any older books where this would be in?
thnx..
I think this was excluded when they combined the two boxed sets at the time into the big compiled version.
Originally posted by Burningspear
can anybody help me with references to Kalid-Ma being kikked out of her body and half her city being transported along with the high templar to the Ravenloft setting?
any older books where this would be in?
thnx..
Kalid-Ma is a he not a she. The concept of him being a her was actually in the first Ravenloft book that had Kalidnay in it. The city of Kalidnay wasn't split in half. Somewhere there is a very good thread that helps explain how this could happen - basically, the Dark Powers gave the people on Athas the impression that Kalid-Ma became a full dragon (and he may have done it), and he got struck down by the other Sorcerer-Kings and Kalidnay was destroyed. while at the same time, they took Thok-An (Kalid-Ma's high templar/priestess), lured her with her love of Kalid-Ma, helped her assist Kalid-Ma with his rapid transformation by her slaughtering of her family line (I may be a little off on this, but it's a very rough explanation). The resultant effect was Kalidnay, in it's entirety got sucked into Ravenloft, with Thok-An becoming the Darklord. Kalid-Ma went into a comatose state, and is kept in a crypt that only Thok-An knows about. curiously, the island of Kalidnay in Ravenloft is surrounded by a silt sea, which doesn't exist anywhere else in Ravenloft. this also does allow the Defiling & Preserving magic, as well as the high psionics of Dark Sun, to exist within Ravenloft.
So, on Athas, it appears that Kalid-Ma becomes a full-on dragon and is cut down by (I believe) Hamanu, Borys (and Kalak?). but in Ravenloft, the spell fails and puts him into a coma. either way, his mind/spirit is placed into a handful of varying-sized obsidian orbs, which are scattered. Nytcrawlr had the idea, and I like it as well, that three are on Athas, but 2 are in Ravenloft. Regardless, if all 5 are brought together, Kalid-Ma can be resurrected (if I recall).
I personally leave the ruins of Kalidnay as a dangerous place for people to go to, with the possiility of being "sucked up" into Ravenloft occasionally while they are there.
The ''dark sun'' fate of Kalidnay is best described in the 2nd edition boxed set of Dark Sun.
However, for an detailed account of the events that merges both versions into one complete story, with lots of extra details, I humbly suggest you read the ''article'' I wrote on this some time ago, which seemed to gain popular favor in the Dark Sun community here.
Though some details are added, nothing has been altered from the information given to us by source material. The details just add flavor, and help explain to make it more credible.
Here:
The Twin Fates of Kalidnay
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.
Anyways, yeah, there were two RL suppliments about Kaldinay and Kalidma, Forbidden Lore and Domains of Dread.
Kalidma is considered a female in Forbidden Lore as well as Merchant House of Amketch (or maybe that was another DS module, can't remember), but everywhere else he's considered a male.
And Merchant House of Amketch actually switches back and forth from male to female for Kalid-Ma.
DS and RL are my two favorite settings, I'm glad there is a connection between the too.
Originally posted by WilliamPall
So . . . just so I have this correct . . . Thakok-an, the Templar, is the Dread Lord of the Ravenloft domain . . . not Kalid-ma.
DS and RL are my two favorite settings, I'm glad there is a connection between the too.
Bingo, and same here.
Hence why I combine the two.
About the only way you are going to leave Athas in my campaigns. :D
Death . . .?
Originally posted by WilliamPall
Oh, I can think of another way . . .
Death . . .?
Nah, the gray is part of Athas, hehe.
ashy
I added that bit as flavor for the character, which is NOT official, but doesn't contradict anything official either. It just adds to the character, and explains why he could have some importance and a link with the ex-SK of Tyr.
2- Hmm... I had assumed that the ruins would have undead lurking in it, but you're right, there no mention of them, in fact, every mention of Kalidnay denizens describe raiders and some regular monsters.
I think a good way to approach this would be that since all the undead were mindless, many drifted away from the city, and others were simply destroyed by whatever came in Kalidnay, over the centuries.
ah, yes i remember him from that.....if i recall he is in hiding so a ruined city may well be a good place for him.
ashy
