Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 zombiegleemax Aug 30, 2004 20:48:30	I have seen it posted that the Jagged Cliffs could possibly be the edge of a continental shelf. Generally, these dropoffs slope and are only 200-400 feet deep. Of course this may not be the case on Athas. I am offering a different idea as to what the Jagged Cliffs may be. I am going to suggest that in Athas' distant past, millions of King's Ages ago, a mantle plume formed and caused a flood basalt eruption. This would basically be a rift in Athas' crust through which a massive and highly liquid flow of lava would stream to the surface. Since this eruption would occur under water it may cool faster than what would happen on land. If the right geological events happened, it is possible that this would create a high plateau which would encompass the known world with one side gradually sloping into the rest of the planet and the other side forming a primal version of the cliffs. Over time, wind and water would scuplt the cliffs into what they are today.
#2 zombiegleemax Aug 31, 2004 19:42:16	Athas is a magical world. Supernatural power is a vibrant, ever-evolving force on Athas. Things have happened in the Dark Sun cosmology that flatly toss physics out the window. Who says the effects of geology as we know them has any bearing on Athas whatsoever? In world with abundant psionics, life-leeching arcane magic, elemental divine magic, and even the nearly-forgotten arts of life-shaping, who says the Cliffs have to be natural at all? Maybe Rajaat made them, using mighty psionics to sculpt them into a haven wherein he might uncover arcane magic. Maybe the rhulisti made them at the height of the Blue Age, in a mighty terraforming experiment. Maybe a potent spirit of the land forged them during the Rebirth, for the simple joy of creating. --why should the Cliffs be natural, when little else on Athas is natural? NB
#3 zombiegleemax Aug 31, 2004 19:45:07	--why should the Cliffs be natural, when little else on Athas is natural? This is reason enough for me.
#4 xlorepdarkhelm_dup Sep 01, 2004 1:21:20	I have seen it posted that the Jagged Cliffs could possibly be the edge of a continental shelf. Generally, these dropoffs slope and are only 200-400 feet deep. Of course this may not be the case on Athas. I am offering a different idea as to what the Jagged Cliffs may be. I am going to suggest that in Athas' distant past, millions of King's Ages ago, a mantle plume formed and caused a flood basalt eruption. This would basically be a rift in Athas' crust through which a massive and highly liquid flow of lava would stream to the surface. Since this eruption would occur under water it may cool faster than what would happen on land. If the right geological events happened, it is possible that this would create a high plateau which would encompass the known world with one side gradually sloping into the rest of the planet and the other side forming a primal version of the cliffs. Over time, wind and water would scuplt the cliffs into what they are today. Well, there also is, I think in Windriders of the Jagged Cliffs, a legend that the Rhul-Thaun's Rhulisti ancestors raised the Jagged Cliffs as a border against the nature-benders. In effect, they are the "continental shelf" of the region, but they also had been enhanced/altered by the Rhulisti in order to produce a natural wall to keep the nature-benders out, and then the Rhulisti left outposts along it to guard the Tyr'agi region (the modern Tablelands). I do like the idea of the region gradually sloping down to the East.
#5 zombiegleemax Sep 01, 2004 14:32:36	Then I guess that settles it. --the Jagged Cliffs are the result of rhulisti terraforming NB