what (if any) connection does rajaat have with the lost gods of athas?
could/did he cut some sort of deal with them?
did he somehow usurp their power? maybe cut some sort of non-violence-toward-the-lesser-races pact? i dont recall him personally performing any violence (aside from creating the champions) against any 'lesser' race.
i mean, why did he even need champions? if he's like 100+ level and all so uber-powerful why not just wipe out all the impure races himself. given, he IS insane. but is that really enough to explain why he went about doing what he did the way he did?
what did happen to the gods? given rajaats' level of power could he have cut some sort of deal with the Powers of athas? perhaps he is a fledgling god of magic that some how took over? perhaps imprisioning them in the dark lens? perhaps the dark lens creates the static (that is the gray) to block the powers. dont get me wrong, i LOVE the no-gods-on-athas thing, but i'm just trying to figure out the back story to better flesh out my groups' time there. even if they dont live long enough to find any of this stuff out, it still makes for better storytelling/roleplaying to know (in my mind) what the history is.
just a few thoughts i'm trying to get ironed out before my PCs get to athas.
they'll be there VERY soon. 
doesnt that imply that there were gods?
at least during the green age.
in VERDANT PASSAGE it mentions that sadira goes to an underground chapel that still has guardian spirits waiting for the gods' return.
doesnt that imply that there were gods?
at least during the green age.
In my interview of Troy Denning (the author of The Verdant Passage and co-creator of Dark Sun) I asked him about this. His reply that this event was inconclusive whether there ever were deities of a nature we are familiar with in D&D during the Green Age. The scene implies that there was a religious structure and that the undead residing there are kept going by their faith and belief. Because these spirits are waiting for the return of their "god", doesn't mean the god actually ever existed... just that the spirits think it once did.
No certainty about whether there is some divine anything about that scene and it is open to interpretation to both sides of the "were there ever gods" argument.
If you want a connection between Rajaat and hypothetical "lost gods", that's cool. Myself, I have my own custom cosmology that dumps traditional D&D cosmology. In my Athas, there were gods, and Rajaat had nothing to do with them or with their "silencing".
Regards,
Eric Anondson
in VERDANT PASSAGE it mentions that sadira goes to an underground chapel that still has guardian spirits waiting for the gods' return.
doesnt that imply that there were gods?
at least during the green age.
No certainty about whether there is some divine anything about that scene and it is open to interpretation to both sides of the "were there ever gods" argument.
The passage in the novel is pretty clear in what it suggests to us: gods of old were nothing like the gods of today (read SKs) and Ktandeo says he does not know what happened to them, only that like all glories of the past, they faded away.
This suggests that even a person like Ktandeo, who has entered discussions with the temple wraiths, does not know the nature of those ancient gods the green age people believed in. This is the only mention, anywhere as far as I know, of an athasian mentionning there ever were abstract gods (read not SKs) worshiped at one time or another.
The conclusion most people make is that the green age people worshiped imagined gods. If those people received spells it was because their god had an elemental component and they were getting their spells from the elements instead.
[Here's an idea: If you look at the DSMCII entries on raaigs, you'll notice one has only access to spells from the Sphere of the Cosmos, while another has access to it plus the Sphere of Earth, but protects the "Forbidden Caverns".
I think it was a good effort on the part of the 2E team that made the MC to express that raaigs (at least in 2E) could receive spells but only from the sphere of the cosmos (a general sphere) or from an elemental sphere if their worship had an elemental component. No indication exists as to weither they had access to spells when they were alive or if its due to their undead transformation...2E material can be imprecise like that.]
Here's my thought. There were no deities in the Green age, and never since then.. why??? because.. the Rhulisti had stopped worshiping them and turned to their life shaping... lacking a need for deities and the philosophy of life shaping and life bending being prevalent, the worship of deities faded.. and without worshipers, they moved on / died / lost power / vanished... hence, by the end of the blue age, there were no God's.. no conduits because they weren't necessary, and there were no longer deities to support them.
The Rhulisti had become creatures of 'science' so to speak, with their life shaping powers.. and turned their backs on the Gods.. so.. no more deities
The worst part of this is... if the first elemental clerics did start in the Green age, then that means no chance for really cool AB's from the blue age kickin it arround some where... (could you imagine an Elemental Water type from back then??) Of course, if there were no elemental clerics back then, you have to wonder how the Rhulisti built that trait (and psionics for that matter) into the Pyreen...
in VERDANT PASSAGE it mentions that sadira goes to an underground chapel that still has guardian spirits waiting for the gods' return.
doesnt that imply that there were gods?
Yeah, and there are people in the Heaven's Gate Cult on earth who are still waiting for the UFO behind the comet to come pick them up. Therefore UFOs exist.
Like it or not, Athas is an atheist's world. Like our own world, however, the nonexistence of any particular divine pantheon has never been a bar to any number of charlatans, madmen, or mad charalatans duping the credulous into believing in them.
Part of the ingenuity of Athas's innate cruelty is that there are always scoundrels out to give false hope. However, unlike our own world, the deeper ingenuity is that these scoundrels often return as telepathic zombies to feast on the brains of the living...
Part of the ingenuity of Athas's innate cruelty is that there are always scoundrels out to give false hope. However, unlike our own world, the deeper ingenuity is that these scoundrels often return as telepathic zombies to feast on the brains of the living...
Rmm, but about the rest of your post, Hiero5ant, Athas trully seems to be a world that is strikingly similar to our own.
There seems to be a bit more science in the fantasy (lifeshaping, thinkercraft, etc.), people believed in gods without needing for them to be undeniably real, and there is no clockwork balance of good and evil components.
Here's my thought. There were no deities in the Green age, and never since then.. why??? because.. the Rhulisti had stopped worshiping them and turned to their life shaping... lacking a need for deities and the philosophy of life shaping and life bending being prevalent, the worship of deities faded.. and without worshipers, they moved on / died / lost power / vanished... hence, by the end of the blue age, there were no God's.. no conduits because they weren't necessary, and there were no longer deities to support them.
The Rhulisti had become creatures of 'science' so to speak, with their life shaping powers.. and turned their backs on the Gods.. so.. no more deities
I kinda like this explanation.
gods:"Well people, if you're going to be like that, than fine, we're leaving!"
Wonder if things would've gone differently if they hadn't left.
My version is that Rajaat killed the Gods himself, while his Champions were running the Cleansing Wars - which is why you don't see much mention of him in the timeline once the Wars start. The Gray is where the Gods used to live, until Rajaat destroyed it.
I don't know. That sounds a bit off. They couldn't have been very god-like if they allowed a mortal(albeit a pretty powerful mortal) to kill them off.
The Elemental Lords and the SK's via an elemental vortex have somewhat duplicated the ability to grant spells.
Their spirit was so strong that it wouldn't fade away in the grey like the normal spirits do. These beings were venerated by the people as gods, they weren't all powerful gods like in Forgotten realms or Greyhawk. These "gods" were powerful spirits that could leave the Grey only when they were called near their image. They could only see and hear through any images of themselves ( statues, paintings, ect.) and thier priests. They would grant spells to those who performed rituals and gave offerings ( food, drink,) to them. They could not do much else but guide their own priests.
What if Rajaat fooled these beings by offering them a way to increase their power and permanantly escape the Grey. Since Rajaat has found a way to move through the Grey without getting lost, they enter his body to "hitch" a ride out of the Grey. Rajaat uses his power to hold the spirits within him. During the cleansing wars he uses the beings to fuel his defiling spells essentially destroying their spirit. The connections between the spirits and Elemental planes were severed. These wild forces spun out of control which in turn become the living vortices.
Who knows? Just one way you could run the idea.
Low-key technology, all grouped under the unifying term of thinkercraft.
Today Athas has about 0 thinkercraft. (The knowledge and its application had attained its peak at the height of the Green Age, right before magic came into the picture.)
dark sun was specifically designed to be a high-level playing field. this means the 'big boys' are out, aka the powers, aka teh gods as they are known in the universe of dnd...paling by comparison are rjaat, and pale to him are the champions, the dragons and would be dragons. and finally at the end are the PCs, who are in a world where divine intervention & holy justice aren't the saving graces. good does not necessarily win, as evidenced by the state of the world. simply put its children at play when the keepers are away, and they made a mess of it, dontcha think
its a setting where players are challenged, and in turn can rise to occupy positions of far more power than a king of forgotten realms or a wizard of arcana. is the simplest truth of the world...cruel and unfair, but rewards and riches to the winner DS is where the PC's can affect the history of the world in serious ways - rather than just been watchers as elminster takes action (sorry i mean generic uber-annoying-wizard-avatar-of-the-creator :D )
Except when they are just watchers as Sadira, Rikus, Tithian, and Agis take action. :P