Thanks!
If reading the Timeline as presented on the Burning Sands of Athas website (athas.org) is true then it appears that the Primordials won that war a while ago (20,000+ years) and that the Primal power source has hold sway for a while... interesting that the world was still a battle between good and evil, just within the context of the Primal power source...
If there were temples then there were gods. They may have been slain/driven off by the primordials but apparently at some ponit they had worshipers.
There are temples to the greek gods on earth - doesn't mean they ever existed.
Not really a good example as gods really do exist in D&D.
Not really a good example as gods really do exist in D&D.
Fantastic example, because an item that shows someone held a belief does not mean that the belief is correct. Nibenay might write, "Dear Diary, I am not a defiler!" but that does not establish that Nibenay is not a defiler. Athas, like any real place, and like almost all imagined places, is a world where people can be wrong about things.
If Athas did ever have gods, I expect that they were like the gods of Eberron - remote and probably unknowable - rather than manifested in flesh like those of Toril, but it's impossible to know. It could be that the world was once populated by many gods in the flesh, but all evidence of them has been lost.
We might even speculate a time before the Blue Age, a time more like standard D&D settings, where gods and primordials warred, and the gods lost. Perhaps a primordial of water was the greatest victory, and she flooded Athas in celebration, seeking to unmake it. Well, the smallest folks around mastered primal magic, beat back the ocean, etc. Joke's on you Olhydra!
Not really a good example as gods really do exist in D&D.
Fantastic example, because an item that shows someone held a belief does not mean that the belief is correct. Nibenay might write, "Dear Diary, I am not a defiler!" but that does not establish that Nibenay is not a defiler. Athas, like any real place, and like almost all imagined places, is a world where people can be wrong about things.
If Athas did ever have gods, I expect that they were like the gods of Eberron - remote and probably unknowable - rather than manifested in flesh like those of Toril, but it's impossible to know. It could be that the world was once populated by many gods in the flesh, but all evidence of them has been lost.
We might even speculate a time before the Blue Age, a time more like standard D&D settings, where gods and primordials warred, and the gods lost. Perhaps a primordial of water was the greatest victory, and she flooded Athas in celebration, seeking to unmake it. Well, the smallest folks around mastered primal magic, beat back the ocean, etc. Joke's on you Olhydra!
Ok but what I am looking for is if there has ever been a hint at which ones were they if there were any.
There are temples to the greek gods on earth - doesn't mean they ever existed.
Not really a good example as gods really do exist in D&D.
Well, some SKs are worshiped as gods in Dark Sun and have temples and aren't actually gods, so...
I imagine animism and worship of primordials and other crazy things of great power have resulted in temples being built also.
But nah, I don't recall any actual gods being specifically mentioned. I'd probably just use PoL gods if I was pressed. They also did that article on Dead Gods a couple days ago.
OLHYDRA WAS RIGHT. All others shall be drowned.
Personally, I go for Athas being separate from the Gygax multiverse. Idon't feel a need to connect it to the other D&D lore, despite Athas being mentioned in Planescape and other materials.
No specifics were ever given, but In The Prism Pentad novels statues to the same bird headed serpent god are found in Under Tyr and Kled. I think we can assume they are not any of the standard D&D pantheon gods. Personally, I go for Athas being separate from the Gygax multiverse. Idon't feel a need to connect it to the other D&D lore, despite Athas being mentioned in Planescape and other materials.
I don't feel a need either, but if I were I'd likely pick my players favorite realm and say this is that realm 30,000 years in the future. The primordials rebelled against the gods like the greek gods did vs the titans, and Athas is actually Mystara or whatever. It kind of works for the desolate settings, when the players realise their characters are in the destoyed future kind of like in planet of the apes(the heston version not the whalberg one)
Ok but what I am looking for is if there has ever been a hint at which ones were they if there were any.
No hints. There was never any information on gods in the original set because the never existed except as ideals that faded with time. In the new version, whatever gods there once were are gone and forgotten after losing the Dawn War. You can insert and use any you wish including the default ones in the PHB as having been there at one time or another.
As for the ancient temples, my impression is that many cults worshipping heavenly, divine and ultimately mythical deities arose and fell throughout the ages. Also there is the rise and fall of demonic cults and the rare and occasional primordial cults.
The only real names and functions of gods to be found are in an excellent net project on the city of Bodach (which comes with a short story), available by clicking this link.
It's up to you what gods were/are part of your darksun games.
No specifics were ever given, but In The Prism Pentad novels statues to the same bird headed serpent god are found in Under Tyr and Kled. I think we can assume they are not any of the standard D&D pantheon gods. Personally, I go for Athas being separate from the Gygax multiverse. Idon't feel a need to connect it to the other D&D lore, despite Athas being mentioned in Planescape and other materials.
Hakkar!!!!
rollawaythestone: you are correct. I was wondering if there was anything ever specifically mentioned. I was just hoping for a glimpse into a different patheon but it appears that they just mentioned stuff but never acutally had anything worked up.
Ahglock: My thoughts exactly. Just take a world, advance it and you have all the dead gods you need.
Dark Sun is post-apocalyptic, so you could use the deities of other settings, or new deities.
P.s 143 and 155 mention yuan-ti temples, so Zehir (perhaps as Set or Yig) wouldn't be out of place.
Khyber is another possibility, perhaps the draconic transformation is a means of becoming an avatar of Khyber? (Add a whole other meaning to "THE Dragon.")
I just love the Lore of worlds. I play in my own homebrew world but I like learning about the various worlds and how they work etc... I got the Dark Sun book for the fluff.
Well if they never existed when why does it mention temples to them that can be found on in the wastes?
If there were temples then there were gods. They may have been slain/driven off by the primordials but apparently at some ponit they had worshipers.
As has been pointed out, in the original Dark Sun 2E lore, there were never gods on Athas. That is to say, there was never any proof of divine influence, as with the real world. Sure, many gods were worshipped, and temples built. However, unlike other DnD worlds, divine power was never granted to followers of deities from said deities.
Just like in the real world. Where there are countless gods. Yet, nary a one has a lick of divine power granted to its followers. Sure, there are claims of such. Not a single piece of evidence beyond circumstantial, anecdotal "evidence". Nothing repeatable, nothing verifiable, nothing.
That lack of actual divine channelling of the power of divinity has yet to dissuade the overwhelming majority, however. Humans anthropomorphize concepts. It is natural to place things within an order that is more easily understood, and attribute human motivations, or a semblance thereof, to natural phenomena. This is how we get so many deities across the world, with some similarities, and differences, all in accordance with the culture in question.
Therefore, it would be more unusual if Athas DIDN'T have gods worshipped by mortals. What really sets it apart is the lack of tangible divine power, that's all.
ETA: As has also been pointed out, there was a bird-headed god, a twisting serpent god, and also a giant lion-headed god with temples dedicated to them. Other than those, and Badna (a multi-armed, classic Hindu-style deity), created by Abalech-Re, no other gods are specifically mentioned. Certainly no classic DnD gods.
I completely understand both the aversion to including them for some DMs and the desire to find older godly precedent in the setting, of course.
It does, depending on how you look at it.
If you look at 2e's view as the ground level view cosmology, and 4e's as a "God's eye view," it works. If you look at the other way around, it doesn't --Actually... the 4e cosmology could just be what people believe, and the 2e could be the truth.
But yeah, as far as I know, there are no real deities in the official version of DS.
I just had a thought. I like tieying together the different campaign settings, as they are just, at least in my campaign, the same place, but affected by time. If we assume that DS is 20,000 or so years after ebberon, again assuming they are the same place, we could assume that the POL and Ebberon deities died out in a second dawn war, if you follow. In POL there are several cults trying to bring the primordials back. What if they succeded and there was a second dawn war that the various divinities lost? Then, as the primordials don't care about the mortals, they just left them to suffer over the thousands of years, slowly using up their resources, and ending up with dark sun. No living gods. Only myths.
But yeah, as far as I know, there are no real deities in the official version of DS.
Oooo. A 2nd Dawn War...
I just had a thought. I like tieying together the different campaign settings, as they are just, at least in my campaign, the same place, but affected by time. If we assume that DS is 20,000 or so years after ebberon, again assuming they are the same place, we could assume that the POL and Ebberon deities died out in a second dawn war, if you follow. In POL there are several cults trying to bring the primordials back. What if they succeded and there was a second dawn war that the various divinities lost? Then, as the primordials don't care about the mortals, they just left them to suffer over the thousands of years, slowly using up their resources, and ending up with dark sun. No living gods. Only myths.
But yeah, as far as I know, there are no real deities in the official version of DS.
Oooo. A 2nd Dawn War...
Well, maybe not a second dawn war. Everything already exists. Dusk war?
I may have to do something like that for a future game.
It does, depending on how you look at it.If you look at 2e's view as the ground level view cosmology, and 4e's as a "God's eye view," it works. If you look at the other way around, it doesn't --Actually... the 4e cosmology could just be what people believe, and the 2e could be the truth.
Yes, the 4e cosmology is written to be broader and more open to DM interpretation, and as such, the 2e cosmology can implemented as "truth" without conflict. The same is true of the history.
Which is why I found Terminus' grognardism to be slightly amusing.
The irony is that the 4e cosmology and history is written so as not to conflict with 2e cosmology and history.
Too bad 4e history wasn't written to not conflict with 4e history. Plenty of conflicting information.
Round 2....FIGHT!
I may have to do something like that for a future game.
Dawn War 2: This Time It's Personal.
Round 2....FIGHT!
I may have to do something like that for a future game.
Dawn War 2: This Time It's Personal.
For some reason when I read that I had a picture of Arnold Schwarzenegger surrounded by a bunch of primordials screaming "Get to the choppa!"
Look, as a DM, do what you will. It's your right under Rule 0 and campaign creativity.
Canon, though. No, absolutely not. No gods ever answered prayers on Athas.
The mechanics of this are debatable (Crystal Spheres, Grey, no Divine links or blah), but the answer remains the same.
No gods were ever present, sent avatars, nor talked to Athasians.
A) Powerful individuals were worshipped as gods (and still are). Some like the sorceror-kings can actually grant power to individuals, reinforcing their subjects' belief in their 'deity'.
B) Societies could always see some primal event (earthquake, storm, seasons) and attribute it to some invisible god or spirit, and have big religions, festivals and cultures based on them. But still, no actual gods.
C) Powerful elemental creatures and entities from the lower planes whom are often counted as gods (eg Grumbar of Earth and the rulers of Baator) could certainly have influenced religions or cults in 2e Athas, but they could channel no divine energy to/from these places, and thus showed little interest in this dust-bowl, scorched world.
So there you have a three-fold explanation for 'temples to forgotten gods' littering the Athasian landscape.
Take your pick if you want to keep it canon.
But feel free to ignore it and make it up as you go along
DM's prerogative ;)
Ack!
Look, as a DM, do what you will. It's your right under Rule 0 and campaign creativity.
Canon, though. No, absolutely not. No gods ever answered prayers on Athas.
The mechanics of this are debatable (Crystal Spheres, Grey, no Divine links or blah), but the answer remains the same.
No gods were ever present, sent avatars, nor talked to Athasians.
...in 2e; the old canon.
So even back in the blue age and the green age there were no gods? I always got the impression that there were god but the abandoned the world when it started dying.
Nope. In the 2e lore, in the Blue Age there were no gods, and the halflings were essentially high-tech, biotech-oriented, no magic, no psionics masters of their world. In the Green Age, elemental magic and psionics appeared, but still no actual deities, and at it's height, the Green Age civilization was one of tremendously advanced psionics akin to Eberron's level of wide magic, with everything from automatons, telekinetic rail systems, water reclaimation, etc, etc, etc.
In 2e there were never gods, because the Grey flat out prevented any divine channelling. Deities has zero reason to come to Athas, for they could get nothing from their followers, nor grant any power to said followers.
Many deities were worshipped, certainly. Many temples were erected, to be sure. But, as with our own world, there was never any actual evidence of divine power and influence.
It has been a LONG time since I have read any of the DS stuff.
Thanks for the info folks.
Now to look up info on the Grey and see what that is all about.
I see settings kind of like a movie. If I wanted to have to make my own story up I would have stayed home or I would just run my homebrew game where I normally run.
I like to read what ideas the people who created the stuff had and how they wanted it to be.
I hope that makes sense.
In 2e, the Gray is the destination of the souls of the dead, and it is literally a barrier between Athas and the other planes of existence. If gods once sat on the other side, they have never been able to reach Athas, nor have Athasians been able to get beyond the Gray and returned to tell about it. It is filled with an ashen haze into which the spirits of the dead (or any living creature that enters it) slowly dissolve into nothingness, with the occasionally exception of nightmarish undead creatures that are basically inimical to all that lives. It is the source of power for necromancers (who did not need to preserve OR defile because they had an alternative source of energy).
If a PC in 2e tried to enter/pass through the Gray, he or she had to roll to avoid getting lost. If the roll failed, they suffered permanent Con stat loss. If they continued to fail and their Con hit 0, they were absorbed forever.
player trying to become the firstGod on Athas
With that thinking maybe Arthas is the world in which Gods are born which is why there are none here. Those that become Immortal move beyond the Gray and into the pahteons beyond.
Putting them in as history as false goods is a pretty cool (to my mind) but having gods as active in today's Athas seems (to me) a little off key.
As I recall astral conduits do not exist so the 'belief energy' for the faithful cannot send power to the gods.
From the outset they cannot form.
Although the new fangled Dawn War malarky rides rough shod over that.
Basically it was due to their actions the stabaility of the outer planes was disrupted and they collapsed into the new set up.
Although the new fangled Dawn War malarky rides rough shod over that.
Except that it really doesn't. The Primordials won the Dawn War and the Gray prevents access to the Astral Sea. The gods don't exist, they haven't existed since before Rajaat even showed up, and there's no mechanism for their worship or the granting of powers, not that it matters since that isn't required in 4e in the first place.
Functionally, the world is identical: the 'shtick' is complete intact. Even the history is unaffected for every Age for which we've ever had content.
I guess I can see that. The primordial victory could very well have caused the creation of the Gray to prevent any future divine activity.
The Dawn War could all have taken place well before the halflings became dominant and the uncommunicative nature of the primordials could well explain the lack of higher powers on Athas.
The lack of the divine could be the very reason for psionics coming to the fore.
So on Earth the Primordials won =)
Taraskir the Lion was a lion-headed beast giant of great intellect and wisdom, king and living god to the people of Giustenal before he fell to Dregoth the Ravager of Giants, who took over the city, hundreds of years before he invented the dray.
The only real names and functions of gods to be found are in an excellent net project on the city of Bodach (which comes with a short story), available by clicking this link.
You know, it's amazing what you'll find that you thought you lost forever. I was the one who wrote that many, many years ago, and when geocities wiped their stuff clean, I thought it was gone forever! Thanks for the link and the memories.
When I wrote that, in my campaign, the gods never existed as formalized conventional deities as such - but that didn't stop powerful beings from masquerading as gods, nor did it stop worship of fictional deities.
Even the history is unaffected for every Age for which we've ever had content.
The 4e DSCS actually places the Dawn War near the end of the Green Age and makes the destruction of the gods the event that birthed arcane magic and allowed Rajaat's rise to power. The 'Dawn' in 'Dawn War' was the dawn of the Red Age, not of Athas itself.
Personally, I dislike that bit of fluff and ignore it in my own version of Dark Sun. But it's technically canon for 4th edition.
Dark Sun Campaign Setting, pag 161, Temple of the Eye ... Gruumsh??
I'm using the elder elemental eye. My version of the temple of elemental evil on athas.
I'm using the elder elemental eye. My version of the temple of elemental evil on athas.
Yeah, I thought of Tharizdun too. The tareks' creator god is obviously meant to be Gruumsh, though.
...
The lack of the divine could be the very reason for psionics coming to the fore.
I think that has been a core concete for Dark Sun since the begining of the orginal version.
The people of ancient Athas worshipped the Holy Trinity: Bob, Robert, and Bubba.
These were the only gods who ever walked upon Athas, and they were known everywhere, to all peoples. Sadly, they were forgotten during the great wars that ravaged the planet, their temples destroyed, their icons defaced, their vast vats of holy beer spilled.
Bob, Robert, and Bubba are utterly quiet today and answer no prayers, not that anyone prays to them. Maybe they died. Maybe they never really existed. Maybe they were just an excuse to get drunk and act like a debauched lecher.
Their only surviving echo can be found in the colloquialisms of modern Athasian youth, who often make the holy sign "BRB" to indicate they will "Be Right Back", ironically unaware of its origins or that this was the same proclamation the last priests of the Holy Trinity uttered before they were purged from the world.
See the Wander's Chronicle, pg. 82 (Addendum B, third printing)