Can anyone shed some light on how they wrote in Tieflings to fit in with Athas? Anything major or did they just say, "These are changed humans." If they have a creative twist like the Dray or the Eladrin I could easily see myself playing a Athasian style Bard who might like to Fire Dance.
Thanks rollaway!
The books don't specify what sort of dark power they bargained with.
One idea (not in the book) is that that they're descendants of the Dragon. The Dragon has small horns, but does have horns. The original art for the Ur Draxans in Valley of Dust and Fire had them all wearing headdresses and hats that could hide horns. Ur Draxa is surrounded by a moat of fire because it's built on an elemental vortex (fire resistance). Its society (although a warrior culture) has the most advanced culture on the planet (+2 int and cha), encourages underhanded tactics (skill bonuses, bloodhunt), glorifies vengeance (there's the racial encounter), and holds to a one-drop policy for noble blood (tiefling blood breeds true).
Perhaps tieflings arose - or arise - similarly. When a SK has a child, there's a chance that the offspring is a tiefling, rather than a human being. Some SKs are rather abundant with their reproduction, possibly producing many such creatures.
If you adopt this idea, perhaps you can change the damage from infernal wrath from fire to necrotic, to suggest that the tiefling's attack is actually an intrinsic defiling ability (and to distinguish them from genasi).
The books don't specify what sort of dark power they bargained with.
And this is definitely what makes them not just typical tieflings. They are so full of delicious potential.
I mean, c'mon, the Blood Debt is awesome.
The books don't specify what sort of dark power they bargained with.
And this is definitely what makes them not just typical tieflings. They are so full of delicious potential.
I mean, c'mon, the Blood Debt is awesome.
Still, I would have liked to see something more to make them different. The way all the races are changed is one of my favorite things about Dark Sun. The Blood Debt is an okay idea, but I would have liked to see something more.
All of these sound like great ideas. The idea of Tieflings as being descendants of DKs but due to their defiled nature they spit out hell-spawn is pretty cool. Residents of Ur Draxa would be an interesting plot-twist as well. The two ideas I thought up dealt with the two lost cities of Kalidnay and Bodach.
-Kalidnay was a city-state that got gobbled up by Ravenloft. Perhaps the Tieflings are descended from a group of humans that had to do the unimaginable to escape from that realm. Having no city to call their own, they form nomadic bands that ravage settlements and caravans leaving no survivors behind. Perhaps offering up their carnage as sacrifice else the mists will come and take them back to a place even worse than Athas.
-Old 2ed history had the city of Bodach destroyed during the cleansing wars (or shortly after them) by one of Rajaat's Champions. In my mind, I always thought of Bodach being related to Carthage in our world where the Roman armies sacked the city and salted or "spoiled" the earth so that no life could grow there. The idea of defiling magic and the fact that the city rests in the middle of a salt plain kinda keeps with that idea.
Many could see Bodach as an example of the SKs being evil and conquering a rival but what if Bodach was an example of the SKs actually doing something GOOD? What if the leaders of Bodach was into some really nasty magic that utilized the Black and tapped into the hidden beings that lurk there? Maybe the SKs banding together and destroying Bodach and all knowledge of it was in fact saving us from an even greater evil arising from that city-state. Athas of today is pretty bad off but it could be worse. The Tieflings are cursed remnants of Bodach that still to this day are forced to honor the dark pledges their ancestors made thousands of years ago.
I will present the DM with all of these possibilities and he can use them or come up with his own. I may not even play a Tiefling but I think they could stand to be a bit more interesting than what they are now.
-Old 2ed history had the city of Bodach destroyed during the cleansing wars (or shortly after them) by one of Rajaat's Champions. In my mind, I always thought of Bodach being related to Carthage in our world where the Roman armies sacked the city and salted or "spoiled" the earth so that no life could grow there. The idea of defiling magic and the fact that the city rests in the middle of a salt plain kinda keeps with that idea.
Many could see Bodach as an example of the SKs being evil and conquering a rival but what if Bodach was an example of the SKs actually doing something GOOD? What if the leaders of Bodach was into some really nasty magic that utilized the Black and tapped into the hidden beings that lurk there? Maybe the SKs banding together and destroying Bodach and all knowledge of it was in fact saving us from an even greater evil arising from that city-state. Athas of today is pretty bad off but it could be worse. The Tieflings are cursed remnants of Bodach that still to this day are forced to honor the dark pledges their ancestors made thousands of years ago.
^This is enough for me to consider reinstating Tieflings in my Dark Sun game.^
- descendants of Kalidnay, after it shifted into the Gray and became one of Athas' own Domain of Dread, and came back to Athas
- Ur Draxa exiles
- descendants of the warriors who fought as part of the Cleansing Wars armies on the sides of the Champions, centuries of close contact with defiling - generation after generation - corrupted their very bodies, and upon the end of the wars they were shunned by all parties, exiled to the wastes
- descendants of Kalidnay, after it shifted into the Gray and became one of Athas' own Domain of Dread, and came back to Athas
I think I'll be using that for Shadar-Kai.
Personally I'd prefer option no. 3. Since dragonborn (drays) are already the creation of one SK, tieflings being the creation of another (the Dragon) would be more of the same. Plus, there is so very little info on tiefling origins that this particular scenario puts their slow corruption so far back that no one but SKs know about it today, and no tiefling does.
Well, sort of. The Dray aren't actual blood descendants of Dregoth (my suggestion is that the Tieflings, as Ur Draxans, are actual descendants of the Dragon), and it'd allow for the "dragonborn and tieflings have a reason to hate each other because of past wars" and "tieflings had an empire" aspects from generic 4e (maybe nothing happening in the Tyr region in general, but a tiefling in New Guistenal or a dray in Ur Draxa would be considered a blasphemy).
No. 3 is still "SK creation," just plural.
Think I'll just stick with the speculated origin of them being twisted desert mutants along the lines of the moive "The Hills Have Eyes" remake. Seems more fitting than giving them fiendish ties.
If you are looking for inspirations on Dark Sun tieflings... check out the term "Daeva" which are demons of the Zoronastrian faith.
Funny thing, Asmodeus is derived from the Hebrew "Ashemedai," which comes from the Avestan "Aeshma Daeva," another name for Ahriman/Angro Mainyu, the devil in Zoroastrianism.
From my understanding, trying to apply Zoroastrianism to 4e's cosmology would reverse the usual alignments and make Athas an optimistic place: Ormazd/Ahura Mazda would have been the creator of the elemental chaos, and the "gods" would have been the servants of Ahriman (who corrupts Ormazd's perfect creation). Humanity (and assumably many of the demi-human races) would be the shattered remains of a primordial named Gayomart.
However, if defiling magic is especially common among tieflings, they would work pretty well as Daevas.
- Under Cosmology there are said to be a race of devils that migrated to the Gray (Shadowfell) before any connection was lost. They could be the group the humans made a bargain with.
- They could have made a deal with a Primordial.
- They could have made a deal with a demon lord as the Abyss is still reachable.
- There could be other creatures in the Gray with which they could have struck a deal.
- A mutation due to extensive defiling by a long dead sorcerer-king. You could change the Fire Resistance and Infernal Wrath's Fire keyword to Necrotic to fit the defiling theme better.
Just for starters.