Dark Sun: Athas, Its Moons and You

[darjr]

Maybe that's how the bad guys got to the earth, they rode a moon.

 

[TrainedMunkee]

Maybe that's how the bad guys got to the earth, they rode a moon.

Excellent idea. Over hundreds of years they developed arcane powers, they originally had psionic abilities. This allowed them to develope arcane/psionic portals to move on to the next world.

 

[Pbartender]

Like your ideas a lot, being a fan of both authors. I would go with two moons. Make it as exotic as possible. The second moon contributed to the loss of moisture. It was originally a comet that was captured by the invaders and put into orbit. To help with the pacification of earth and create an environment more hospitable to the invaders. They used up earth's resources and have moved on. Hundreds of years later earth's current inhabitants have no idea about this, just myths. Sorcerer-Kings are decedents of the invaders left behind after the mass exodus, through psionic gates. Most earthlings are of mixed earthling/invader descent, SKs are just purer genetically and have harnessed Athas' natural resources in the form of arcane, primal and the rest.

Here's the idea... Both HGW and ERB got it part right, but also got a lot of details wrong in the way that legends normally do.

What HGW thought were Martians weren't. They were just as alien to Mars as they are to Earth. (In my campaign, these guys are going to be either Mind Flayers or Aboleths... I haven't decided which yet.) And no one is entirely certain where they came from originally. At any rate, they first landed on Mars, conquering it and enslaving almost the entirety of its population.

Now, Mars is a dying planet, as ERB suggests. However, it's not dying a natural death. Rather, what little useful resources it had were denuded by the invaders. Now Mars wasn't especially resource rich to begin with, so what the aliens gathered wasn't nearly enough to replenish and repair their fleet for the next leg of their journey.

Instead, they set their greedy sights on Earth.

Likewise, they conquer Earth, decimating the population and the ecosystem with their war machines, their heat rays, their black smoke and their red weed. Those who survived were enslaved as their Martian cousins were. With them, they brought the slaves and beasts that they'd collected from Mars and other countless worlds. In the end, Earth too was stripped of all its material wealth... In such a complete way that utterly changed the worldwide landscape.

Within a century, the aliens resumed their migration. They left behind the slaves and beasts they brought, and also a handful of criminal exiles. It's these exiles that have cruelly ruled the world since, waging merciless war with each other and keeping order through draconian law.

So... The Illithids or Aboleths would be secretly ruling from the shadows, with the Sorcerer-Kings as their puppet-mouthpiece-proxy overlords.

Most magic isn't exactly magic, but left-over super technology that is "sufficiently advanced", as Sir Arthur would put it.

That's no moon.
That's a space station!

Hrm...

Now there's an idea... The moon is actually a left-over "drydock" that was used to repair the alien fleet. What they dug out of Mars was enough to build it and move it to Earth, but not enough to fully repair and refuel and reprovision the fleet (that's what Earth was for).

Do you remember the old Spelljammer adventure SJA 1 Wildspace? I could see the second moon being the "Hive" from that adventure.

Hrm...