a few others.
They cut it down some just like they did with FR and I'm sure with DL as well.
Ah well.
Kalid-Ma was the sorcerer-king of Kalidnay, and was also one of the most powerful defilers the land had ever known, rivaling the magical prowess of Sacha of Arala or Dregoth. He was never too warm to the First Sorcerer Rajaat, but was still elevated as one of his champions, because of his great power.
However, Kalid-Ma was knighted last amongst the champions of Rajaat, and was given the task of rooting out and killing the tari, a rat-people seen more as nuisance than anything else, but notoriously resistant and known for multiplying and spreading quite rapidly. The 15th Champion undertook the task grudgingly, and campaigned only as much as was required for him not to displease Rajaat, and though he might have intended to do so eventually, he never completed his appointed task.
When word reached the champions about the true plan of Rajaat, Kalid-Ma was eager to join in Borys' rebellion. Kalid-Ma helped banish the first sorcerer, and became Sorcerer King of the city of Kalidnay, to which he changed the name after his own.
Like all those who followed Borys of Ebe, Kalid-Ma was given the secrets of dragon metamorphosis, and he searched for ways to reach full dragonhood, as most other sorcerer-monarchs. But it was Dregoth, combining his own immense power and findings from a lost age allowed him to reach this goal far quicker than the rest of the sorcerer kings. However, at the request of Abalach-Re, the other sorcerer kings, including Kalid-Ma, banded together to attack and defeat Dregoth at the eve of his victory.
That event demonstrated to Kalid-Ma that he would have to find a different way to reach dragonhood. If the other sorcerer-monarchs were made aware of his plans and had time to prepare against a progressive transformation, they would certainly do the same thing to him as they did to Dregoth. So Kalid-Ma, already a 2nd stage dragon, researched a bolder way to reach is goal, one that would transform him into a full dragon in one swift strike.
After centuries of research, Kalid-Ma had devellopped the procedures and materials needed, of which were 5 perfect obsidian orbs and a huge Ziggurat, all of which would serve as energy conduits for the deed he was to attempt. When Kalid-Ma would initiate the transformation, each night would take him to a new stage of Dragonhood. But that was not quite quick enough...
Kalak of Tyr, who was always observant of his rivals, seeking ways to attain the level of power that they had been given as champions of Rajaat, learned of his southern neighbour's endeavors, and also learned how to capitalise on the only major flaw in Kalid-Ma's plan. The Great defiler that was Kalid-Ma was too powerful for him to challenge, but during his accelerated transformation, Kalid-Ma would be left weak and vulnerable inside his Ziggurat, and though the transformation was relatively fast, he would have ample time to strike at him when the ritual was initiated.
Kalak warned Hamanu of Urik that he believed Kalid-Ma was secretly on his last stages of dragonhood, and that he would certainly reach his ends very soon. Kalak gave this information to the Lion of Urik in exchange for the help of the armies of Hamanu and the collaboration of the sorcerer-king himself in the downfall of their rival. The armies of Urik were to attack and sack the city while the two sorcerer-kings would strike at Kalid-Ma himself. They alone would share the spoils of their victory before the other sorcerer kings would have time to react.
Urik prepared for war as Kalid-Ma put his plan in motion. However, as its armies were marshalled, the High Templar of Kalidnay, Thakok-An, became aware of the threat to her king, and decided to act upon it.
Thakok-An was a young female half-elf who had risen through the ranks of the templarate as one of Kalid-Ma's favorites. When she was only an infant, the sorcerer-king had sentenced her elven father to death after a transgression on his part, and taken her as a slave to compensate the city-state for her father's crime. However, she was later found to have great psionic potential and was schooled in the Way. Kalid-Ma also had her enroll in the templarate as continuing service to his city, but allowed her to return to her mother and siblings.
Somewhere in Thakok-An's twisted mind, she percieved all these gestures as favors from a great king, and she became enamoured with Kalid-Ma, rising quickly through the ranks of the templarate as one of her most devout followers, though the monarch never actually showed any sign of returning her feelings.
When she learned of the threat, Thakok-An looked for a way to save her King from the danger on her own, for she desperately wished to prove her worth to him. Entering into the Royal Libraries, she searched through the personnal records of Kalid-Ma himself, now that her king was locked away in his ziggurat. Driven almost mad by the imminent threat to her love, she read through descriptions of magical rituals and transformation ceremonies she little understood, until she found what she thought was a way to speed up the process.
The dragon transformation required the energy from the life of an enormous amount of people, being syphoned slowly through the whole procedure to empower 5 special orbs of obsidian that were to be gradually ingested by the sorcerer king as his draconic form grew progressively larger. However, Thakok-An believed that sacrificing a smaller number of lives, but the lives of those who had the greatest importance to the one who made the sacrifice, could provide more life energy and complete the transformation much more quickly. If this could be achieved, Kalid-Ma would be transformed into a full dragon in one great and final ritual, becoming mighty enough that he could defeat even the combined armies of Urik and the might of the sorcerer-kings of the North.
So, on one of the first nights of the ritual, Thakok-An brought her mother and sisters to the top of the ziggurat, into which the King dwelt, performing the ceremonies which were tranforming him into a dragon. There, in the depts of the night, she took her carved bone rod, symbol of her magistrate's position, and beat her family to death, until their blood ran on the Ziggurat. The life energy was syphoned into the orbs, but unkown to both Thakok-An and Kalidnay, they had surcharged the orbs, and caused the magic which was transforming Kalid-Ma to go horribly wrong.
A tremendous wave of defiling energy burst out of the ziggurat and threw Thakok-An to the ground, where she lost consciousness. Emerging from the debris was a fully grown and transformed Dragon. However, in addition to the inborn aggressivness of the newly transformed dragon, the beast was not Kalid-Ma, or more accurately, was deprived of Kalid-Ma's consciousness.
On the same night of Thakok-An's sacrifice, Kalid-Ma ingested the first orb which was to quicken his transformation. However, a great surge of power flooded him, much greater than what he had hoped, and his transformation quickened immensly, but his mind was submerged. Half-conscious and deprived of much of his sanity, Kalid-Ma ingested the remaining orbs in the same ritual night, until he was changed into a full Dragon. However, as the energy from the orbs was released into the dragon's body, his mind had been absorbed by them. The excess energy surged forth from the dragon into a great wave that craked the ziggurat and tore down much of the adjescant buildings.
It was a mindless and raging Dragon that emerged from the Ziggurat, and the beast leveled what was left of the city of Kalidnay and slaughtered most of the survivors of the catastrophy. In great convulsions, the beast regurgitated the orbs throughtout the ruins as he did so. After most of the Kalidnay had been destroyed, the creature moved on.
Much to the surprise and dismay of Kalak and Hamanu, a full Dragon came to meet them on the battlefield, and both sorcerer-kings withdrew, leaving the Urikite army to be slaughtered by the beast. Hamanu managed to contact Borys, the Dragon, to meet this new threat, and they and Kalak searched for the newly born dragon, and following a trail of destruction, they quickly found the creature and managed to slay it before it attacked any other major settlements.
The Dragon then returned to Ur Draxa and Hamanu, deprived of his main forces and any spoils worth taking in Kalidnay, returned to his city-state. Kalak did much the same, but sent many agents over the years to the ruins of Kalidnay, to see if he could find how Kalid-Ma had achieved dragonhood so quickly. Many agents never returned, and those that did had reports of many undead lurking in the city. Centuries later, it was Dote Mal Payne, a necromancer of some power, who manage to circumvent the undead lurking in the ruined city and find what Kalak was looking for to accomplish his own goals.
And so was the story of Kalidnay... in Athas.
When Thakok-An awoke, she found herself in an almost empty city, and impossible as it seemed, it was now stranded on an island in the middle of the Sea of Silt. Quickly, she managed to restore order in what remained of Kalidnay, and found that a small village had been established some leagues from the city-state. After a month of cleaning and restoring Kalidnay and its Ziggurat, Thakok-An found Kalid-Ma's body in a sealed chamber of the Ziggurat. There he was, looking as he ever had, human in apperance, and asleep. In fact, nothing could wake the sorcerer-king, and he sleeps to this date.
Thakok-An quickly discovered that the entire city-state and all its inhabitants, which numbered now to a mere fifth of their former numbers, were not on athas anymore, but on some other plane of existence. There she had to endure a miserable life, tyrant of her small domain, deprived of her master's love, he who would seemingly sleep eternally, so near yet so far from her. She rules the people of the domain in the name of the sorcerer-king, and life has become something similar to what it was, yet twisted in some way.
Though Thakok-An doesn't actually know what happened, her involvement into her master's plan caused the magic of Kalid-Ma to attracted powerful extraplanar entities, much like the dragon transformation of Borys had once attracted the elemental vortices. However, the gruesome and evil nature of her involvement caught the attention the Demi-Plane of Dread, and as the blood of her relatives was being spilt on the ziggurat, Kalid-Ma, Thakok-An and the survivors of Kalidnay were taken to Ravenloft, where the high templar unwillingly created a small domain of dread with herself as lord.
Moreover, the transformation magics of the ritual had a strange side effect to the event. The physical forms of all creatures so transported were essentially duplicated into the demi-plane, and their original bodies were left in Athas. The counsciousness of the victims, however, was not duplicated in that way, and was taken to Ravenloft, leaving mindless corpses behind, which animated as undead due to the nature of the event. The only two exceptions are that of Kalid-Ma, who's consciousness was instead transferred into the magical orbs of obsidian and could not be stripped from Athas, and Thakok-An, who was utterly and irreversably transfered to the domain she created.
In other words, a copy of Kalid-Ma's untransformed body was taken to Ravenloft, while his true body was indeed transformed into a Dragon on Athas, and his consciousness was sealed into the Orbs of Kalid-Ma. The Kalidnay of Athas has been destroyed by the event and the raging dragon, and the city-state also exists in the Demi-Plane of Dread.
Any thoughts???
[This is an updated version of my original writing, corrected and edited, and also adds some information from Psionic Artifact of Athas which I had not added previously. Enjoy!]
Originally posted by NytCrawlr
Correct, but nor does Soth and his domain and a few others.
They cut it down some just like they did with FR and I'm sure with DL as well.
Ah well.
Actually, Sithicus does exist in the Ravenloft setting (formerly Soth's domain). However Soth is gone. He got pushed into the Great Rift by the Vistani chick he had with him, she fell in too, however she somehow merged with it (and became the new "official" darklord). However, she thinks she's dead and doesn't realize what she is yet. In her stead, the Dwarf/Werebadger that had stuck around Soth is now claiming the title of Darklord for Sithicus. Lord Soth's name is stricken from the records, and the people even fear mentioning his name (referring to him as "The Undead Blackguard"), because they are afraid that calling his name will make him return.
I think changes like this were simple: WotC gave permission to Sword & Sorcerery (ie: white-wolf) permission to publish/release Ravenloft material, however there was no permission given for material drawn from any of the other 2nd Ed worlds (Dragonlance, Dark Sun, etc). Thus while Sithicus remained in Ravenloft as I stated above, Soth was permanently removed from the realm, and they can't even mention him. Kalidnay couldn't exist at all, as it *really* had far too many ties to Dark Sun, and WotC wouldn't permit it. Other realms that faded from Ravenloft also fall into that category (I don't recall them off hand), or S&SS thought that the realm wasn't all that important.
However, I wonder if it's possible to get permission to include Kalidnay as sort of a "crossover" location for Dark Sun/Ravenloft, either from WotC, S&SS, or both? I personally always used Kalidnay as pretty much the only means (short of going through Dregoth) of going from Athas to any of the other 2nd Ed worlds. I found that made for interesting Dark Sun as well as Ravenloft campaigns. For Dark Sun - they stumble into Ravenloft and really discover how bad life can be. For Ravenloft - congratulations, you got out of Ravenlof,t welcome to Athas, your new permanent home.
Originally posted by Shei-Nad
Ok, having gotten my hands on the Domains of Dread complement, I've given some thoughts on the matter of Kalidnay and I think you could actually have both description of the Kalidnay destruction come together in a unified and original story, with very little adjustments and some flavor parts added into it, to do with as you'd like:
...
So, a copy of Kalid-Ma's untransformed body was taken to Ravenloft, while his true body was indeed transformed into a Dragon on Athas, and his consciousness was sealed into the Orbs of Kalid-Ma. The Kalidnay of Athas has been destroyed by the event and the raging dragon, and the City also exists in the Demi-Plane of Dread.
So! Excuse my spelling, but its late and I wrote a lot more than I thought I would... I'll correct it later... maybe...
Any thoughts???
I like it, it does a pretty good job explaining the situation between the two accounts of Kalidnay. Nice work Shei-Nad.
Mind if I post it to my article section? Will give full credit of course and I will go through and edit it for you too if you want.
I also read you wanted to post an article on this topic Nytcrwlr. Do my ideas look like yours? Any other thoughts on how it could have been different or improved?
And you can post it if you deem it good enough, but I'd like and plan to run through it for corrections and editing soon, perhaps tonight, so I could spare you the trouble. You can still do it if you want though. I didn't reread it after writing it and now that I did I see many mistakes and a lot of redundance which gets on my nerves... (The city, the city, the city... did I mention the City??? ;))
But thanks for your comments and feel free to add your own ideas or suggestions on the matter!
Originally posted by Shei-Nad
I also read you wanted to post an article on this topic Nytcrwlr. Do my ideas look like yours? Any other thoughts on how it could have been different or improved?
Close to what I had in my warped, evil mind.
I wasn't going to do the whole undead/clone bodies in Ravenloft thing (that was a nice touch btw).
I had planned to have the few survivors get sucked into the domain in RL and leave the dead bodies behind which later rise as undead.
I was also going to have Kaldi-Ma's body, at least what was left of it, get ripped into RL as well but then transfered back to a human so it made Thakok-An see that it was ll for nothing, adding further dread, etc.
However, I like what you did with it better. :D
And you can post it if you deem it good enough, but I'd like and plan to run through it for corrections and editing soon, perhaps tonight, so I could spare you the trouble.
Ok, I will wait until you go through it before I post it.
Just let me know when you're done.
Danke.
I'm happy now! Took lots of time, but seems worth it somehow!
Enjoy!
ive never seen reference of such a thing.