Has anyone ever seen any material regarding Ral and/or Guthay? (Athas's 2 moons)
I'm curious because I've always been interested in maybe doing something where my players somehow get teleported to one of the moons and it turns out they're inhabitable. Is there any official or even unofficial material written for either moon?
I'm in the same boat as you. I've been gleaning information from peripheral places...for example, the Night Runners elf tribe (described in the 2E Elves of Athas book) has clan names based on the phases of the moon. One of those clans is "Lone Moon", which implies that Ral/Guthay have a phase in which only one is visible. Which one? Who knows? But it's good flavor for the game to describe the night as especially dim because it's the lone-moon phase.
There is a cool program out there called "The Merchant's Calendar", and it includes moon phase calculation. But, in general, the easy way is to just decide on any given night how much of each moon you want. They are on different phases, so you can alternate between a truly dark night and a really bright night. I find it a really fun aspect. Also, because they have colors to them the light reflects green or orange-amber depending on which is full. Ghostly green works really well for some encounters.
Don't forget Uncle Tontor in Dragon Kings...
Ha! That story really fell apart with 4E, since 4E gives us the young. Perhaps Uncle Tontor caused that change...
Which is green and which is amber, incidentally?
4e Dark Sun Campaign Setting, p. 17: "Ral, a mottled green in color, is the closer of the two. Sages who have scried Ral report that it is covered in great green seas and mountain-islands of dizzying heights. Guthay, the smaller and more distant moon, is a golden orb mantled in steaming mists beneath which lie scarlet jungles and marshy seas. Stories tell of ancient moon-gates on Athas that lead to both Ral and Guthay, but they function only at unpredictable intervals."
I find the calendar on p. 15 useful, though there are spreadsheets out there for actual calendar calculation (and a timeline of Athas).
Thanks.I wish Obsidian Portal had a calendar feature that could track your in-game calendar. I got excited when I saw their "calendar" tab and was bummed to find out it's just to plan meetup times. So I keep track of the complicated Wind's Reverence type stuff on a wiki now.
Ironically though, my first Dark Sun campaign just ended a few weeks backs, and it used Ral being habitable as part of the ending.
My PC's followed the BBEG through the arcane portal and end up in a place that is extremely verdant beyond anything they could have imagined. Only one problem, BBEG is on his way to activate an Arcane Engine / Eldritch Machine that is capable of destroying Rajaats prison. They had a fight with the locals, I used the Wilden race for lack of anything better. The group finally sees Athas rising over the horizon and figures out where they are (on Ral), then boom BBEG activates what I like to call the "Death Ray Laser" which starts slicing the poo out of the Athasian landscape, and defiling Ral on a massive scale. The PC's reach the platform next to the "Laser" and do battle with the baddies. They manage, through some creative use of attack powers to hurl the BBEG directly into the Arcane beam. They then had to disable the machine before it freed Rajaat, by smashing the controls (oops that didn't work) ...ahem..I mean by prying the power matrix out of the thing while it was running. Needles to say, this wasn't good for the group as a whole. Only two PC's survived the battle and the resulting explosion. Neither of the survivors are arcane characters either. So in true Dark Sun fashion, the PC's saved the world, but have managed to strand themselves on Ral, as they cannot open the arcane portal to go home. LOL
We all thought it a fitting end to the campaign. Had I not had to end the campaign rather suddenly I doubt we would have had the brutal over-the-top, pulp action finish, but it was fun.
The green one, Ræ, is my Lands Within the Winds and the misty marshy moon, Guthæ is my The Gray. Since almost none knows about the relation between the moons and these other planes, it's ok (for me) to call The Gray "gray" not The Gold, once we r talking about "another world of shadows and ghosts" sounds OK...
"Many erudite thinkers believe that the Gray acts
as a barrier between Athas and other realms beyond,
and that long ago, the domains of the gods could be
found in starry seas beyond the Gray." (DSCS)
Guthæ is the Far Moon, thats why we could be able to find the astral planes beyond it.
taht's it.