Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 greyorm Sep 02, 2004 20:38:21	One of the problems I've seen mentioned recently is that of the disappearance of Athas' oceans, and how it could possibly come about due to the Cleansing Wars and the rise of rampant and unchecked defiling magics. Since the ocean doesn't qualify as "plant life", how exactly did the events of that Age lead to the destruction of the oceans and their filling with silt? I know we could just say "It's magic!" and just forgoe trying to explain the exact events and processes that occurred, but I like understanding and developing magical events in utilitative and progressive fashion. It adds concretely to the setting and provides springboards for ideas and a better understanding of the forces at work in a campaign. Note that this is a repost and minor edit/restructing of the same material eaten by the recent server change on the boards. I have listed below three different suggestions for explaining the event and numbered them for better differentiation. Also note the Addendum at the the bottom. For those interested, I gathered data for the first suggestion (about the life-cycle of stars) from the memory stores of my own brain and the following site: http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=38 : a brief but very good overview of the life events and types of stars. #1 I was reading a fascinating article on space.com regarding various theories attempting to explain Venus' geological history, and I ran smack into the following section of text. This is from David Grinspoon, a planetary research scientist and astrobiologist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado: "Earth is going to lose its oceans in the future, just as Venus did in the past. How long planets retain their oceans is a function of distance from the sun, all other things being equal. But clouds may allow planets to hold onto their oceans at closer distances to the sun than has been conventionally thought." So...supposing the uses of the Dark Lens and the Pristine Tower had the side effect of increasing the effects of time in a vastly compressed span of actual, experienced time. For example, it would modify the evolutionary development of any given species, but the effective changes would be wrought upon individuals rather than species as a whole. This would also (help) explain the mutatitive effects localized to the area of the Pristine Tower. The effects would not simply be localized to Athas or it's lifeforms, however, as the sun's life stage and the planet's own state of development was obviously affected as well by the halflings with these items. It might be thought, in a very simple way, that the halflings simply evolved the Brown Tide out of existance. Of course, that misses the historical point that denotes it was the changing of the sun's color and thus its radiation/energy spectrum that did the Brown Tide in. Still, I like to think that this process of temporal advancement would also be the one which caused new races and creatures to arise and emerge from the Pristine Tower. And when the Dark Lens and Pristine Tower were used once more during the Cleansing Wars, the same temporal distortative effects occurred, with Athas' sun expanding into a dying red orb (it's internal hydrogen consumed by the magics utilized). Still, one question remains for me: how do you go from a blue supergiant, as I imagine Athas' sun to be during the Blue Age, to a yellow main-line star, as I imagine occurred during the Green Age? That's not an effect of time, it is and can only be an effect of hydrogen consumption. Blue supergiants can't "burn down" into mainline yellow stars, they're simply too massive for such an event to occur. So, I'm supposing that instead of temporal distortion, the Pristine Tower, coupled with the Dark Lens, used up much of the sun's hydrogen mass in producing the magical energy required to cause the Age-turning event, thus causing the sun to shrink. "Two billion years passed in the span of a few days time. The sun shrank, becoming a blazing yellow orb. The seas dissapated and dwindled, and strange new creatures began to roam the land. We, too, became different as the energies washed over us, changing us and mutating us in increasingly disparate ways -- and where there was once one people, there were now many, alike now in only our memories." The same would have occurred when Rajaat changed the sun once more, from yellow to red (a mainline star to a dying red giant -- red giants are stars whose centermost hydrogen stores have been completely burned out), the central hydrogen fuel of the sun consumed to empower the Champions, and moreso when the Champions used it to attack and imprision the Warbringer. Back to the original thought: given that we've always wondered how it is that Athas' oceans became vast deeps of silt, it could be because the time effects associated with the use of the Pristine Tower for these legendary spell-effects caused the planetary evolution to reach a stage where its oceans and groundwater had (mostly) evaporated into space, leaving only the salt and other detrius behind (silt). Why it didn't become Venus-like due to this event is a good question, though one that could always be chalked up to the vagaries of the temporal distortions, or simply factors unknown (since we're not completely certain how Venus became Venus, either, or whether a similar event on a planet more distant from its sun would also create the hell that is Venus' surface or another environment altogether). #2 Or, alternately from all of the above thoughts, if we assume the Dark Lens is the Black (or at least a highly focused receptacle for its energies), and the Pristine Tower when used to focus draws out the shadow realities of the Black and makes them real, "replacing reality" as it were. So, the sun changes and the Brown Tide dies because a shadow of Athas was made real; and through Rajaat's imperfect understanding of this halfling technology when used upon his Champions, perhaps coupled with his magic, caused unexpected side effects, caused other shadows than the Warbringer desired to come forth. Athas was now a world with a dying red sun and no water; he had empowered his Champions, that (or those) shadow(s) had been made real, but other shadows crept in, too. #3 Finally, another interesting possibility: the first use of the Pristine Tower that ushered in the Green Age used the energies of the sun to "imprison" the Brown Tide in an extra dimensional space, much as Rajaat is imprisioned; the second use of the Pristine Tower, which ushered in the Brown Age, unwittingly released the 'Tide from its imprisionment and unleashed it upon the oceans of Athas. After ages of starvation, it quickly devoured all the available ocean waters, even seeping through into the elemental matrice of Athas and turning what would have been the paraelement of Mud(?) into the paraelement of Silt, and nearly destroying Water in the process. Now, I'm not suggested that silt is an intelligent entity, neither animalistic and beastial or possessing an actual intellect capable of self-awareness and cunning (though either are certainly interesting prospects to explore), I'm just suggesting that the Brown Tide is silt. So, there we are, three equally "plausible" explanations and ideas for the problem of Athas' vanished oceans. #Addendum Well, at least I considered them all plausible. I was going over the timeline tonight and discovered that "the cities of Ebe, Waverly, and Arala are swallowed by the expanding Silt Sea, though later it recedes from Waverly. The nearby city of Bodach is spared, but becomes surrounded by silt" nearly 2300 years ago, well before the end of the Cleansing wars. Annoyingly, the timeline fails to mention when the Silt Sea first appeared and began to expand, and also fails to mention when the sun turned from yellow to red. Thoughts?
#2 jaanos Sep 02, 2004 22:15:33	Thanks for reposting this one greyworm, one of the best threads around. I'll try and get some time to address concepts raised, very nice work!
#3 zombiegleemax Sep 02, 2004 22:40:55	Here, at least, is mention of when the sun turned crimson; page 9 of the Dark Sun Revised Box Set: -8,000 • Rajaat discovers the principles of magic, heretofore unknown on Athas. • Rajaat publicly teaches the techniques of preserving magic, while secretly teaching a select group of students the ways of defiling magic. From this group he selects the most powerful defiler/psionicists to become his Champions. • Rajaat uses the Pristine Tower to focus the sun’s energy, seeking to elevate his Champions’ powers. He succeeds, but the sun turns a dark crimson. The next part of the timeline begins with the Cleansing Wars, -3500.
#4 greyorm Sep 02, 2004 23:13:02	-8,000: Rajaat uses the Pristine Tower to focus the sun’s energy, seeking to elevate his Champions’ powers. He succeeds, but the sun turns a dark crimson. Ahhh! Thank you! The next part of the timeline begins with the Cleansing Wars, -3500. Yikes. And just what the heck were the Champions doing for 4500 years? Honestly, there are times where I think the DS timeline is just far too exaggerated in terms of scale regarding particular events and persons. This is an example of that, I mean, seriously: Champions: "Oooo, we have GODLIKE POWERZ!..Er, what now?" Rajaat: "Anyone for pinochle?" -- aeons pass -- Rajaat: "Oh, hey, remember those godlike powers I gave you a few thousand years ago? I just had this idea: how about you go use them to kill everything for me?" Champions: "Sure, why not. Myron has been cheating for the last three centuries, anyways." Seriously, you'd expect a few vaguely notable vast changes to the world after a dozen people were given godlike power. Right? That out of the way, does anyone have a complete timeline that lists everything from the Revised set and all other sources?
#5 Pennarin Sep 02, 2004 23:36:06	Annoyingly, the timeline fails to mention when the Silt Sea first appeared and began to expand, and also fails to mention when the sun turned from yellow to red. It turned the day Rajaat created his first Champion, and has kept turning darker with each new Champion, and had a dramatic big shift to still darker red when Borys was made into the Dragon. The Timeline has precise dates for all of those events.
#6 xlorepdarkhelm_dup Sep 03, 2004 0:07:29	Yikes. And just what the heck were the Champions doing for 4500 years? Well, I'd think there were a few different things going on. Most likely, there had to be a lengthy campaign to turn public sentiment of the Humans against the other races (some were easier than others), there's also the Preserver War, if I remember correctly. And who knows, maybe he changed them into his "Champions", but then had a very long period of extended teaching. Plus, some of the Champions could have technically started on their wars before the "official" marked start of the Cleansing Wars. I mean, some races might not have been considered as relevant to the historians as part of the "Cleansing Wars". But yea, there does seem to be a few times where they hyper-extend the timeline. That same fallacy exists in almost all of the D&D worlds, really.
#7 Grummore Sep 03, 2004 10:48:47	Champions: "Oooo, we have GODLIKE POWERZ!..Er, what now?" Rajaat: "Anyone for pinochle?" -- aeons pass -- Rajaat: "Oh, hey, remember those godlike powers I gave you a few thousand years ago? I just had this idea: how about you go use them to kill everything for me?" I think the timeline could be correct! Why? Why would the champions assimilate (in a second) all the sudden burst of power sent by the dark lens? Why the transformation and their body, overloaded with energy, wouldnt take eons to develop? And while developping, that could be the greatest moment for all the champions to explore the world to find their foes and learn how they live and how to destroy them (find their weakness), since nobody know them and their goal !
#8 greyorm Sep 03, 2004 10:56:16	It turned the day Rajaat created his first Champion, and has kept turning darker with each new Champion, and had a dramatic big shift to still darker red when Borys was made into the Dragon. The Timeline has precise dates for all of those events. I'd be very interested in quotes supporting that progressive shift. The timeline(s) I have access to have no notations about the sun's turning, and the quote from the Revised set above doesn't appear to show any sort of "progression", just a sudden shift, as occured with the sun's change from the Blue Age to the Green Age.
#9 greyorm Sep 03, 2004 11:17:26	I've started a different thread about the timeline, so as to avoid dragging this one woefully off-topic (which was my own fault, to be sure). Let's get back to oceans and silt, here.
#10 zombiegleemax Sep 03, 2004 12:36:46	My personal view is that defiling magic works by consuming the natural elements, Earth, Air, Fire and Water in the area surrounding the defiler. Earth is the soil nutrients + minerals, water is soil moisture and Air is dissolved gases in the soil like Nitrogen which plants need, fire is harder to imagine, but you could say it is the natural chemical energies stored in these complex molecules. Essentialy like the body burning glucose to release energy, defiling magic releases stored energy and makes it available avaialbe as magical energy to defilers for thier spells. When I say consume these elements, I mean it breaks them down into a more inert state. Essentially increasing the entropy of the system. Earth doesn't dissapear but minerals are oxidised etc... nitrogen is free as atmospheric nitrogen, and water is boiled off. Energy is released as ambient heat(possibly in the boiled off water), which if you know about physical sciences is essentially wasted, the by product of most physical process. So anyway as I was saying, and getting back to the topic of the oceans. I see defiling magic as destroying the useability of these natural elements in the surrounding area, since plants are constructed from them they also die. Other living beings also would be consumed but the fact they have a will kind of holds them together and resists the change, but the agony is still felt. I see the Sunrise sea slowly dwindling in size and receding and at the same time accumulating dust causes from the destruction of plant life. Slowly it get's browner and browner as the ocean dwindled and accumulates more dust, then it begins to take on a muddy, clay like nature. Later it is a hard packed baked clay, held together by the last remains of moisture, finally it dries completely and the brittle clay breaks up from exposure to the elements and becomes a loose packed dust sitting in the vast depression that was once and ocean. then it becomes easy to see why the Elements are so worried by defiling magic. The life giving properties of the elements are consumed wastefully and permanently fom the ecosystem, for the sake of some wizards fireball. Earth becomes Silt, latent high-atmosphere humidity(Water, which Rains down elsewhere such as the Crimson Savanah)and Co2(Air) act as green house gases directly adding to the effects of the already swollen Sun. Magma(don't know), but possibly the huge climate change causes the earth crust to heat and expand in places, causing tectonic shifts and volcanic eruptions. So, in brief, oceans gone from defiling magic by boiling off water. Dust settles in bowl. Animals resist destruction but we all know how that one turns out.
#11 Pennarin Sep 03, 2004 15:18:55	I'd be very interested in quotes supporting that progressive shift. The timeline(s) I have access to have no notations about the sun's turning, and the quote from the Revised set above doesn't appear to show any sort of "progression", just a sudden shift, as occured with the sun's change from the Blue Age to the Green Age. Its in the Wanderer's Chronicle, pg 13: As the Pristine Tower channeled the sun's energy into the Champions, the yellow orb changed. It turned crimson and dark, signalling the beggining of a time of blood and death of unprecedented magnitude. It signaled the start of the Cleansing Wars. The part about a further, more drastic change of the sun's quality when the Dragon was created, is only a logical leap based on the above information.
#12 zombiegleemax Sep 04, 2004 17:26:01	I don't believe that Athas' oceans have all dissappeared. I agree that a large portion of the Seas became the Sea of Silt, but I also believe that most (75%?) of Athas' oceans are still out there. In my view of Dark Sun the Halflings were not totally successful in their killing of the Brown Tide. I think they killed off most of it and a remnant survived in the lowest portions of the oceans. Over time this remnant has mutated and multiplied and now enfests Athas' remaining oceans in cycles as it consumes itself, comes back, then consumes itself again. The reason I am in favour of this is because I want more diversity than just seas of silt.