But I do believe that a world, for whatever reason, can be cut off. So what's the deal with Athas? Is it impossible to reach the outer planes or not? Apparently, some from Athas have. Dregoth, a few elves, some defilers and preservers, if planescape sourcebooks are to be believed. Then you have artifacts that have to do it specifically (Dregoth's gate comes to mind). So how hard is it? Is it even possible without an artifact? Is Athas just it's own little deal, using a completely different system?
Now unless you could cast Persistent Death Ward (not available in 2e, not core in 3.0, not core in 3.5 and would take a 10th-level spell) then you had no chance of navigating through the Grey.
Unless you were undead, of course.
I don't think Athas is completely cut out, simply because it clearly is not, as there are many events described that allow plane travel, such as Dregoth's gate or the githyanki (or githzerai?)invasion.
As such, I feel it is possible to reach other worlds, but damn near impossible. In essence, there would be only a few artefacts, or a few very localised locations where gates exist. However, this is not common, at all. think 1000 times less common than say, forgotten realms.
Also, spells for plane travel would not function, other than getting to the black or the grey (but not the hollow), unless you are using epic-level spells designed for that purpose.
I'd simply make all means of plane travel (other than black, grey or the inner planes) are unique effects, not in that there's only one way, but each of them is different, wether a spell, an artefact, or a localised gate.
Blech :sad:
If I run DS, the last thing I want to worry about is a bunch of high level players getting it in their heads to head off to somewhere else where they can pick up +6 vorpal swords at the local FR surplus shop.
If I want to run cross overs, I'll run Planescape with a DS focus. Otherwise, I keep the planes limited to the Grey, the Black, and the Elementals (and the mysterious place that Dergoth has been heading out too, which is most certainly not Baator, its much worse than that :devil
. For all intent and purpose, when I run DS, the PS multiverse does not exist at all. Its not simply 'cut-off', its not even there to travel to. Yes, this is a cop-out of sorts. Its staves off all the usual 'but what if Paladine wanted to go to Athas, or what if I talked to Estavan and set up a caravan route shipping swords to the Crimson Legion, or my henchman I picked up in Sigil is a priest of Tymora, can he still cast spells when we get back, or what if, what if.Its also rather easy to justify cutting Athas off as well. Dregoth for example, has a planar gate said to led to the normal planes of the Great Wheel. Yet even he hasn't brought back cheap steel weapons and simple steel armors to equip his soldiers with, or infux into the city states to cripple the local economies. Nor has he amassed a legion of abyssal devils to support his dray troops. Nor has he realised that there are greener pastures out there that he could set himself up as lord over. In fact, he doesn't have in his possessions one thing listed that may have come from somewhere other than Athas. I mean, he wants to wage a war against all the SKs and their legions, then he's going to need far more than afew thousand dray to do this with.
That leads me to believe that either the planar gate doesn't work (not likely), Dregoth hasn't been using it (also unlikely), Dregoth got played in a bad deal with the demons and devils he was supposedly consorting with (yeah right), or that he hasn't been traveling to the normal Great Wheel planes at all, but somewhere else instead.
Of course, canon says he went to baator. But Dregoth seems like the kind of guy who would have opened a can of wup arse on the Dark Eight, schemed the Lords of the Nine into being his lackeys, and returned with the legions of hell at his disposal. Not just taking a few site seeing tours and come back with the photo album to look at over tea with Mon Adderath. Dregoth thinks big. Really big. He wants to become a god over Athas. If he learned of whole multiverses out there, I think he'd ditch his innitial plans and set his sites even higher, like taking over whole planes of existence.
Canon also says the githyanki fortress from the Black Spine adventure was in in the astral. But even in that adventure, they get around the whole PCs going off into the nether planes with an impervious bubble surrounding the city (like you need that for a city in the astral). The only possible purpose for this shield in the adventure is to keep the players from planar jaunting. Now, this is speculative, but come on. You have an adventure that has the potential to allow the DS PCs all the joys of planar travel, but even the designers thought better of it (of course, removal of said bubble eliminates this fact).
Its like the DS designers thought it would be cool to bring extra-planar adventuring to athas, and then each time insured it stayed about athas, on athas.
As for the cop-out cosmo, if its D&D legal and we can insure there are no realms filled with magic items free for the taking or a Plane of Elemental Mineral for smithing, then why not?
At least when Dregoth will gate-in his (gulp
) demon army, they won't be equiped with metal and discussing Sigilian cuisine over a rosted dwelf...Btw, demon army = DS, BIG TIME!!!
...no, really!...
Btw, demon army = DS, BIG TIME!!!
Actually, I use alot of planar monsters. Balors, marilith, all sorts of loths, etc (no arcanaloths though, too easy). All you do is tweak the description, nix the planar based aspects, and blam-O, nifty DS monster ready to eat your PCs (mezzoloths, if you go with just describing them, make your DS PCs think of some weird Pristine Tower altered kreen species). In fact, I've been doing it since early in my DS DMing and no one has caught on yet. If I've got a rule monger whose memorized the MM books, I simply make sure to add or subtract a few abilities or somesuch so as to make it appear very different.
Other then that I tend to use Athas like most other setting. It has Athas as the Prime Material, an Astral, Ethereal, and Shadow (Black) that are all coexistant with it and act normally. The Inner (Elemental) Planes and even the Outer Planes exist. However the Gray completely emcompases Athas, the Black, the Hollow, and small sections of the Astral and the Ethereal. The Elemental planes are connected through elemental conduits through the Ethereal. There only access to the Outer Planes is through the Astral and the Gray.
The Gray is crossable. Using the rules from D&P characters get to make a check to see if they are lost or able to find thier way on a d100. If they roll thier Int or below they aren't lost and are able to find thier way out. If they fail, they take 1 point of permenant constitution loss. If they hit 0, they get absorbed into the Gray.
Trying to reach the Elemental planes through Ethereal isn't to difficult. As in the D&P, 1-8 gets them lost in the Gray, 9-65 means the spell simply didn't work, and 66-100 allows them travel through the Ethereal. They have another check to get into the proper conduit and travel to the Elemental planes however. To get back out requires the check to find a conduit to the Ethereal, and another to get out of Ethereal and back onto Athas. Chanters add the level of the spell to thier roll for the check.
The Astral uses 1-15 lost in the Gray, 16-95 is a failure, and 96 to 100 is a success for travel through the Astral to the plane of the Gray. Once again, the level of the spell is added to the roll. Getting to the Gray by becomming lost automatically drains 1 point on constitution. Once in the Gray 5 successive checks allows contact with the Outer Planes.
edit -- The Githyanki asteroid in my campaign actually managed to get through the Gray and was trapped in Athas's astral plane. When Trinth cast the spell to enclose her asteriod in the bubble what she actually did was move planes without realizing it.
The Gate that Dregoth has is Portal Key that allows him to bypass the Gray.
Maybe there could also be some trait of Athas' plane that only allows creatures from that plane to travel to that plane.
There is a barrier between Athas and the rest of the multiverse that makes travel extremely difficult (I believe I had the players, once they were nearby, roll their intelligence or lower on a d100, as mentioned earlier). Add to this the draining effect of long-term travel in the Gray, and travel to other planes was fairly difficult. Add to this that the barrier had negative effects on metal and "non-Athasian" objects.
I figured there was a reason Dregoth hadn't just armed all his dray with metal swords and tossed them at the world.
Besides the point, though: the real question is this. Is Athas isolated under 3e? Are demons and devils just "from the black," or are they from Baator/Abyss and it's just really hard to get there (or get back, as the case may be)?
Originally posted by Cyrus9a
This is just an idea: What if any planar gate createable on Athas or to Athas does not allow the passage of any thing except the PCs themselves. Meaning: no weapons, no clothes, no nothing. This could allow DMs to allow travel between planes w/o destroying the local economy.
Maybe there could also be some trait of Athas' plane that only allows creatures from that plane to travel to that plane.
I like this. Or possibly anything non-organic can either not pass through the portal, or possibly anything non-organic just ramps up the spell's difficulty, depending on how much non-organic matter passes through.
Organic only items would mean all the weapons that were brought over by the Githyanki would be....?
The Gray is a pretty big barrier. It's hard to get through, it's probably going to kill you, and just how much can you carry? You might be able to get a whole caravan through and into the Gray, but I don't see to many animals, even being led, getting through the Gray. None of my own PCs have felt it worth the risk.
I think it should be seperate from the Great Wheel cosmology IMO.
Originally posted by beyowulf
I like this. Or possibly anything non-organic can either not pass through the portal, or possibly anything non-organic just ramps up the spell's difficulty, depending on how much non-organic matter passes through.
I actualy muse on the same idea of a gate which would allow only organic material such as living creatures, would plant etc(anything non mineral I guess) but the creators were the Rhulisti: every aspect and way of life had to do with organic material so it was logical that their gate(made from a special organic material itself) wouldn't allow anything else to pass.
As for the planar's gate, it was made during the green age where , at least in the begining of that era, metal was commun sight. So to my thinking, it would of been illogical for the creators of the said gate to specifically forbid anything metalic from gating through it. Why would they do that?? I ask you.(Specially if the gate was coincidally created while metal was getting scarse to the point of dissapearing entirely(well, compared to other worlds, that's what it is.)
If I recal correctly, the githyanki had metal weapons(or at least most of them) when they tryed their invasion, no??
Anyway, I dont have the answer as why Dregoth hasn't armed his dray with metal weapons, but I dont think the gate is the solution to the *why*
--Logically, there has to be an other explanation.
Originally posted by Jihun-Nish
After what Cyrus9a wrote you said the following quote.
As for the planar's gate, it was made during the green age where , at least in the begining of that era, metal was commun sight. So to my thinking, it would of been illogical for the creators of the said gate to specifically forbid anything metalic from gating through it. Why would they do that?? I ask you.(Specially if the gate was coincidally created while metal was getting scarse to the point of dissapearing entirely(well, compared to other worlds, that's what it is.)
I wasn't thinking that they consciously went out of their way to forbid metal. Possibly just organic(live, or used to be live) had an easier time passing through the portal. Things with a mind and will had an easier time keeping themselves together and not getting their component particles scattered all over the planes.
Originally posted by beyowulf
I wasn't thinking that they consciously went out of their way to forbid metal. Possibly just organic(live, or used to be live) had an easier time passing through the portal. Things with a mind and will had an easier time keeping themselves together and not getting their component particles scattered all over the planes.
Mmmm ... how convenient that the PlanarGate forbids any metal through its portal: to easy a solution.(sorry if I seem blunt)
Of anything that DS thought me, Athas is not an easy-going world. Simple solution are unknowned to the planet. Even when it comes to drinking a glass of water.
Originally posted by Jihun-Nish
Mmmm ... how convenient that the PlanarGate forbids any metal through its portal: to easy a solution.(sorry if I seem blunt)
Of anything that DS thought me, Athas is not an easy-going world. Simple solution are unknowned to the planet. Even when it comes to drinking a glass of water.
Well, I did expand it alittle. I said that only beings with a intelligence and a will would be able to cross through the portal. Lets say that you need to make a Will Save to go through the Portal intact. The portal uses the intelligence of the traveler to guide it. Non-sentient beings that attempt travel are lost to the Grey. Just for arguments sake, lets say...
If you're completely naked. DC 5
If you're wearing clothes. DC10
If you're wearing jewelery. DC15
If you're equipped with a non-metalic weapon DC 15
If you're equipped with a metallic weapon DC 20
If you fail you're Will Save, you get trapped in the Grey. Or something of that nature. Maybe you just lose whatever you're carrying.
Anyway, I just made up those DCs off the top of my head, as they're just for illustration.
Sound better?
Secondly, its not an easy way out. The designers of the Planar Gate already accomplished a great feat in creating a portal that could take one beyond the Grey. With all the effort spent in accomplishing this, maybe they couldn't figure out a way to actually take stuff along with you when you travel.
Thirdly. An odd thought hit me. Dregoth went to Baator, but perhaps he had nothing to offer them in return for armies? They want souls, souls go into the Grey, thus they have no way of actually reaching Baator.
Thoughts?
If you want big baddies from other plane, you can use the drakes from the elemental planes, Nightmare Beast from the Black, etc. It also explains how can such big guys exist on Athas where the ecosystem couldn't feed them. They are just temporaly visitors. Or use the method described by Mach: use the stats, change them a little, but play it as a monster from Black, Gray, altered by Pristine Tower, etc.
As for the problem of bringing through metal items from the Outer Planes, I also consider the Gray to be the major reason why importing isn't common, but in a different way. If I understand Manual of the Planes and the little bit of Planescape that I've read, souls in other cosmologies travel to the Outer Planes and usually meet with one of three fates: They become petitioners, they meld with their deity, or they meld with the plane.
But spirits don't reach the Outer Planes in the Athasian cosmology, becoming trapped in the Gray. Dieties cannot exist because of the Gray, as they cannot gain strength from the faith of the living or the dead. But what effect does this have on the Outer Planes themselves? The Outer Planes apparantly still exist, because Dregoth's been to them, but I imagine without new souls to "rejuvenate" them, they are in bad shape. Perhaps metal veins dried up, amongst other things?
Originally posted be throkat
But spirits don't reach the Outer Planes in the Athasian cosmology, becoming trapped in the Gray. Dieties cannot exist because of the Gray, as they cannot gain strength from the faith of the living or the dead.
Interesting:
If this were true it could mean that any Deity that were to travel to Athas would loose its power base and effectively die.
Originally posted by Throkat
...the Gray was formed when the Ethereal Plane and the Astral Plane "collided." If I remember the theory correctly, the Astral and Ethereal still exist, it's just the region "close to" the Material was now effectively a third seperate plane.
I like this idea. The two transitive plans could have merged somehow creating an anti-transitive plane.
Originally posted by beyowulf
Lets say that you need to make a Will Save to go through the Portal intact. The portal uses the intelligence of the traveler to guide it. Non-sentient beings that attempt travel are lost to the Grey. Just for arguments sake, lets say...
If you're completely naked. DC 5
If you're wearing clothes. DC10
If you're wearing jewelery. DC15
If you're equipped with a non-metalic weapon DC 15
If you're equipped with a metallic weapon DC 20
If you fail you're Will Save, you get trapped in the Grey. Or something of that nature. Maybe you just lose whatever you're carrying.
Sorry to be quoting myself. How about something like this. Modified it a bit to make it little more neat.
The DC to make it out the end of the portal is 10.
For every 5 lbs of organic matter you're carrying, add +5 to DC
For every 5 libs of inorganic matter you're carrying, add +10 to the DC.
If you clear the DC, all your stuff goes with you.
If you fail your save, but the roll was still higher than 10, you randomly lose items that you're carrying(DM's decision) until you're under the limit of the roll. Items lost wind up in the Grey.
If you somehow roll under 10, you end up in the Grey.
Originally posted by Cyrus9a
I like this idea. The two transitive plans could have merged somehow creating an anti-transitive plane.
I really like that idea as well. I also stock my black full of Chathuluesque(sp?) monsters. I got the idea from the inclusion of the Stalking Horror in the second Dark Sun Monsters compedium.
I feel it makes for a much more evil and creepy occult feeling and another reason for wizards to be feared so much.
I also stock my black full of Chathuluesque(sp?) monsters.
Same here. I thought that making the Black just like the plane of shadow was a bit dry and had already built upon a high sense of horror in my DS, so now the inhabitants of the Black are potent nasty squishy things, formless and full of void. They've taken over most of the Black and are slowly working their way to Athas proper (but they're not entirely evil, just too alien to understand). I use alot of planar creatures, making them more grotesque than their normal forms for this.
Originally posted by beyowulf
Well, I did expand it alittle. I said that only beings with a intelligence and a will would be able to cross through the portal. Lets say that you need to make a Will Save to go through the Portal intact. The portal uses the intelligence of the traveler to guide it. Non-sentient beings that attempt travel are lost to the Grey. Just for arguments sake, lets say...
If you're completely naked. DC 5
If you're wearing clothes. DC10
If you're wearing jewelery. DC15
If you're equipped with a non-metalic weapon DC 15
If you're equipped with a metallic weapon DC 20
If you fail you're Will Save, you get trapped in the Grey. Or something of that nature. Maybe you just lose whatever you're carrying.
Anyway, I just made up those DCs off the top of my head, as they're just for illustration.
Y
Sound better?
Secondly, its not an easy way out. The designers of the Planar Gate already accomplished a great feat in creating a portal that could take one beyond the Grey. With all the effort spent in accomplishing this, maybe they couldn't figure out a way to actually take stuff along with you when you travel.
Thirdly. An odd thought hit me. Dregoth went to Baator, but perhaps he had nothing to offer them in return for armies? They want souls, souls go into the Grey, thus they have no way of actually reaching Baator.
Thoughts?
:D yes it does soud better
I have been a DS fan since its release and a big time lurker on these boards.
My Athas was shunted from the multiverse as a colateral effect of Borys' spell to keep Rajaat imprisioned in the Hollow.
As I see it, the spell created a magical barrier so strong (or else Rajaat could easily escape) that locked Athas from the Outer Planes completely.
The Planar Gate was the only way to breach that magical barrier.
BTW the same was true for spelljamming. Portals could not be created to enter or exit the crystal sphere.
PS: I hope that I was clear enough to be understood. Sorry for my bad english.
This route doesn't constrain me with nonsense from other campaigns, cause me to worry about players who want to wander into other settings, and allows me to still describe and explain things like the whole would-be githyanki invasion of Athas, the planar gate, etc. that I might still want to use.
It also doesn't box me in to having to take descriptions and facts about these other worlds from existing source material: frex, the "Astral"? I can decide it is a realm of clouds and shadows somewhere out in/beyond the Black, or on the border of the Gray and Black, or perhaps even tied to the elemental realm of air: the githyanki are angry/twisted air spirits taken corporeal form. Or maybe it's what happened to Rain. Damn, I like that.
The planar gate? Just a gate to countless other pseudo-real shadow realms out in the Deep Black, tied in to my theories about illusion & shadow magic, the Black and the Hollow.
Demons and devils? Evil spirit beings from the depths of the Black, or maybe from the depths of the Gray, or something else entirely. Like the legions of magma, who could be the demons of Urikian mythology, tie in the volcano that sits nearby and all sorts of fun can be had. Demon hordes pouring forth from the smoke of the evil mountain from which Hammanu wards them. Or maybe they really are the twisted denizens of some nightmarish shadow realm in the Black, hungry to be fully real, not part shadow, empty, lost and vengeful.
Anything.
For me, the thought of tying Athas in any way to the 2E multiverse leaves me as cold as the thought of a Star Trek/Battlestar Galactica crossover, no matter how convoluted and unique (or not) the circumstances of it happen to be.
It's fun to do on an isolated basis, just for the sake of comedy, like when I transported an earth Comedian into a remote desert trade outpost. The Players knew something strange was up when the bard at the local tavern started to weave questlions like "what's the deal with sand" into his act.
But, it seems odd that there would be demons and devils... yet no gods. There are connections to the Outer Planes ( see Dragon Kings for cosmology of the planes ) , but, the Crystal Sphere (from Spelljammer ) has been deemed closed.
In Defilers and Preservers I recall that the devs broke down and created rules to travel through the Grey to other realms ( in some sidebar ), with extremely low probability of success.
If players are allowed to travel to the inner planes, what is to stop them from going elsewhere?
If players are allowed to travel to the inner planes, what is to stop them from going elsewhere?
Depends on what your cosmology permits. For me, I visualize the inner planes as being unique to each world, and not interconnected. They are held/contained "within" the prime material plane, and do not extend to anything beyond it. The planes necessary for access/travel to the outer planes are the transitive planes. I see the Gray as a bizarre "1 in a billion" chance event where the astral and ethereal planes touched and even merged. The results of this was a barrier that separates everything within it from everything outside it. The shadow plane became cut off as well, and inside the Gray. it became what is now known as the Black. The outer planes are planes that exist "outside" of the material plane, and exist outside of the Gray. They are seperated/segregated from everything inside, and only a race that exists in the Astral plane natively, and is focused on incursions into various planes and realms (like the Githyanki) would possibly be able to locate the Gray in the first place, and then over millenia, figure out how to possibly slip in a crack or blemish on the Gray's otherwise flawless impenetrable surface.
I do allow for one really unknown and secret transitive plane to function as a gateway to the outer planes. I believe that the creator(s) of the planar gate tapped into this, wittingly or not. That plane is the plane of mirrors. However knowledge of this plane is so rare that even Rajaat doesn't know of it. I don't permit arcane magic to be able to access it -- it requires the use of long-forgotten psionic and/or divine magic to even discover its existence.
But, it seems odd that there would be demons and devils... yet no gods.
This is only a question/problem if your demons and devils actually come from or have anything to do with the outer planes of the "standard" D&D cosmology or theology.
If players are allowed to travel to the inner planes, what is to stop them from going elsewhere?
There are other good answers to this question, but you could also think of it this way if you want a nice closed cosmology: Athas isn't just "cut-off" from the multiverse, the multiverse literally does not exist. You can't go to it or any of its locales from Athas because there isn't anywhere to go.
As far as the fiends and gods are concerned, my personal take on it has always been that, at one time, there *were* gods...it was just a very, very long time ago, and even by Rhulisti standards was little more than a "myth"...but myths have the tendency to stick around for a long time, and so even in the Green Age and beyond these deities were worshipped. I think I mentioned it in some other thread, but there's some statement in the Prism Pentad about how there "were gods, but they're gone now" and that even in the Green Age they were worshipped and, possibly, granted some sort of power to their followers. Once the Complete Psionics book came out I thought that the Divine Mind (I think that's the one) was the perfect answer to this - the gods didn't truly exist, at least not as spell-granting entities, but the belief in them was enough that the natural psionics of the world allowed "priests" to call upon their inner strength to display psionics in a divine-like fashion. The Cleansing Wars came, those that held onto their faith were killed while those that lived tended to be the ones that thought "the gods must not really exist, they'd never allow this to happen" and thus the only clerics that are still around are the elemental ones - clerics that definitely and obviously get their powers from a source other than themselves.
For fiends, we know that they *can* exist on Athas (at least 1 demon appears in a 2e adventure), just that it isn't very likely. The chance of getting lost in the Gray is probably enough reason for most not to try the trip themselves, but a Planar Binding or similar spell could still potentially (successfully) summon one and, depending on how things go, leave it "trapped" on Athas. Of those that are there, they're going to want to do their usual thing - corrupt mortals, break down power structures, etc. - so you could wind up with cults and the like springing up around the more charismatic fiends, which in turn could result in more of their "friends" being summoned, etc.
I've got more thoughts on this, but they start to deviate pretty far from "canon cosmology" so I'll leave it at that.
OTOH if you're using ideas and elements from conventional D&D or from anything else to flesh out the Grey or the Black, the elemental planes, etc., then that's a Dark Sun game. Whether it's a good DS game or bad one, depends on the combination and your sense of style. There are some really really bad plug in choices; I call these Dark Smurfs. For example, there's no particular game rules reason why Lycanthropes shouldn't work on Athas. But for some reasons, all of the ones I can think of, just seem wrong. Wearbear? Swanmay? I don't think so.
OTOH I think it would be silly to issue a blanket prohibition on words like "Fiend" or even "demon." Those words universally mean "scary things we don't understand from places we don't know about." Obviously Athas has lots of those, whatever they are. The danger is when you start thinking of Athas as part of someone else's multiverse, and part of some other bigger picture. When you talk that way, as I see it, you've wandered right off the Dark Sun campaign map. If Athas is a plug in for another campaign, then marvy, but I for one am not writing material with that purpose in mind. I don't mind cannibalizing stuff from other campaign worlds to flesh out Athas and its cosmology, but I'll be damned if I'm going to let things get to the point where I am obligated to play or write to cosmos concepts that weren't designed for Athas. We can pick and choose.
As I see it, if you place Athas within the D&D multiverse, then you're essentially running a Planescape game or something other than Dark Sun.
That's basically the only time I really bother with figuring everything out along the lines of a multiverse. And then it is to figure out how to place it there, and how to interact with the rest of the multiverse, but then keep it closed off. Other than that... I really don't bother with those details, and I regularly "retcon" any references to outer planes, etc. out of my game. I also regularly "clean up" a lot of the setting/flavor parts from the AD&D books, and provide only information I feel my players need to know, or would be able to know (as people of Athas, based on city/culture and status/prestige/rank). Which usually amounts to not much. I also severely penalize characters of players who confuse player knowledge with character knowledge.
Dark Sun could do great with its own dedicated planes, like the ultra-modern Eberron setting. Taking a page from that setting, in Eberron there are evil outsiders but they come from one of Eberron's planes.
Athas' demons could come from some micro plane within the Gray or Black, or from a parallel universe accessed through the Planar Mirror. Whatever. Greyorm has made convincing cases for this, showing its possible to make such choices while still keeping a poetic nature to the process.
I find B the least interesting alternative, and C, the most likely. The sorceror-kings were not Athas' first set of false gods.
Our materials already say outright that the Ssuran Druids don't recognize that they are druids, because believe that their spirits of the Land are gods. This can't be the first time such a thing has happened. I'll bet that some early green age psionicists thought themselves to be weilding some sort of divine power. There was some myth of godhood that Dregoth was trying to fill.
Once we've established that, it explains how we can borrow from D&D cosmologies where we want to. The Black is after all a shadow plane. There might be whole Black subplanes populated with the imaginations, dreams, and nightmares of Athasians.
I said that I find B the least interesting alternative, and C, the most likely. I find A the most interesting approach, to take the Thomas Covenant approach to Athas and say that it's a world cut off from its creators. I think that approach A has more interesting possibilities, and doesn't discount any of the things I've worked out for track C. (If a real god or gods exist, that does not discount the possibility that most or all of the stories about god or gods are false). But I don't think that's a question that Athas.org should answer, because once you answer it, then people want details, and that becomes the focus of Dark Sun development. I'd rather focus on stories, pictures, and people, and deemphasize the rules and metaphysics.
Of course, I also think that the planar gate provides the one stable method to get in and out of Athas, to the outer planes, where everything has continued on despite Athas' separation of it all. The outer planes, etc. I think still very much exist, but are completely useless to those within Athas. Dregoth, I feel, had spent a lot of time stumbling around through them (and I have used him as a NPC in other games, usually sending groups on quests for artifacts and knowledge aout deities... sometimes ending up wiping out the group because someone dug a little too deeply into who or what he was), and he still can't get it right -- his megalomania and narcissism totally filters any facts to what he thinks they should be.
Basically... I use elements of all three of your choices in my view of Athas.
Plus, never forget a basic truth of option C: there are no gods on Earth - no Shiva or Thor - yet people invented them and believed in them. Same with Athas. Inventing gods seems to be a global passtime of humans...why not athasians?
Additionally, in a world where most everyone has some degree of psionic potential, a widespread belief in a false god might produce a very palpable manifestation.
But I've already caused headaches (including my own) discussing that elsewhere so I'll stop now.
(And yes, this isn't the place to be discussing this sort of stuff anyway)
Could the collective belief of millions of psionic persons create a sort of pseudo-god?
Does a psionic kid get sent home from school when his imaginary friend beats up his classmates?
In Prison-State of Eldaarich, we've developed psionic religious cults, who are obviously now either on very thin ice or getting exterminated due to Daskinor's new order. One of the most obvious forms of a psionic cult is the Thrallherd. On Earth, I think we can all agree that Rasputin and Jim Jones were thrallherds of sorts. There's something that seems almost supernatural about their hold on their followers, not just swaying a bunch of losers, but some powerful and even some reputedly very intelligent people. So psionics or other unexplained power could create a religion from the top down, but could it create a religion from the bottom-up, where collective belief manifests itself in something that looks or acts like a god, but dissapears when its followers die?
(Now that I think of it, there's a book, "Enchantment," by the author of Ender's Game, that deals with that kind of belief-created pseudogod.)
On why Dregoth did not raid hoards of dragons to get magic items..... who said he did not.... and who says they would work in Athas.
after all there is no link to the Outer Planes to allow divine magic items to work.... and Arcane magic is limited to life energy, so any item that draws from normal magical sources would likely be useless in Dark Sun. The obvious exception to this woudl be the githyanki of Black Spine mountain.... but then again they had an open portal to a fortress that would still have the magic of their reality linked into it.... which could mean the items Dregoth brought back "might" work in Athas, as long as they were close to the planar gate and it was open.
after all there is no link to the Outer Planes to allow divine magic items to work.... and Arcane magic is limited to life energy, so any item that draws from normal magical sources would likely be useless in Dark Sun. The obvious exception to this woudl be the githyanki of Black Spine mountain.... but then again they had an open portal to a fortress that would still have the magic of their reality linked into it.... which could mean the items Dregoth brought back "might" work in Athas, as long as they were close to the planar gate and it was open.
That's my take on how it all works, and it's an easy interpretation given that elemental clerics are described as getting their spell power via "elemental conduits" that link the Inner Planes to Athas, crossing through the Gray. If you had an item/artifact or other means of creating some sort of "conduit" through the Gray to an Outer Plane (or anywhere else in the multiverse, for that matter) I don't see why magic and the like couldn't work through it.
In the case of the Gythyanki, they also have the benefit of being relatively close to the PMP.
My Dark Sun materials are limited to just the campaign setting and a few other sourcebooks, but I'd like to read the material that does exist on Athas and the planes - where abouts is it?
I've gathered from these posts that Dragon Kings and Defilers and Preservers have some stuff in them (neither of which I have); are there any others?
Which planes do people unanimously agree can be reached from Athas? I'm presuming that the Astral and Ethereal must be, since many wizard spells and psionic abilities involve either of these planes...
What's the relationship between the Astral/Ethereal planes and the grey/black?
Hi,
My Dark Sun materials are limited to just the campaign setting and a few other sourcebooks, but I'd like to read the material that does exist on Athas and the planes - where abouts is it?
I've gathered from these posts that Dragon Kings and Defilers and Preservers have some stuff in them (neither of which I have); are there any others?
Which planes do people unanimously agree can be reached from Athas? I'm presuming that the Astral and Ethereal must be, since many wizard spells and psionic abilities involve either of these planes...
What's the relationship between the Astral/Ethereal planes and the grey/black?
Terrors of the Dead Lands sums up basically the Athas.org take on it. Personally, I see that the Gray is actually an anomaly caused by the mixing of the Astral and Ethereal -- it actually has the properties of both of those planes simultaneously, and counts as both of those planes for the purposes of spells. However, it is a barrier, not allowing travel through the Gray into the 'normal' Astral or Ethereal. It also, in my view, cut off the Plane of Shadows, trapping a piece of it within the Gray, which became what is known as the Black. I believe some great travesty happened resulting in the Positive and Negative energy planes becoming torn apart, with what was left of the positive energy plane integrating into the elemental planes, while the negative energy plane integrated itself into the Black and Gray. Athas is basically cut off from the outer planes, and the Gray keeps everything inside the Gray disconnected from the outside -- so Athas also has it's own unique set of elemental and paraelemental planes that do not link to any other worlds' inner planes.
Which planes do people unanimously agree can be reached from Athas? I'm presuming that the Astral and Ethereal must be, since many wizard spells and psionic abilities involve either of these planes...
Prime, Gray, Black, Elemental Air, Elemental Earth, Elemental Fire, Elemental Magma, Elemental Rain, Elemental Silt, Elemental Sun, and Elemental Water. Mindscape might be a plane...
I do not use Astral or Ethereal or Shadow.
So I guess that would be... not unanimous? ;)
Terrors of the Dead Lands sums up basically the Athas.org take on it. Personally, I see that the Gray is actually an anomaly caused by the mixing of the Astral and Ethereal -- it actually has the properties of both of those planes simultaneously, and counts as both of those planes for the purposes of spells. However, it is a barrier, not allowing travel through the Gray into the 'normal' Astral or Ethereal. It also, in my view, cut off the Plane of Shadows, trapping a piece of it within the Gray, which became what is known as the Black. I believe some great travesty happened resulting in the Positive and Negative energy planes becoming torn apart, with what was left of the positive energy plane integrating into the elemental planes, while the negative energy plane integrated itself into the Black and Gray. Athas is basically cut off from the outer planes, and the Gray keeps everything inside the Gray disconnected from the outside -- so Athas also has it's own unique set of elemental and paraelemental planes that do not link to any other worlds' inner planes.
Then read the original TotDL version, before its 3.5 revision :D