Is Sigil mentioned in any of the DS material? While Athas is largely blocked from extraplanar travel, it's largely just the outer planes that are sequestered. There's plenty of references to Athas or persons from Athas in the PS 'Guide to the Inner Planes' and in the PS MC III.
As well, there's a 'New Tyr' district in Sigil's Hive Ward, composed of people who have managed to leave Athas (though by what method it isn't mentioned). I figured an infrequent portal from Sigil to be the reason, or travel via the inner planes away from Athas. The only method of getting to the outer planes of the Great Wheel from Athas I'm aware of was the planar gate in New Guistinal held by Dregoth. Are there any others?
Also, and I'm sure this will raise eyebrows, or it may have been covered before... In 'Uncaged: Faces of Sigil' there's an Argenach Rilmani by the name of Jemorille the Exile. Among his many boasts that range from 'I control The Lady of Pain by what people I influence in Sigil' to 'I caused the Tuigan horde to attack the nations of Faerun on Toril' to 'I caused the building and destruction of a temple to elemental evil on Oerth' there's one that relates to Athas: "In the rolling greens of Athas, I counseled the halfling Rajaat in the ways of magic so that he might restore the world to his forsaken brethren (Could I have forseen the abuses of power that despoiled the planet?)."
Has the Rilmani element ever been mentioned in DarkSun? Or even hints that Rajaat had outside aid in his development of magic on Athas?
Originally posted by Shemeska the Marauder
Since Darksun/Athas was part of the common 2e multiverse that Planescape fleshed out, I was curious if any of the mentions of Athas that appeared in some of the Planescape products are mirrored in the DarkSun material. I've only skimmed the DS material so I figure you bloods could help me out.
Is Sigil mentioned in any of the DS material? While Athas is largely blocked from extraplanar travel, it's largely just the outer planes that are sequestered. There's plenty of references to Athas or persons from Athas in the PS 'Guide to the Inner Planes' and in the PS MC III.
As well, there's a 'New Tyr' district in Sigil's Hive Ward, composed of people who have managed to leave Athas (though by what method it isn't mentioned). I figured an infrequent portal from Sigil to be the reason, or travel via the inner planes away from Athas. The only method of getting to the outer planes of the Great Wheel from Athas I'm aware of was the planar gate in New Guistinal held by Dregoth. Are there any others?
Also, and I'm sure this will raise eyebrows, or it may have been covered before... In 'Uncaged: Faces of Sigil' there's an Argenach Rilmani by the name of Jemorille the Exile. Among his many boasts that range from 'I control The Lady of Pain by what people I influence in Sigil' to 'I caused the Tuigan horde to attack the nations of Faerun on Toril' to 'I caused the building and destruction of a temple to elemental evil on Oerth' there's one that relates to Athas: "In the rolling greens of Athas, I counseled the halfling Rajaat in the ways of magic so that he might restore the world to his forsaken brethren (Could I have forseen the abuses of power that despoiled the planet?)."
Has the Rilmani element ever been mentioned in DarkSun? Or even hints that Rajaat had outside aid in his development of magic on Athas?
1. No.
2. Few are officially mentioned. There was the astral gate the Githyanki were trying to use to invade. That was destroyed though. Access to the elemental planes was easier, although the areas visited should be considered remote and relatively low on portals, IMO.
3. This is obviously screed. Rajaat discovered magic through experimentation. He had testing labs at the base of the Jagged Cliffs. And IIRC, the Rilmani were introduced around the same time as DS' last products were released.
I was just curious if it was corroborated in any way in the DS material I've never really read over. Thanks.
Originally posted by xlorepdarkhelm
Nope. And for the record, Rajaat isn't even a Halfling - he's a deformed Pyreen.
Nice to know that Dark Sun wasn't the only product line with bad inconsistencies, heh.
Simple answer is: Yes, there are links between Planescape and Dark Sun, but they're tenuous (at least, tenuous one way: Planescape has many direct references to Athas, Athas has oblique references to Planescape).
For example, there are many documented accounts of Tanar'ri and Baatezu on Athas and, of course, the gythanki and so on. Dregoth traveled the planes.
The goal of the Dark Sun team, I'm guessing, was to isolate Dark Sun, but the word from on-high was that was a "no-go." It wouldn't be "good" if players from Dark Sun had no reason to buy Planescape products, afterall: got to keep those coffers coming in somehow.
Why did TSR go under, again?
Originally posted by Dawnstealer
The goal of the Dark Sun team, I'm guessing, was to isolate Dark Sun, but the word from on-high was that was a "no-go." It wouldn't be "good" if players from Dark Sun had no reason to buy Planescape products, afterall: got to keep those coffers coming in somehow.
Why did TSR go under, again?
/me snickers
Forgot to replace your S with the $ too man, heh.
There are no direct references to planescape specific material in DS products (no direct crossover names or specific places), but there are a good amount of references to links to the generic multiverse. There's an undead dragon-king named Dergoth that has an artifact level mirror of planar travel who seems to find the lower planes a nice place for his summer vacation home (likely a time share with one of the dark eight); there's the Gith, Athas' version of an orc, that are a degenerate reptillian offshoot of the Githyanki (and a whole mega adventure to tie those two races together); there's fiends aplenty mentioned in several encounter tables. And that's really about it for the tie-ins with the standard multiverse's cosmology.
Athas has its own elemental planes which are quite different from Planescape's. There's the standard Earth, Wind, Fire, and Water, but then there's the planes of Silt, Sun, Magma, and Rain as para-elementals. The elemental planes themselves are much more travel friendly as well; the plane of fire for example isn't just a big mass of flame, its a place that is mostly normal, just really hot, with pillars of fire, fire rains, and lakes of fire here and there. Athas also boasts two unique planes as well. The Black is a plane of shadow that was given almost no real detail in the entire campaign line. From a design perspective, the only reason the Black exists is so the creators had somewhere to toss Rajaat during his lengthy imprisonment. Then there's the Grey, a place where all Athasian souls go to, a place of undead and spirits.
As for the Rajaat/Jemorille thing, the setting implies that Rajaat did the whole discovery of magic on his own, but from a PS perspective, there's no reason why Jem's claims could not be at least partially true (though he does boast far more grand accomplishments perhaps than other rilmani, so maybe a grain of salt is in order).
On New Tyr, why the heck couldn't we get a nice kip in the Lady's Ward? Why does it have to be the slums? Its just not fair, I tell you! Anyhow, don't be misled by the name. The city-state of Tyr is no more or less important than any of the other eight city-states. Its just that the 'narrator' of the setting was from that city, so when traveling, he called the known lands the Tyr Region, and also dubbed the world's only full fledged dragon the Dragon of Tyr.
Don't forget that there's also a tribe of desert elves out there who hail from Athas, in the realm of Amun-thys, on Arborea's 3rd layer of Pelion. No more than a bief mention of course, but hey, its at least something, ain't it.
Hope that helps a little. And kudos to the fine work you and the PS team are doing with converting the old PS material over to 3E.
Other have already mentioned Dregoth's planar gate and baatezu allies. Athas' gith were once a colony of githyanki that was hit with a powerful "psionic bomb" resulting in their devolution into the primitive race of gith. (As a sidenote, although Athas' "Rebirth" period is generally held to have given rise to psionics on the world, the psionic bomb is also sometimes cited as a cause for widespread evolution of psychic powers).
The information on avangions also mentions that they travel the planes during their transformation process, but gives little details on this, leaving it up to the DM to develop. High-level clerics are also assumed to travel the inner planes and, according to Earth, Air, Fire and Water may become involved in inter-elemental conflicts. Athasian inner planes are described a little differently to those in the standard cosmology, by the way, being almost "elemental reflections" of the material world, rather than the more abstract depictions found in other 2e and 3e material.
No hard mentions of Sigil or the Rilmani, though, or any other solid artifacts of the Planescape setting. Like xdh and Dawn have noted, Rajaat was a Pyreen (athasian shapeshiftings super-race) and only a halfling inasmuch as all modern asthasian races are descended from halflings (rilmani are such fibbers!) Rajaat worked alone - iirc, the material specifically states that he worked in isolation for thousands of years (first in a big swamp, then in an ancient magical tower). He did attract many disciples once he revealed his discoveries to the world so it's possible that Jemorille could have been one of these, heh heh.
Hope that helps
Originally posted by Dawnstealer
If you want to get REAL technical, all the races of Athas are halflings, so the link is possible. Don't forget that even Pyreen walked out of the Pristine Tower at one time.
Slight correction: Thri-kreen are not New Race, they co-existed with the halflings in the Blue Age. They were winged, though, and island-bound, so they had little in the way of culture. The Green Age brought in a new era for the thri-kreen, since more open land gave them greater mobility.
When Rajaat made his plans, he dismissed the thri-kreen as animals not worth the trouble of exterminating. He probably decided that when the Blue Age was restored, their mighty "Kreen empire" would drown beneath the waves.
Adamantyr
Originally posted by Heretic Apostate
The thri-kreen mention "hell," and it bears a strong resemblance to that icy plane of Baator. I remember that part...
Totally. I had forgotten about that! The kreen think that hell is a terrible cold place called Kano. The icy plane of Baator is called Cania. Seems pretty close to me...
Damned in Caina are held in ice up to their neck and forced to look down.
It seems to me that Caina could be the original source of inspiration for both Baator's layer and the Kreens' Hell.
They were winged, though, and island-bound, so they had little in the way of culture.
I agree with everything else, but I don't remember the kreen being winged. Where did it mention that?
Originally posted by Dawnstealer
I agree with everything else, but I don't remember the kreen being winged. Where did it mention that?
Thri-Kreen of Athas, page 3:
"... the Kreen of the Blue Time lived on pieces of land that floated on the water. It is said that early kreen had great gossamer wings, which they used to fly between the pieces of land. They knew nothing of tools and building, but even then they hunted. In that age were only kreen and animals, and a few plants, on the pieces of land."
Adamantyr
I agree with everything else, but I don't remember the kreen being winged.
Starship Troopers like Kreen, baby!
Originally posted by NytCrawlr
Nice to know that Dark Sun wasn't the only product line with bad inconsistencies, heh.
Dark Sun suffered from it's share of inconsistencies, most of which were caused by out-of-house freelance designers and editors (more than in-house staff) working on the line, and the book department, that cared more about a storyline than harmony between the campaign setting and the books. From what I heard RISE AND FALL OF A DRAGON-KING was practically written w/o input from any game designers (Bill, Tim, or Troy), and by the time inconsistencies were discovered it was too late (so they say) to change anything.
From what I heard from former TSR staff year ago, no blame was ever directed towards Lynn Abbey or Simon Hawke, but those driving the book department who at the time cared little for what the game department was doing. In fact, the people involved with Dark Sun towards the end were actually working towards fixing/explaining (as best as possible I guess) these inconsistencies, but then the line was terminated. If anything, Dark Sun was a victim of poor upper management, rather than those writing the words.
AnOldGamer
Originally posted by AnOldGamer
If anything, Dark Sun was a victim of poor upper management, rather than those writing the words.
I'll agree with that, esp after talking to Kevin Melka.