It's Dark Sun

[Andor]

As for the whole feywild debate, I'd like to weight in the opinion of a relative young'un who doesn't have as much history of the setting and past experiences and lore coloring his opinions... You know, just for a fresh perspective.

The Feywild should be extinct. Not non-existant, extinct. Athas once had one, but Defiling magic drained the Feywild first. The Feywild is not only "nature" turned up to 11, but also magic. Arcane engery suffuses the Feywild. If Defiling magic drains energy, then it might be the case that the original users of Defiler magic didn't even necessarily know they were defiling. They just tapped into this apparently limitless source of energy. Little did they know that they were destroying an entire plane of existance. And once the Feywild was siphoned off completely, with not even a dry husk to leave behind (because even a husk has inherent fey energy in the Feywild), the defilers were addicted to the practice and began using the only other source of energy available: Athas.

How's that sound?

That sounds worthy of an XP. Here ya go.

 

[Silverblade The Ench]

Wouldn't that be "To Serve Man"?

IT'S A COOKBOOK!!!
."

hehe glad someone got it

 

[I'm A Banana]

How's that sound?

That sounds pretty much like I'd want it.

And I like how it doesn't rule out an individual DM who maybe has a player who really likes Eladrin saying: "OK. You survived. How?" and it being a really interesting opportunity.

But it doesn't assume that such a thing will happen, which meets my needs nicely.

 

[Novaseaker]

I'm glad you guys liked the idea!

KM: That was my general intent, yeah. The existence of the Feywild in the past leave room for "the last survivor" type background.

It would also let Athas have "fey origin" monsters with no special rules. It's just that while their species might have originated in the Feywild, they now call Athas home because their real home is gone.

This coresponds to something in Dark Sun's past too, doesn't it? There was a genocide against gnomes, right? It might be that the denizens of the Feywild found out who was destroying their world. In the core setting, gnomes are sort of like guerilla freedom-fighters, so in Dark Sun, they might've sent gnome assassins to kill the defilers. Only it didn't work, and as a backlash, the defilers instituted a pogrom of clensing.

That might be getting into territory that's already covered, and contradicting it. But like I said, I'm fairly ignorant of the finer points of Athas's history.

 

[Spatula]

As a DS fan from way back, I'm somewhat excited about this news. If anything could get me to swallow my pride and forsake my grognard attitudes towards 4e, it would be Dark Sun. But reading the various posts here and elsewhere has me concerned about one important detail:

While it's certainly too early to tell, I'm getting the disturbing impression that in order to run a DS game, I'll not only need PHB II (if 2e "clerics" become 4e "shamans") and certainly PHB III (for psionics, and/or if 2e "bards" become 4e "assassins"). My basis for this comes from lots of talk about the 1 character class feature in the forthcoming DS PG. Now, I'm not ready to get up in arms about all this (the book is a year away and we know nothing about it other than its coming and adheres to the original boxed set), but it does worry me for a number of obvious reasons.

Have I missed anything in the discussion that contradicts this?

Well, there's the DDI, where a one time $10 gets you the rules from every book published to date, incorporated into a really cool character builder and a monster builder (plus a year+ worth of Dragon and Dungeon articles).

Otherwise, you just don't use classes or races that you don't have the books for. *shrug* Doesn't strike me as a big deal, really.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

Well, there's the DDI, where a one time $10 gets you the rules from every book published to date, incorporated into a really cool character builder and a monster builder (plus a year+ worth of Dragon and Dungeon articles).

Aren't the character builder and monster builder some of those things that one needs Windows for?

Otherwise, you just don't use classes or races that you don't have the books for. *shrug* Doesn't strike me as a big deal, really.

Not running Dark Sun with psionic classes (PHB3), or shamans (PHB2) as 2e clerics, is pretty a big deal though.

 

[I'm A Banana]

This coresponds to something in Dark Sun's past too, doesn't it? There was a genocide against gnomes, right? It might be that the denizens of the Feywild found out who was destroying their world. In the core setting, gnomes are sort of like guerilla freedom-fighters, so in Dark Sun, they might've sent gnome assassins to kill the defilers. Only it didn't work, and as a backlash, the defilers instituted a pogrom of clensing.

Heh. Keen. That explanation jives with me, though I'm not sure much of an explanation needs to be given beyond the basic: "They died because of Rajaat's Cleansing Wars + the destruction of the Feywild"

PS: HERE is the official story for why gnomes, and a lot of other critters, died out. It's kind of a cool story, and basically why Athas is the heck-hole it is today. It's basically a story about a genocidal maniac who discovered Defiling magic, and thought Humans were the True Race of Destiny (when it was Halflings, which is hilarious). To me, the specifics of which races were actually successfully "cleansed" is kind of irrelevant, beyond the basics. It makes sense that inappropriate races like Eladrin or Gnomes or Pixies would be killed off, but other races were killed off too (lizardfolk, kobolds, whatever); some succeeded, some didin't.

What's important to me was that Rajaat's Champions lead some successful genocidal campaigns against creatures on Athas. That there are multiple successful genocides in Athas's history is a huge change from most fantasy, and a big part of the whole "The Bad Guys Won" feel I get from the setting.

The whole "some major PC races have been the victims of successful genocide" thing is pretty important for the feel of big-time evil, I feel. If just so that the answer to "Why can't I play a gnome?" is "Because they were all murdered hundreds of years ago."

And that also raises the possibility of "Maybe it wasn't as successful as they thought!", which, for a unique PC, is OK, but it would be something I would not want to repeat more than once.

But that's tangential. Your idea is keen, though I don't know if we need (much of) a reason for the death of gnomes beyond "Rajaat was a Very Bad Man who did Very Bad Things."

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

It's basically a story about a genocidal maniac who discovered Defiling magic, and thought Humans were the True Race of Destiny (when it was Halflings, which is hilarious).

No, Rajaat believed that Athas needed to be reset back to the Blue Age when the creator halflings hadn't yet triggered the brown tide. Rajaat just believed that humans could wipe out the other races better than what was left of the halflings could. So Rajaat found powerful humans, taught them defiling in secret, an unleashed them on the world to organize the rest of the humans to cleanse the planet of all other races. He wanted halflings of the Blue Age back in charge of things. But it is odd that Rajaat isn't a halfling.

Tangential point on whether Rajaat "discovered" arcane magic. There is a scene in the Prism Pentad when Sadira and her half sister are atop the Pristine Tower. There is a pool, with what is said to be the remnant of the Blue Age ocean. In the scene, someone began to draw energy to cast a defiling spell, drawing energy out of the pool of Blue Age ocean water, and a swirl of brown began to form.

I asked Troy Denning if this was meant to hint at the brown tide that precipitated the end of Athas' Blue Age. Troy smiled, and said "That sounds like something I'd do, doesn't it." In other words, there was someone/something millennia before Rajaat that used/did something with an arcane power source on an epic scale that caused the brown tide that threatened all Blue Age life. The actual end of the Blue Age, of course, was the creator halflings using the the Pristine Tower to draw upon the power of the blue sun to drain the ocean to stop the brown tide, which ended up changing the sun's color to yellow.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Yeah, you win. My DS knowledge is not very encyclopedic, so I didn't know about the return of the Blue Age. But keener story now than it was before!

 

[Andalusian]

No, Rajaat believed that Athas needed to be reset back to the Blue Age when the creator halflings hadn't yet triggered the brown tide. Rajaat just believed that humans could wipe out the other races better than what was left of the halflings could.

If memory serves correctly, Rajaat used humans to carry out the Cleansing Wars because halflings couldn't become trained as wizards (this being 2E, where many non-human races had class limitations).


Rajaat was born as a hideously malformed pyreen. I believe it was stated (or at least implied) that he blamed his physical appearance on the Rebirth, the event which caused the Blue Age halflings to transform into various different races. So his desire to return Athas to a world populated exclusively by halflings was essentially triggered by his self-loathing at being ugly.