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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mark Hope" data-source="post: 3326886" data-attributes="member: 27051">It's a matter of some contention in the DS community, further confused by one or two of the novels that directly contradict the game material (and not helped by the fact that these novels are very popular on the whole).  As far as the game material goes, it works as follows:Athas doesn't have the conduits that connect the prime plane to the outer planes, hence it does not have - and never had - deities.  It does, however, have powerful spirits that can grant spells to those who follow them (such as druids and rangers), and powerful elementals on the elemental planes who can grant spells to their followers (such as clerics).As for the sorcerer-kings, they were originally powerful defilers and psions who were granted immortality by the First Sorcerer Rajaat, when he made them into his Champions for the genocidal Cleansing Wars.  Harnessing the energies of the sun through the Pristine Tower (an ancient rhulisti place), this transformation also gave them the power to drain life energy through the use of obsidian orbs.  He also hinted at a level of power beyond this, power that would combine their magic and psionics and elevate them to near godlike status.  It was at this time that Rajaat's use of the Pristine Tower turned Athas' sun from yellow to red.Rajaat was eventually betrayed by his Champions (a rebellion led by a Champion called Borys) and imprisoned in a weird little plane called the Hollow by the power of an artifact called the Dark Lens.  Borys allowed the other surviving Champions to take control of a city-state each (some had died and others had been slain in the rebellion for siding with Rajaat).  Thus the Champions became the sorcerer-kings of their chosen domains.  Borys then used the Dark Lens to transform the sorcerer-kings into Athasian Dragons (advanced beings that meld psionics and magic - the same beings previously hinted at by Rajaat).  In the resulting conflagration of energies, the sorcerer-kings were unwittingly connected to creatures called Living Vortices.  The Living Vortices (which spanned the prime, the ethereal and the elemental planes) created conduits between the sorcerer-kings and the elemental planes, allowing the sorcerer-kings to grant spells to their worshippers.  It is important to note that the sorcerer-kings were pretty much ignorant of how they gained the ability to grant spells - it was more or less an accidental side-effect of their transformations into fledgeling dragons.The sorcerer-kings then used the Dark Lens to transform Borys into a fully-developed dragon, and he took up guardianship of the Hollow, periodically claiming a levy of souls from the other sorcerer-kings in order to reinforce the wards around Rajaat's prison.  As for the Living Vortices, yes, they are now extinct as a species.  However, the adventure Dregoth Ascending reveals that Living Vortices can survive the death of the sorcerer-king to which they were attached.  So, with a number of deceased sorcerer-kings on Athas, there may well be a handful of Living Vortices still in existence.That's the short version, anyhow... <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /></blockquote>

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