Isolation of the Dark Sun multiverse

[Roman]

Mark Hope, that was a superb explanation - many thanks! I did not realize that the vortices could survive... how many dead Sorceror Kings are there in total?

Edited to add: I also recall something to the effect that the Sorceror Kings cannot use their spell-granting power they use to grant spells to the templars for themselves personally and that this vexes them enormously. Is this actually the case and if so why?

 

[Raven Crowking]

The reason for the lack of connections was never explained.

I always thought that Dark Sun was supposed to be in the Forgotten Realms' future, "When Dead Dragons Rule The Land" (or words to that effect).

 

[Shemeska]

Whisper my name and I'll come calling

That's still present, in the form of the Plane of Shadow connecting multiple cosmologies.

It's an option yes, but I've felt it was a superfluous thing given that it's the same role that the deep ethereal already had. That latter plane was an unplumbed, infinite ocean of probability that the Great Wheel might have simply been one solitary multiverse of many that budded off of it. Several examples of such seperate multiverses, or perhaps supra-Wheel architecture perhaps, were mentioned in various places.

Although I also feel that each setting having it's own cosmology is a feature, not a bug. It's a good thing as it allows the setting to be able to set itself apart more in terms of feel and tone. Although folks like Shemeska might disagree, I've never thought that Planescape was a good one size fits all cosmology.

Planescape didn't originate the idea of the Great Wheel as a unified D&D cosmology, it just took it as a central focus and ran with it. A unified cosmology among the various major D&D settings was already there in 1e (as much as some DL fans may hate to acknowledge).

I'm not against seperate, unique cosmologies, I just don't like retroactively applying such things to settings with absolutely no attempt to explain the shift in-game when it's destructive, rather than additive change and there was already decades of material in place on the topic. Eberron having a unique cosmology from the start, go for it and create things that stand on their own, it's cool, but for instance FR and its 'its always been this way' debacle could have been handled infinitely better.

 

[Roman]

That's still present, in the form of the Plane of Shadow connecting multiple cosmologies.

This is a good point - I did not think about that.

BUT, does Dark Sun have a Plane of Shadow? It has been a long time...

I think, but am not sure, that the Dark Sun cosmology consists of the following:


The Prime Material Plane

Ethereal Plane: I also recall there was some difference between so called far ethereal and near ethereal, but I don'r remember what

4 Elemental Planes: Fire, Earth, Air and Water
2 Energy Planes: Positive Energy Plane and Negative Energy Plane
4 Paraelemental Planes: ???? (forgot the names)
4 Quasielemental Planes: ???? (forgot the names)

The Grey: apparently some form of barrier plane
The Black: some analogy with the Astral Plane of the Great Wheel

The Hollow: Prison of Rajaat - not sure how it ties to the rest of the Cosmology

Am I missing something - possibly the Plane of Shadow?

For what it's worth, I think that's a much more elegant and usable solution than spelljaming or the Great Wheel (IMO, a distinct Greyhawkism) uniting all settings if you actually want characters to be able to travel to different settings.

I did not like spelljaming at all. I did like the Great Wheel. Still, the point that the Plane of Shadow also provides a connection between worlds is a good one.

Although I also feel that each setting having it's own cosmology is a feature, not a bug. It's a good thing as it allows the setting to be able to set itself apart more in terms of feel and tone.

My feeling on this is a simultaneous yes and no. On the one hand, I agree that each setting having its own cosmology that fits its feel is desirable, on the other hand though in the specific case of Forgotten Realms, the change was made post-facto thus invalidating a lot of FR history. Simply cutting off Dark Sun would have been easier as there would be no change to cosmology apart from the closure of some linkeages, but I guess even these form a part of history of Dark Sun, hence my partial backtracking on the suggetion.

with the exception of the cant--bleagh

I have to agree about the horribleness of cant - as much sympathy as I have for the Great Wheel, the cant is not part of it.

 

[Desdichado]

It's an option yes, but I've felt it was a superfluous thing given that it's the same role that the deep ethereal already had. That latter plane was an unplumbed, infinite ocean of probability that the Great Wheel might have simply been one solitary multiverse of many that budded off of it. Several examples of such seperate multiverses, or perhaps supra-Wheel architecture perhaps, were mentioned in various places.

Yes, and even the 3e Manual of the Planes hints at using the Deep Ethereal as a portal to other cosmologies. So there you have it--two avenues to bridge disparate campaign settings still present in the current form of the rules.

Planescape didn't originate the idea of the Great Wheel as a unified D&D cosmology, it just took it as a central focus and ran with it. A unified cosmology among the various major D&D settings was already there in 1e (as much as some DL fans may hate to acknowledge).

Yes, I'm aware of that--I suppose I got a little sloppy in using the terms "Great Wheel" and "Planescape" interchangebly, since Planescape further developed the Great Wheel and in the current edition of the rules, most Planescapisms are assumed to have folded into the core setting as well if you actually go out on to the planes. The exception is the mysterious disappearance of the para- and quasi-elemental planes.

But even before 3e, the system was coming under strain since settings that were further removed from Greyhawk in tone and feel were not really finding the Great Wheel to work for them. Dark Sun is a prime example. Eberron is a more recent one. I suspect that the planes being modelled on the Greyhawkian Great Wheel is because the planes weren't important to the development of the other settings really--not that the Great Wheel was so ideally suited to those other settings.

I'm not against seperate, unique cosmologies, I just don't like retroactively applying such things to settings with absolutely no attempt to explain the shift in-game when it's destructive, rather than additive change and there was already decades of material in place on the topic. Eberron having a unique cosmology from the start, go for it and create things that stand on their own, it's cool, but for instance FR and its 'its always been this way' debacle could have been handled infinitely better.

I'm not sure I'd call that a debacle. In what way? FR as a setting utilized the planes more as footnotes, sources of evil, and places for occasional PC jaunts, and all of that can still be done just fine in either iteration.

 

[Alzrius]

In 2E, the crystal sphere containing Athas, its moons, sun, etc. was notably different from others in terms of its planar connections.

2E had the Ethereal Plane being the linking plane between the Inner Planes and the Prime Material Plane. The Ethereal Plane itself was called the Deep Ethereal, and where it touched other planes was called the Border Ethereal; all demiplanes existed in the Deep Ethereal (remember that in 2E, Shadow was a demiplane). And of course, the Astral Plane was the linking plane between the Prime Material Plane and the Outer Planes.

Athas's crystal sphere had no Border Ethereal; the Grey was there instead. The Grey made it incredibly difficult to reach the Astral Plane (95% chance of failure), and somewhat difficult to reach the Ethereal Plane (and the elemental planes beyond them; 65% chance of failure). Only major artifacts or psionic enchantments (epic spells, basically) didn't suffer these failure chances to get through. And of course, Athas's crystal sphere was incredibly distant from the more familiar ones, and was impenetrable in any case. The Black was, like the Grey, a different planar area within the crystal sphere itself, and Rajaat's prison (the Hollow) was contained within the Black.

Virtually all of this information can be found in Defilers and Preservers: The Wizards of Athas and The Complete Spacefarer's Handbook, though it's not much more than what I listed above.

 

[Mark Hope]

Mark Hope, that was a superb explanation - many thanks! I did not realize that the vortices could survive... how many dead Sorceror Kings are there in total?

Edited to add: I also recall something to the effect that the Sorceror Kings cannot use their spell-granting power they use to grant spells to the templars for themselves personally and that this vexes them enormously. Is this actually the case and if so why?

Five sorcerer-kings (as opposed to Champions, not all of whom received vortices) are known to have been killed (Kalak, Sielba, Borys, Abalach-Re and Tectuktitlay). Kalid-Ma is another possibility, depending on whether you think that imprisonent in Ravenloft (or in obsidian orbs, if you don't use the Ravenloft connection) is enough to sever a vortex.

It's also the case that sorcerer-kings cannot access the elemental magics that come through the vortices. No solid explanation is given as to why, but the suggestion is that the sorcerer-kings have become fused with the conduits, and can't access them because they are actually part of them.

I always thought that Dark Sun was supposed to be in the Forgotten Realms' future, "When Dead Dragons Rule The Land" (or words to that effect).

. Well, not unless Toril's sun turns blue, it's moons change size, the planet floods, magic and psionics disappear entirely and all the races except for the halflings and the thri-kreen vanish without a trace. Other than that, no problem...

I think, but am not sure, that the Dark Sun cosmology consists of the following:
(snip)

Dark Sun has the following planes:
Athas (prime material)
Elemental Planes (earth, air, fire water)
Paraelemental Planes (sun, rain, silt, magma)
The Grey (plane of spirits and undead)
The Black (plane of darkness, cold and shadow)
The Astral (separated from Athas by the Grey)
The Ethereal (separated from Athas by the Grey, but breached by elemental conduits)
The Hollow (prison plane at the heart of the Black, containing nothing but Rajaat)

That's it. Later (athas.org) releases have expanded the concept of the Grey to allow for the inclusion of 3e rules relating to the positive and negative planes and added the Deep as nod to the Outer Planes, which are clearly present in Athasian cosmology but never defined as such (see Terrors of the Dead Lands for more on this if you want to).

 

[Roman]

Mark Hope, thanks - it has been a while, so the refreshment of my memory about the cosmology of Athas is helpful.

BTW: I just downloaded the Terrors of the Dead Lands and noticed that it was released on my birthday - what a great gift!

Skimming through the section on planes, I discovered that Mindscapes form temporary deminplanes in the Astral Plane that are coterminous with the Astral Plane. So, psionics is not affected by the barrier that Grey poses to accessing the Astral?

 

[Roman]

Five sorcerer-kings (as opposed to Champions, not all of whom received vortices) are known to have been killed (Kalak, Sielba, Borys, Abalach-Re and Tectuktitlay). Kalid-Ma is another possibility, depending on whether you think that imprisonent in Ravenloft (or in obsidian orbs, if you don't use the Ravenloft connection) is enough to sever a vortex.

Very interesting... have any of these vortices become attached to somebody else? Can they even become attached to somebody else?

As to Kalid-Ma, I did use the Ravenloft connection - I am not even aware of the obsidian orbs you speak of - what are they?

It's also the case that sorcerer-kings cannot access the elemental magics that come through the vortices. No solid explanation is given as to why, but the suggestion is that the sorcerer-kings have become fused with the conduits, and can't access them because they are actually part of them.

Hmm, so with the sorceror king granted templar magic, we have the following sources/types of supernatural power in Dark Sun:

Psionics - the internal power of the person/creature in question but connected to the Atral Plane through temporary Mindscapes

Arcane magic - the power gained from draining life of its energy (can be done quickly and destructively [Defiling] or slowly and non-damagingly [Preserving])

Spirit magic - the power granted by spirits to druids, rangers and possibly other classes

(Para)Elemental magic 1: Clerical Magic - power granted to clerics from the (para)elemental planes in exchange for pacts with (para)elemental entities
(Para)Elemental magic 2: Templar Magic - power from the elemental planes (is it defined which ones - IIRC the spellists are different than for clerics) granted to templars by sorceror kings, through living vortices

Lifeshaping - I know it exists, but what is it, how does it work and what is its source?

Is anything missing? Perhaps something Black/Shadow related?

Also, did Dark Sun have any other sources/types of supernatural power in the past that have now disappeared and if so are there any prospects for their reappearance? Last but not least, are there any hints (or outright information) that there are still other sources/types of supernatural power to be created/discovered/tapped/added in Dark Sun?

 

[Mark Hope]

Mark Hope, thanks - it has been a while, so the refreshment of my memory about the cosmology of Athas is helpful.

BTW: I just downloaded the Terrors of the Dead Lands and noticed that it was released on my birthday - what a great gift!

Coolness . Hope there's some stuff in there that you can use. The cosmology section is intentionally small, as it's more of a book on undead, but the basic details for a DS3e cosmology are there.

Skimming through the section on planes, I discovered that Mindscapes form temporary deminplanes in the Astral Plane that are coterminous with the Astral Plane. So, psionics is not affected by the barrier that Grey poses to accessing the Astral?

Correct. That's a design decision that we took to smooth over the variety of (sometimes contradictory) interpretations on psionics and mindscapes that have appeared throughout the various editions. It's something of a workaround to give mindscapes a place (as they are such a strong part of the DS setting) without treading on the precedence that the Grey is a largely impassable barrier. At the end of the day, though, it can be altered or ditched without any real impact on the game if it doesn't suit your taste or uses.