What exactly was the Brown Tide? Was it sentient or just a growth? Are there any remnants of it left on present day Athas?
What are your theories as to what the Brown Tide actually was?
I would not say that it was sentient, though. It reminds me very strongly of the real-world phenomenon known as Red Tide. Red Tide is the name given to harmful algal blooms that replicate at a very high rate. Often extremely toxic, red tide can kill humans if ingested (usually through infected seafood) and cause other painful symptoms through direct exposure. On Athas, I would imagine that the Brown Tide was a highly aggressive and toxic form of algae or phytoplankton. For it to survive into the current age, it would have needed to have been located in a body of water that was protected from the sun's rays since the time of the Rebirth.
In The Amber Enchantress, I seem to recall the brown algae in the Pristine Tower being stimulated or created by an act of defiling magic. Although defiling magic did not exist in the Blue Age, it seems likely to me that it has the same effect upon the building blocks of life as the failed experiment that caused the creation of the original Brown Tide back in the 8th World's Age. In essence, the early nature masters "defiled" the lifeforce of the ocean, creating the Brown Tide.
Perhaps the current red color of Athas' sun would have a different effect on the Brown Tide if exposed to its light. Maybe it would accelerate its growth or cause it to change into something entirely different (sentient?).
I see two broad lines of thought. One has it that the altered sun eradicated the tide through an excess of its focussed energy. The other would suggest that the alteration to the sun's energy starved the tide. Phytoplankton and algea require solar energy to survive, so an alteration in the nature of that energy could well destroy it or render it dormant.
As I understand it, the red sun burns hotter than the yellow, which in turn burns hotter than the blue. This would suggest to me that the tide was "zapped" out of existence by an excess of high-energy solar radiation. Along those lines of thought, I would doubt that the red sun would be anything other than harmful to any surviving brown tide.
Still, you could always rule that the radiation from the red sun is of such intensity that it does not kill the tide, but instead mutates it into a different lifeform. This mutated tide could easily be sentient, if desired, or possess any other features that the DM wishes to give it.
Well, the various canonical sources state that the Brown Tide was destroyed, not rendered dormant. That aside, however, I'd say that you could devise differing effects for the red sun on the tide, as opposed to the yellow sun.
True, but whose to say that some couldn't have survived? Could be that a nature-bender managed to hide some away for later use.
I see two broad lines of thought. One has it that the altered sun eradicated the tide through an excess of its focussed energy. The other would suggest that the alteration to the sun's energy starved the tide. Phytoplankton and algea require solar energy to survive, so an alteration in the nature of that energy could well destroy it or render it dormant.
I like to think that the rhulisti focused the suns energy thru the use of the Pristine Tower to destory the major pockets of the Tide and that the altering of the sun to yellow caused the rest of it to die off at a slower rate.
As I understand it, the red sun burns hotter than the yellow, which in turn burns hotter than the blue. This would suggest to me that the tide was "zapped" out of existence by an excess of high-energy solar radiation. Along those lines of thought, I would doubt that the red sun would be anything other than harmful to any surviving brown tide.
Thats if you want apply "real word" rationale. I would think that the Brown Tide is not your typical algea. I would think that it is more akin to a complex life-shaped form.
Still, you could always rule that the radiation from the red sun is of such intensity that it does not kill the tide, but instead mutates it into a different lifeform. This mutated tide could easily be sentient, if desired, or possess any other features that the DM wishes to give it.
That would be the neat thing to do away ;)
True, but whose to say that some couldn't have survived? Could be that a nature-bender managed to hide some away for later use.
Totally. I could easily imagine it surviving in some of those vast underwater complexes built by the rhulisti - presumably now at the bottom of the Sea of Silt.
Thats if you want apply "real word" rationale. I would think that the Brown Tide is not your typical algea. I would think that it is more akin to a complex life-shaped form.
Yeah, that is a bit of a pseudo-scientific take on it ;). I'm not sure that the brown tide would necessarily be a complex lifeshape, however - I see it as simple. Voracious and deadly, but simple. The reekmurk from the FF might make a good template for a mutated brown tide. It has poison and acid attacks, as well as sunlight vulnerability.
I want a sentient brown algae killing machine to ravage Athas damn it!
I do aswell!
I like to think that a small portion of the Brown Tide, which I lovingly refer to as the Thalassophage (Sea-Eater), survived. I also believe a very large body of water, covering roughly 1/4 of Athas, is infested with it. Not only do I believe this is a great adventuring idea, I also believe it would offer a richer variety of geographical areas. If it is done right then it would fully fit in with the wasteland that Athas is today.
I always played it that the Brown Tide was a corruption of life itself and was partially the reason why Athas was so isolated from the rest of the multiverse. When the Brown Tide was "defeated," it was actually banished to the Gray and became the Black.
I can accept this..... IF a remnant of the Brown Tide remained and became the Thalassophage!
I don't remember where I read it now, but I thought that Tyr was built on top of ancient Blue Age coastal city.
I guess I missed some stuff in not reading several of the novels.
As for the light itself, the change in type of star alters the type/wavelength of the light being emitted. Blue is of higher energy than yellow than red. If you want to go with theline of thought that what killed/defeated the brown tide was the altered nature of the sun, then where did the energy go? That's a lot of energy to change a star like that. Is such energy stored within the pristine toiwer and dark lens? Did the majority of that energy go towards orchestrating the rebirth and re-terraforming the planet?
The other line of thought is that the tower/lens were created to siphon off energy to accomplish the defeat of the brown tide and the amount of energy brought about a fundamental change in the star, altering its nature and color and energy used.
Here's an idea. Maybe they used the siphoned energy to use the brown tide to terraform the planet. They changed it to become seeds of life for plants and other forms of life. In the process, the amount of energy being used vaporized a lot of the oceans, wound up in advertantly killing a lot of the rhulisti, and had unexpected side-effects. Maybe the rebirth was a mistake. Maybe they started a process of life-shaping what had become almost a world-spanning organism and the process went out of control, and the reason the rhulisti were headed away from the the pristine tower was to escape a chain of events that had gotten out of hand, and the creation of the rebirth races was a side-effect of that, a mistake. Eventually the process died down and things more or less stabalized. Eventually the pristine tower ran out of energy, and no more new races were created and no mutations happened, and so people stayed away from it. Then along came Rajaat, who took up residence. When he used the tower to create his champions, along with all the other effects, the tower was charged again, and residual effects linger still, created the unstable mutations. Eventually the radius of effect will lesson until the tower is bled dry and there are no mutations. Unless someone tries to use it again. But how much life is left in the star? Will further use drain it so much that it cinders down to a neutron star or a brown dwarf? Maybe the sun will just go out.
Anyone ever read the Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolf? Maybe the sun, through someone attempting to use the Tower, begins to flicker and die down, and someone has to go and try to revive it somehow, either by bringing a new sun, re-balancing the elemental planes, or doing something to breathe new life into a dying system.
just some thoughts.
nic
Eric: Sadira's half-sister defiled a pool of water atop the Pristine Tower and a brownish color began to swirl around in it. Was this pool of water a remnant of the original ocean-water that the Blue Age halflings used for their bio-technology creations? Was the brown coloring a hint at the "brown tide" that the proto-halflings fought at the end of the Blue Age?
Troy: Sounds like something I'd do, doesn't it?
So we have that to go with.
Regards,
Eric Anondson
In my opinion it was a massive gelatinous creature (like a Shoggoth) that is an absorber of liquids (water, blood you get the idea), and dessicates living creatures that it touches. It was basically destroyed by the halflings but lesser elements of it may still remain trapped - probably far from water and liquids - so not under the sea of silt (since it used to be water).
.....defiled a pool of water atop the Pristine Tower and a brownish color began to swirl around in it......Was the brown coloring a hint at the "brown tide"......
I always believed that the Silt Sea was caused by the defilement of the Sunrise Sea. I would take the quoted passage above as proof that defiling water creates silt. I wouldn't think it to be the Brown Tide because the brown swirling did not appear until after the water was defiled and was not present before this action.
One might ask, "How does water become silt while being defiled? Defiling is the removing of life energy from something. Water is not alive."
Does anyone remember the reason the Rhulisti created the Brown Tide? It was to make the water more fertile. Maybe they succeeded. I propose that the Rhulisti added an additional component to Athas' water: Life energy. Perhaps the Brown Tide always existed on Athas as some sort of micro-organism. When the Rhulisti altered the water the microbe was provided with a perfect environment to thrive in and it caused an unforeseen environmental dissaster.
This "life-energized" water would be a perfect medium for any wizard to draw from. Once defiled, the dessicated water molecules become the silvery-brown particles we know as silt.
Imagine that there are hidden pockets of the Brown Tide numbering in the dozens scattered all over Athas. What if something recently triggered the Tide to awake from it long dormant state.
Maybe thru the combination of the great quake and the Cerulean Storm. The quake could have broken one of these a long forgotten hidden pockets and exposed it to the Tyr Storms that break from the Cerulean Storm. This could easily supply the water necessary to reawaken the Brown Tide.
I've long went with the theory that the Brown Tide was just an algae, was an effort to make more plant matter available to support the food chain, thus doubling the ocean's capacity to support life. I usually find that the simplest explanation is the best. It keeps everything properly set in established chronology. [/IMG]
Hey Man, these are some good ideas people are coming up with here. Simple the best Fah! Fah! I say Fah!
Any ideas/speculations? 
Hmmm...after reading this, I think I'm going to go lay down a "brown tide" of my own.
Diarhea?
It could have been to sustain a burgeoning population, or to prepare for a population explosion. Or simply to see if they could.
Of course, that scenario means that following the Brown Tide would have been an enormous famine that would have all but destroyed civilization... :D
I did have one thought (beyond the one you mentioned) of my own. Warning, big assumpion on my part. Life-shaping is noted as operating somewhat like magic. Well, we know that magic on Athas requires life. Maybe the same worked for lifeshaping...the more complicated the lifeshape, the more life it takes. So maybe the lifeshapers were trying something truly epic, perhaps even godlike? Just an off-the-wall theory of mine
I have a bit of a different question: WHY did the halflings want to increase the life? What did they want to do with all that life that they wanted to create?
Going with the idea, well, being that they were masters of shaping living organic matter into everything they could possibly need, and living matter needs to feed somehow it might be reasonable to imagine that at some point there was an overpopulation of life-shaped things. The algae-version of the Brown Tide might just have been intended to be fuel for the life-shaped "economy".
With a society based on life-shaped matter, keeping the life-shaped items alive is almost similar an energy crises today. Maybe they just made too much of the algae too fast but it was a quick-fix that backfired.
It plays up on the enviro-theme prevalent in Dark Sun and ends up showing that Athas has had a longer history of bad stewardship.
This is another one of those topics that really doesn't have an answer, but has plenty of opinions.
Does anyone remember the reason the Rhulisti created the Brown Tide? It was to make the water more fertile. Maybe they succeeded. I propose that the Rhulisti added an additional component to Athas' water: Life energy. Perhaps the Brown Tide always existed on Athas as some sort of micro-organism. When the Rhulisti altered the water the microbe was provided with a perfect environment to thrive in and it caused an unforeseen environmental dissaster.
This "life-energized" water would be a perfect medium for any wizard to draw from. Once defiled, the dessicated water molecules become the silvery-brown particles we know as silt.
Congrats! That's probably the best explanation for all the
silt that I've heard of. Plus it explains the connection between elemental Water and paraelemental Silt.Congrats! That's probably the best explanation for all the
Thank you, thank you. I happen to feel that way myself.
Last Resort- This was ment as a strike against an uprising of the renegade Rhulisti and the resulting assult was what caused the Brown Tide.
The Big Red Button- Basically someone totally screwed up here. Maybe a group of the halfling life masters were trying to whip up something new in the kitchen and added to much salt or something.
I like to think that the Living Vortices we're originally crafted by the nature-benders as a last resort or doomsday weapon.
There is an apparent remnant of the Brown Tide in the pool in the Pristine Tower (it features in The Amber Enchantress, iirc). In fact, the timeline says that the surviving nature masters created the Pristine Tower in order to destroy the Brown Tide. This is an interesting expansion on the info in the Wanderer's Chronicle, which simply notes that the nature masters used the tower to alter the sun so that its energy could be focussed through the tower as a way of destroying the tide.
I would not say that it was sentient, though. It reminds me very strongly of the real-world phenomenon known as Red Tide. Red Tide is the name given to harmful algal blooms that replicate at a very high rate. Often extremely toxic, red tide can kill humans if ingested (usually through infected seafood) and cause other painful symptoms through direct exposure. On Athas, I would imagine that the Brown Tide was a highly aggressive and toxic form of algae or phytoplankton. For it to survive into the current age, it would have needed to have been located in a body of water that was protected from the sun's rays since the time of the Rebirth.
In The Amber Enchantress, I seem to recall the brown algae in the Pristine Tower being stimulated or created by an act of defiling magic. Although defiling magic did not exist in the Blue Age, it seems likely to me that it has the same effect upon the building blocks of life as the failed experiment that caused the creation of the original Brown Tide back in the 8th World's Age. In essence, the early nature masters "defiled" the lifeforce of the ocean, creating the Brown Tide.
That's probably the best thought up and researched answer I've seen on this, or that I could come up with on this anyway.. though I haven't read the rest of the thread yet..
Makes you wonder if there is any other matter left over from the blue age, that might be maleable to modern day energies... perhaps the halflings of forest ridge, the life shaper ones.. just need material to shape more easily than what they have? Makes you wonder what real preserver magic could do with the pristine tower....
Well, the various canonical sources state that the Brown Tide was destroyed, not rendered dormant. That aside, however, I'd say that you could devise differing effects for the red sun on the tide, as opposed to the yellow sun.
I see two broad lines of thought. One has it that the altered sun eradicated the tide through an excess of its focussed energy. The other would suggest that the alteration to the sun's energy starved the tide. Phytoplankton and algea require solar energy to survive, so an alteration in the nature of that energy could well destroy it or render it dormant.
As I understand it, the red sun burns hotter than the yellow, which in turn burns hotter than the blue. This would suggest to me that the tide was "zapped" out of existence by an excess of high-energy solar radiation. Along those lines of thought, I would doubt that the red sun would be anything other than harmful to any surviving brown tide.
Still, you could always rule that the radiation from the red sun is of such intensity that it does not kill the tide, but instead mutates it into a different lifeform. This mutated tide could easily be sentient, if desired, or possess any other features that the DM wishes to give it.
Now this line of thinking I couldn't help.. with all this talk of red and yellow suns...
Take some of the existing algae from the red sun athas.. whether part of the brown tide or not.. and expose it to yellow sunlight... thereby infusing it with superman.. er, algae abilities
is it a bird? is it a plane?? no! its muck!! 
Sorry, couldn't help myself ;) you'll forgive me of course
I do aswell!
I like to think that a small portion of the Brown Tide, which I lovingly refer to as the Thalassophage (Sea-Eater), survived. I also believe a very large body of water, covering roughly 1/4 of Athas, is infested with it. Not only do I believe this is a great adventuring idea, I also believe it would offer a richer variety of geographical areas. If it is done right then it would fully fit in with the wasteland that Athas is today.
And allow for a whole new breed of monsters as well... some of whom could have life shaping talents (twisted rhulisti?) or even psionics.. or both??
I was under the impression that there was a lot less land during the blue age and that the "Brown Tide" was a refrence to the drying up of the oceans; a tide of land if you will.
I don't remember where I read it now, but I thought that Tyr was built on top of ancient Blue Age coastal city.
I guess I missed some stuff in not reading several of the novels.
Perhaps that is symbolically true in both cases... the nature masters tried to increase the life production of the sease, and destroyed or in some fassion caused the water to receed, creating an excess of land.. the brown tide of land..
But how much life is left in the star? Will further use drain it so much that it cinders down to a neutron star or a brown dwarf? Maybe the sun will just go out.
Anyone ever read the Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolf? Maybe the sun, through someone attempting to use the Tower, begins to flicker and die down, and someone has to go and try to revive it somehow, either by bringing a new sun, re-balancing the elemental planes, or doing something to breathe new life into a dying system.
just some thoughts.
nic
I've actually often thought just such an adventure would be great for epic beings.. Avangion, Dragon, Elemental, heck, even Spirit of the Land (the last of whom I'd love to see get of their big butts and do something for a change!)
I like to think that the Living Vortices we're originally crafted by the nature-benders as a last resort or doomsday weapon.
Now that's an interesting comment.. how would you activate these vortices?? In what manner would they result?? Could they be tapped minutely? for energy or effect? (the first clerics)
How would the halflings who life shaped organics, be capable of interracting with other planes of existence through their technology? That goes for both the Vortex's and the Brown Tide becomes the Black theories..
Now that's an interesting comment.. how would you activate these vortices?? In what manner would they result?? Could they be tapped minutely? for energy or effect? (the first clerics)
How would the halflings who life shaped organics, be capable of interracting with other planes of existence through their technology? That goes for both the Vortex's and the Brown Tide becomes the Black theories..
The rhulisti were able to achieve some fantastic feats with their life-shaping tech during the Blue Age. I wouldn't find it all that hard to believe that they were capable of tapping the planes in some fashion.Living Vortices may have been the pinnacle of their life-shaping science. What purpose did they serve? The nature masters could have used the Vortices for a unlimited power source. The nature benders may have plans for them with a more sinister bend (a weapon?).
I haven't really developed this theory fully yet, but its what I plan on use for my campaign in some form yet to be determined.
Beat that!