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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mark Hope" data-source="post: 1956848" data-attributes="member: 27051">Details on rhulisti culture are few and far between.  They do not seem to have lived primitive lives, however, as lifeshaped technology allowed for an extremely advanced civilization.  I think of them more as a race of highly evolved genetic engineers, crafting living devices to fill all manner of technological niches.  A sub-group of rhulisti (the so-called nature benders - Dark Sun is full of giggle-inducing names like that) practiced aberrant lifeshaping techniques and warred with the nature masters, ultimately to their own downfall.  The rhulisti are also known to have been on friendly terms with an athasian species of dolphin, with whom they crafted underwater constructions for mutual benefit.  There is an almost SF angle to the rhulisti, with their biotech and weird social castes and strictures.The principal effects of the changing of the sun were on the climate.  It was the changing of the sun that led to Athas becoming a desert world.  The inference seems to be that as the sun changed, it grew hotter and more bloated, scorching the world beneath.  It should be noted, however, that the sun was not the only influence on Athas' climate.  The enigmatic Brown Tide certainly seems to have caused massive shrinking of the oceans (yeah, where did all that water go?).  The genocidal Cleansing Wars, when the Champions of Rajaat made war on the non-human/non-halfling races, saw widespread use of defiler magic.  This, too, caused widespread environmental catastrophe in a relaively short space of time.  And once he was elevated to the status of the Dragon, Borys' rampages are also held to have caused immense damage to the land and its flora and fauna.  Dragon magic not only defiles plant life and the land - it defiles life energy as well, sucking the essence out of living beings who find themselves too close to the draconic caster.</blockquote>

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