Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 Duke5150 Sep 29, 2008 3:18:51	I have a lot of random questions so I will stick with this one thread to save space on the boards and take it one question at a time. In the novel "The darkness before the dawn" the heroes discover psionic crystal that contains a world within it. What are these crystals? How were they made and who made them? How can you free someone trapped inside of one? Also in the novel is a character trapped in a crystal world called Yoncalla. What is he? How was he trapped and how was he released? Its said in the book that there are more crystals, half of them are still alive, so I'm guessing more of those beings like yoncalla exist and are waiting to be freed. But they need a new physical body to enter. So what are they? Yoncalla said he ruled athas (along with his people) before his body gave out, so I would guess that who ever they are, they transfered themselves psionicly to crystals and after awhile could no longer travel to different crystal worlds and got stuck in their own. I'd love to know about them if anyone has any info.
#2 jonplaywu Sep 29, 2008 9:49:01	Its hard to make a true timeline based of the scanty details about the history of Athas, but among the many conflicting stories, there exist references to psionics being so ubiquitous that they resemble more technology than "magic". That being said, I think that instead of creating new bodies for the rich to be immortal in, the ancients instead created psionic holodecks where the spirit of the dead psionic can be free to create a perfect world for themselves. I think the "king of Athas" aspect of the story was BS made up by a megalomaniac suffering from isolationd needing to impress the two main charaters in the story. In my mind, the crystals still exist throughout the Tyr region and I have recently placed one in the hands of teh PC's as a timebomb. I think that they would be artifacts with little or no powers and more akin to a Holochron from Star Wars. I could not figure out how Oronis gained teh knowledge to become an Avangion until I stumbled across the idea of the crysrtals, where the knowledge could be locked away by ancients and such. Hope this helps.