D&D 5E Ungodly Heaths (Dark Sun spiritual successor)

[LuisCarlos17f]

I was thinking about how could be possible the return of DS when this does not fit current standards and how to find the right balance between coherence with the previous lore and the gameplay flexibility.

I have sound a possible solution where the Athasian Tablelands are within a bigger pack. This allows to keep the continuity of the novels (Pentad Prism or the Tribe of One) but also an opened door to can use crunch from other sources.

The "Crimson Sphere" is like a cluster of demiplanes, or parallel wildspaces (whose name is "time spheres"). The first layer could be visited and explored from the material plane or astral sea.

Some "time spheres" are like variants of Jackandor and the domains of "Hollow Word(Mystara)"

Living constructs can be playable species, but there is a little "loophole". There is several plagues of "elemental fungus" and the constructs can be affected. Then the living constructs need to "eat and drink" in the sense they have to consume organic substances as medicine against that "elemental infection".

There are some undeads, but it is not so normal, and more times the souls or dead bodies of sentient beings could become elemental monsters.

The Athasian tablelands included but in a remote section. The king-sorcerers dead in the novels are alive again, but in a different layer, something style "mirror universe" working like an "afterlife".

According certain theories the "Crimson Sphere" is a mixture of quarantine zone, firewall and radioactive cemetery but also like a punishment zone or penicentary colony, working like the wall of the faithless in Forgotten Realms. The souls living in the Crimson Sphere are reincarnation of people who weren't loyal to the deities, or loyal to who lost any titanomachy or pantheon war. Other theory is the crystal spheres are like "backups" in the space-time continium to avoid possible time paradoxes caused by confrotations among different chronomancers' factions (and time dragons' rivality)

Divine magic is possible, but king-sorcerers try to "monopolize". Arcane magic cause defiling or other secondary effects. Some characters can become "ascended" like a lower level of demigod.

Here you are, if you want, you can continue with the classic DS, or this is not touched at allo but you can use the crunch with complete freedom.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

I am thinking about how to creat a spin-off of Dark Sun and now I have got some ideas.

In the Blue Age, before the Brown Tide, some rhulisti, the ancestors of the rhul-thaun, could travel to other places within the same wildspace, and even they could explore and colonize closest wildspaces. Of course the dark point of this is the war between nature-benders and nature-masters continued out of Athas.

They were not the only ones to reach those areas. They were also visited and explored by other sentient species: the fraals, the aleerin(mechalus), sesheyan, t'sa, vrusks.

Later the truth is discovered. They couldn't arrive there thanks their own ways but they were "sent" by the "timeless powers". When they arrived the advanced technology stopped to work in the normal way. It was still possible, but too linked to the psionic powers.

In the "Ungodly Heaths" thanks the warnings and prophecies by the self-proclaimed "oracles of the egregores" planar portals were discovered, and even someones drove to different ages in Athas. Of course some groups tried to avoid the Brown Tide what caused the end of the Blue Age, or the rise of Rajaat and his champions, or the cleasing wars. Teorically they should success.

After several attempts, success and failures the chrononauts started to understand: They didn't traveled to the original Athas, but toward a "Dreamhollow", a "mirror universe" created by the collective memory within the Dream plane. Their efforts weren't really useless, but they could start from zero and create a new timeline where several species could avoid the exctintion.

But these "Dreamhollow" wasn't an utopy at all. These new Athas had got blue oceans, but soon these were the battlefield of new alien factions, the noble tritons and the aboleths.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Other idea is Rajaat is in the Black, but he has been "chosen" by an unknown power to be the ruler and defender of a domain. This would be like a demiplane imitating the Athasian Blue Age, but some times new islands appear, with unwellcome elements from Green Age or from other wildspaces.

A new dark domain like Barovia in Ravenloft setting? Not really, this is not Dark Powers' business but other faction. The true goal of this "New Athas" is working like a cosmic "firewall" and barrier against attempts by Tharizdum, the elder elemental eye, to escape or at least to "taint" other worlds.

Rajaat would be happy get ready for a new genocide "cleasing war" against the no-halflings but he is too used with the menace of the obyriths.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Now I have got a new idea.

A secret cult of time dragonborns traveled to the past to avoid the brown tide and their mission was a success but as if it wasn't. Thanks the warning the rhulisti continued experimenting in isolated laboratories to avoid that type of apocaliptic accidents but the end of the blue age couldn't be avoided, only happened in a different way.

The rhulisti created a new type of transgenic sargasso. This could be used to gather oil or raw material. If it was controlled rightly the ecological impact was minimal. It worked for a time but then the disaster happened.

Due to necrotic energies a group of that transgenic sargasso was tainted, and these could infect slowly the sea life, creating hordes of mutant monsters. It was very hard but not impossible to stop that plague.

Somebody had got the idea to use planar portals and great masses of tainted water were sent to lifeless zones in other planes. The menace ended but also the blue age, and the green age had just started.

Here Raaat's plans and actions were going to be the same, but the cleasing war happened in a different way. The genocide by Rajaat's champions was interrumpted by a planar invasion from the Far Realm (maybe). Then the strategy by Rajaat was different. This only should worry for the survival of the halflings and the invaders would do the dirty work.

Of course Rajaat's champions rebelled when they realised the humans also were terminated by the invaders.

The invasion were stopped and rejected by the new sorcerer-kings and here the ecological damage outside region of Tyr wasn't totally irreversible, but teorically civilitation only survived in the region of Tyr (and the neighbour thri-keen empire).

A secondary effect of the planar invasion is the aparition of planar gates from different places, most of them in the same wildspace. Several times from these portals refugees from different unknown species arrived, but other times there were attempts of planar invasion by other factions, for example the formians.

Then this version of the region of Tyr would be a little like a nightmare version of Sigil.