The Gods are dead or absent. (and perhaps never where) Athas has (traditionally) been cut off from other planes. But in the other 4E settings, there is a desire to incorporate as many core materials as possible - to allow the use of all monsters in all settings, and to allow new source material from Wizards to be useful in any setting.
So what to do about Angels? It should be possible to find a way to use them as Monsters, perhaps without a connection to the gods.
In my setting, what I'll probably do for the gods is to say that in ancient times, divine beings existed, but they could not directly appear on Athas, and their power was only real as long as belief in them was. When so many races and peoples were annihiliated during the Cleansing Wars, the powers of the Gods collapsed, and they became irrelevant - perhaps then they went dormant, or fled to other worlds. It would allow for more adventuring possibilities if something like an Astral Plane exists, but the domains are in ruins or abandoned. An interesting premise might be that the Sorceror Kings have access to one or more old Dominions that they use as a personal sanctuary, retreat, or testing ground for new spells, servants, and monsters. This would allow an exciting venue for Epic PC's to oppose the Sorceror Kings, before they take the fight to him in his own city.
So I can think of two possibilities to use Angels:
Angels once served gods who are now dead or powerless, and today the angels serve other causes, or rally behind one of their own as a warlord, who they refer to as a 'god'. Angels in this sense would be almost like bandits or tribesman. They could be found anywhere, serving any cause.
Another possibility is that Angels are creatures of pure magic - this would mean that there is a ritual out there somewhere that would allow anyone to create angels - based on the caster's level, the success of a religion check, and the cost of the components they're able to put into it. Angels could be anywhere, doing anything, serving druids, the Veiled Alliance, or the Sorceror Kings themselves. A village may defend itself from raiders and monsters by pooling their magical knowledge and conjuring an angel as a defender. But perhaps the creation is temporary, and the ritual must be repeated often, or the angels will dissipate just as their old gods did. So Sorceror Kings still need to rely on human armies for many tasks.
And the Devils...
1.) One possibility is that the Devils are the survivors of the age of the Gods, sustained by the souls of the Damned gained through infernal pacts. There is something like an Astral Sea, and the Sorceror Kings control many old Domains, but the Devils still rule one of them, and they are available to be summoned by those that can pay their price.
2.) Another alternative is that Devils are actually just another type of Earthly Monster, despite their Immortal origin-type. They could be an ancient creation of the Blue Age Life-Benders, an attempt to create the ultimate life-form, free from mortal frailties with great physical powers. They live deep underground, below the Underdark, the Nine Hells deep in the Mantle and Core of the planet. The bowels of the Underdark opens into structures similar to the Nine Hells.
3.)Maybe the best possibility is that both Angels and Devils are creations of magic, from a certain specific ritual. But one powerful angel, Asmodeus, was not content to serve a master and then dissipate, he found the strength of will to rebel against his master, along with other angels. Asmodeus discovered a way to feed from the spirits of dead mortals, and to divert them to himself instead of the Gray when they died. His angels, sustained by mortal souls became twisted and monstrous, growing into an empire unto themselves until they were beseiged in battle, and found a way to transport themselves onto the moon, Guthay. The Surface of Guthay is actually Avernus, with the other hells beneath it. The Devils rarely need to wage war in gret numbers on the surface of Athas, by using pacts and temptation, they can divert mortal spirits to sustain themselves on the Moon. Typically they would only return to the surface for covert missions.
I like the idea of the primordials winning the Dawn War as an explanation for the lack of deities in Dark Sun. If this were the case...
Some angels could have retreated to Athas to avoid extinction thus becoming Devas. However, these devas would be unlike any we have seen. They could be charred and mishappen from their "fall from heaven". They could be half-crazed loners with a grudge or melancholy wanderers seeking to forget their past. There are many cool possibilities if you want them in your game.
Other angels could be vastly changed from their original state. If the primordials won, then it is conceivable that the Elemental Chaos could have absorbed the Astral Sea. In this case the angels could have been warped into some type of quasi-elemental immortal monster.
one quick thought on devils. DS does have an underdark, it just wasn't as well represented as FR's was, but it was there, especially, if I recall correctly, in the video games. That being said, they could do something like how Eberron handles Khyber, the deeper you go the darker, figuratively and literally.
Dark Sun doesn't need angels. I say that in the meaning of the creatures in the MMs with that name, and in the generic meaning of angelic creatures like avangions. They don't fit the feel . . . IMO. :D
You could probably say the same thing about Eberron; another world where the gods are distant, and no one is completely sure they exist. But in the Campaign Guide they contrived a way to insert devils and angels anyway. I believe the devs will do the same with Athas, in the MM2 leadup, they've said they want to eliminate reasons NOT to use monsters, so somehow I suspect they'll want a way to include angels, devils, and demons.
I'm speculating how that might come about, and about a way to preempt the developers for my own Campaign.
You could probably say the same thing about Eberron; another world where the gods are distant, and no one is completely sure they exist. But in the Campaign Guide they contrived a way to insert devils and angels anyway.
Eberron=apples
Dark Sun=trampled desiccated oranges
What you're forgetting is that otherwordly beings have an impact on mortal life: Tieflings and Devas.
With no devils, there are no Tieflings, no one to make pacts with.
With no Angels, there are no Devas, because there would be no spirits to take mortal form.
Franklty, I don't believe they'll create a setting where core races would be excluded; that goes against the whole 4e design philosophy. In the past, Angels might not have been a good fit for Athas; but all the game worlds so far have contrived origins within the context of the setting.
There must be something for the ancestors of the Tieflings to make their pacts with;
There must be some good-intended spirit being to go down to Earth and become Devas.
Otherwise, they'll have to knock out two core races; and I really doubt they'll do that.
I easily see Devas and Tiefling without Devils and Angels in Dark Sun.
I see Deva as Pyreen, a Primal (+2 Wis) & Preserver (+2 Int) race, rare but that help protect Athas and Reincarnate to continue doing that.
For Tiefling, they are Demon-blooded. Rare and long ago dilute in the human population, they come from human mother. On Athas they are consider ''Sons and daughters of the Sorcerer-King'', superstition preventing them from being killed. Half end up working for them and other keep their independence.
What you're forgetting is that otherwordly beings have an impact on mortal life: Tieflings and Devas.
You have no idea what I'm "forgetting".
Franklty, I don't believe they'll create a setting where core races would be excluded; that goes against the whole 4e design philosophy.
Which is exactly what Dark Sun is. It is a setting what excluded core races as the design philosophy, or did you forget something? No gnomes, no half-orcs.
Thank you Eric, the whole point of Dark Sun was to BE DIFFERENT from every other world out there, otherwise you might as well place Athas on the opposite side of the planet from what ever world your playing in. If a setting says item X does not exist here and item Y is unique to here then you should accept that at face value or play in what ever world has item X. The setting is the important part, the rules should be full cross compatible but NEVER the fluff. As of yet I have yet to hear a single person complain about not being able to have an avatar of their preferred deity pop in to Eberron.
If you want random deity encounters and more wizards then you can shake a wand at the play Forgotten Realms, if your looking for a more technological and political world there's Eberron, but if your looking to actually sweat and get dirty you will soon have Dark Sun and all of it's little particularities. Deal with it.
Forget everything you know about 3rd (or 2nd) Edition.
www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/4dnd/g...
What is the release schedule for campaign settings?
A: 2nd Edition released a lot of campaign settings, but which fragmented the player base. In 3rd Edition, we moved from a broad and deep, to a narrow and deep approach to campaign settings. In 4th Edition, we're looking for a broad and shallow approach; we want to give you the setting, but then step back and encourage you to tell your story within that setting.
You could argue that restricting race choices would repeat the pattern of numerous, deep settings by making a lot of core material unavailable in Dark Sun, and thus lots of past and present 4E features would be meaningless for these campaigns.
But having Devas equaling Pyreens may be a good idea.
Forget everything you know about 3rd (or 2nd) Edition.
I shall never forget, I'm of the opinion that Wizards is going in the wrong direction. By making everything the same the players lose out in the diversity that has made D&D the entertainment of choice for me over the last 30 years. Weather you or Wizards agree, some things just don't belong in every world. If I really wanted a blending of all worlds I'd play Rifts (Oh by the way I hate Rifts from the very concept).
People have been discussing devas being pyreens. Personally, I thought Pyreens were way more powerful than your average Athasian. Maybe though, they could have something to do with them a la watered down pyreens in the tradition of teiflings being watered down devils.
Just keep ANY astral creature extremely rare...maybe imprisoned for millenia, lost due to a malfuncitoned portal etc. Demons make perfect sense though due to connections to the Elemental Chaos ;)
Athas *must* be kept cut off from the Astral Plane, or it isn't Athas any more...
Renteria: Usually yes they are more powerful, but as a Deva ''Pyreen'' PC, you're a new reincarnation and we're kill in your previous.
WotC may decide that everything in D&D plus the kitchen sink has a place in 4e Dark Sun. I believe they they explicitly say gnomes and orcs are back, there will be a serious stink.
Doing so essentially epically minimizes, if not eliminates, the tragic history of the genocidal Cleansing wars. Some of the Champions completed their task! If WotC deems to take that away from the background . . . it would be lame.
That said, I'm a major fan of taking anything and reskinning it into a cool twisted version to make a DS version.
Give us devas, but the angelic heritage must be purged from the DS flavor.
Give us tieflings, but its heritage must also be equally purged.
Dark Sun has halflings as the bloody creator race, not dragons, not elves, not demons or other extraplanar beings . . . halflings. Life on Athas are the products of ocean-roaming halfling ingenuity and errors. That's the starting point designers have to work 4e races into. Not everything has to be tied that deep into history, but you can't throw something in to the setting that contradicts how everything else began.
I believe to fit devas or tieflings into DS, the successful design won't reference extraplanar heritage at all but will tie them strictly to a thoroughly Athasian background. Which would be far more interesting anyway!
One idea I had to allow a full span of core racial options and yet keep intact the history of the Cleansing Wars would be to expand upon the premise of the 'New Races'.
In the Prism Pentad, Book 3 we meet Magnus the Windsinger - who claims to be an elf but apparently is really some kind of mutated, reptilian freak. By building on that feature, a variety of racial options can be explored.
The established canon in 2nd edition made it clear that gnomes and orcs for instance, were wiped out entirely during the Cleansing Wars. But there could be an option that allows for some Pristine-Tower life-shaper mutant to recapitulate an apparently extinct race. If a player just loves gnomes, and has to play a gnome, then mechanically he could use everything in the PH2 for the gnome race - but it will be clear he's a strange freak who's alone in the world. He probably won't even know he is a gnome, most common people, with little perspective on history, wouldn't recognize the species.
A DM might also rule that a New Races mutant might only borrow the mechanics of an extinct race, and not any recognizable appearance.
I think it's in keeping with the new design philosophy, from what happened in the Eberron Player's Guide; in 3rd Edition Eberron characters could only have Dragonmarks if they were of the right race, but they decided that was unnecessarily restrictive - now any PC can have any dragonmark, but if you're not the right race, you're just some aberrant weirdo - but you can still have the feat.
I think we should be able to use the game mechanics of any Core race, but preserve the history of Athas by saying that if you just have to play a dead race, well you're really just a New Races freak! Preserving History, and PC options.
WotC may decide that everything in D&D plus the kitchen sink has a place in 4e Dark Sun. I believe they they explicitly say gnomes and orcs are back, there will be a serious stink.
Doing so essentially epically minimizes, if not eliminates, the tragic history of the genocidal Cleansing wars. Some of the Champions completed their task! If WotC deems to take that away from the background . . . it would be lame.
That said, I'm a major fan of taking anything and reskinning it into a cool twisted version to make a DS version.
Give us devas, but the angelic heritage must be purged from the DS flavor.
Give us tieflings, but its heritage must also be equally purged.
Dark Sun has halflings as the bloody creator race, not dragons, not elves, not demons or other extraplanar beings . . . halflings. Life on Athas are the products of ocean-roaming halfling ingenuity and errors. That's the starting point designers have to work 4e races into. Not everything has to be tied that deep into history, but you can't throw something in to the setting that contradicts how everything else began.
I believe to fit devas or tieflings into DS, the successful design won't reference extraplanar heritage at all but will tie them strictly to a thoroughly Athasian background. Which would be far more interesting anyway!
Actually, no, they don't have to use the original history, as the release notes said, they are going back to the 1st boxed set, and ignoring all the books ands things after that point, the Prism Pentad etc are just "Possible" ways things may have went. So the "official" history of Athas doesn't exist any longer, thank goodness.
it can in YOUR campaign if you wish it, but for the many folks who loathe the officxal history and novel metaplot, we don't have to have the Cleansing Wars...Athas and it's odd and missing races is just the way it "is"...for whatever reaosn, we wish it to be, as players and DMs ;)
Athas to me is a different world, no need for things ot be the same, and in my history, there was both a catastrophic "doomsday war", and the sun went nova..almost. Hence many creatures got wiped out, including the gods. Since then, between lingering foul magic and other stuff, the sorceror kings experiments, left over living weapons from the war, etc there are lots of odd beasties. That works for *me* but not for *you*, and that is ok 
Neither of us should have it forced down the other's throats.
I would have enjoyed the books if they hadn't forced a massive change onto a setting I loved, ya know? that's what got a LOT of fans seriously PO'd 
Anyway...
Devas as pyreen or the...Ristulii? (forget the right name, female reincarnated beings) would make sense. But also as "anicent enemies of the sorceror kings", who keep coming back to get revenge ro stop them??
Tieflings do make sense, in that while Astral travel is extremely rare, it's not impossible (see Draegoth), or maybe such travel was common a LONG time ago, and thus, enclaves of tieflings came about, or they may not even be descended from devils at all, just strange creatures nicely adapted for Athas (they have fire resistance, hence they should cope with the heat better?)
On my "Mutation" point, if you think of these points, it makes sense:
- The Dark Sun itself, what strange radiations or effects may it cause? In your campaign it may just be a normal red giant sun, but even that throws out a lot of radiation of normal types that maybe slowly raising the rate of natural mutation over great time spans. Or is the Sun something much more sinister? In my history of Athas it's a Sun that almost went nova due to the illithids trying to put it out and the gods trying to stop that got killed, leaving the foul mess that caused the Grey, and so the Sun itself is "strange". In the official history the Sun has twice been affected by the Dark Lens so what may that have done?
- Athas is *ancient*, truly old. I love the stories of Clark Asthon Smith and Robert E Howard, and others like Leiber, so I imagine Athas as some world that's had civilizations for perhaps millions of years or more. over that time, what mutations may arise? perhaps creatures developed a trait FOR mutation to help survival or by magical meddling?
- Lingering "seeps" of magic and poison, bizarre magical devices etc. Left by the Cleanising Wars, the sorceror king and defilers spells, or from your own homebrew history (I imagine an apocalyptic war of living bio weapons like so-uts, psions in vast numbers, and defiler lead armies), you can imagine areas of terrible poisons and effects thet warp creatures that encounter them. The Pristine Tower is perfect example of this.
- Darwinism gone mad. Athas is dying, it's old, it's got magic and pisonics, so creatures have had time and forces not present on our world, that have shaped them to be terrifyingly perfect survivors. IMHO, the "Alien" from the films would at best be a "normally dangerous critter" on Athas ;)
So the "official" history of Athas doesn't exist any longer, thank goodness.
We don't know that. The first boxed set is more than what we saw in print. Like any setting TSR, WotC, and every publisher of RPGs, they keep a collection of information that is never intended to see print but is meant to guide authors. This information is "official" for all authors though we consumers never get to see it all right away.
Sometimes it is dribbled out over the course of time, some of it is only available through inference.
Regardless of this, the let's not read things that haven't been said from what has been said. This is what James Wyatt did say.
James Wyatt: Our goal with the setting was to cleave as close to the original boxed set as possible while still allowing as many D&D options as we could and making the setting ideal for 4th Edition play. We’re in the process of re-releasing Troy Denning’s excellent Prism Pentad series of novels, and we didn’t want readers to come away from those books and look at the campaign setting and not recognize it as the same world. So we tried to capture the essence of the original Dark Sun boxed set while ensuring that the Prism Pentad novels could be one possible way things turn out.
". . . [W]e didn't want our readers to come away from those books and look at the campaign setting and not recognize it as the same world."
They're trying to "capture the essence of the original" and "cleave as close to the original . . . as possible" doesn't necessarily mean they're expunging what was published after.
I believe we'll see the exact same history that came before the DS2 Age of Heroes, but the DS2 Age of Heroes will be one possibility that comes after, and they might even take some time to fill in some more of the timeline. I don't believe they would toss it out and start over, or toss it out and leave it a blank slate for the DM. There has to be some history and to invent one that wasn't there in the original set, I believe, counts as enough of a change that readers could see it as not the same world as the Prism Pentad.
So Rajaat and the Champions will probably be back as official. It will be a fine balance between Dark Sun already published stuff (fans of both Original and Revised need to be happy) and mechanic of 4E (new 4E races, new 4E classes).
Since no supplement will come after, any DM for their own campaign can change the history of past athas as they want. But they also said that they wont shoehorn the setting with 4E.
I don't think we can assume that all the world's past history will be swept away. The Prism Pentad is one 'possible' way things may turn out, but the Prism Pentad STARTS with Kalak and the other SK in charge, and it was the events of the Cleansing Wars that gave them the opportunity to seize their powers.
I really think the best option is to keep the history of the Cleansing Wars, but PC's won't have to be limited by it. Have to play a Half-Orc,? well that means that your mom was too close to the Pristine Tower, you got mutated and you have all the mechanics of the Half-Orc, but you're alone in the world where real orcs where wiped out 2,000 years ago.
So we tried to capture the essence of the original Dark Sun boxed set while ensuring that the Prism Pentad novels could be one possible way things turn out
I take that as meaning there ISN'T going ot be a set history, "Possible way" things turn out, remember the original set didn't mention any history, it was added only in the novels! ;)
Plus also the designers admitting the error of metaplotting etc.
leaving Atha's history blank apart from say, oh 100 years or so before current time, may be good, that lets you have some history that people could know about as start, but rest is....mysterious. hey, who knows actual history when writing is illegal...? ;)
I'd rather have info on the towns, traders, beasties, etc etc, than a long, hard-set history.