You know, I've read a lot about Dark Sun on Athas.org, as well as anecdotal information on wikipedia, but all this seems to exclude a very important detail:
Namely, who the heck is Rajaat!?
I mean, I know who he is (the inventor of defiling magic, too powerful for the champions to kill so they imprisoned him, a pyreen), but I have no idea who he is, backstory and personality-wise (other than that he was, well, a genocidal maniac).
I know what a pyreen is (a creature created by the ancient halflings to oversee life on Athas), but I don't know what caused Rajaat in particular to go "KILL ALL SAPIENT LIFE (except for halflings, I like those)".
So...
Could someone explain who Rajaat was and what turned him into a homicidal cosmic horror?
Could someone explain who Rajaat was and what turned him into a homicidal cosmic horror?
We don't exactly know.
Some hypothesize that he because he was terribly malformed for a pyreen (renown as a beautiful race) he wanted to undo the world back to the Blue Age before halflings created all known life. He hated he was so born so ugly that he wanted to undo creation.
Wouldn't mind if Rajaat didn't make the cut in 4e anyway.
Personally I hated the history that was added after the original boxed set. I always left the history ambiguious in my campaigns... made for a much better 'feel' when everyone wondered how the world got this way.
Does anyone know if the whole Hafling origin race/Blue Age/Rajaat history was part of the original concept of Dark Sun or was it tacked on as the game line developed?
Wouldn't mind if Rajaat didn't make the cut in 4e anyway.
Personally I hated the history that was added after the original boxed set. I always left the history ambiguious in my campaigns... made for a much better 'feel' when everyone wondered how the world got this way.
Does anyone know if the whole Hafling origin race/Blue Age/Rajaat history was part of the original concept of Dark Sun or was it tacked on as the game line developed?
although I belive the hafling made the preen part is tack on, Rajaat was always part of denning's vision of the setting from my understanding...
(((And I would hate to see all the history complety forgotten...although some rewotking would not bee too bad.)))
Agreement about the Cleansing Wars/Rajaat junk messing up the game. It was poorly executed as a history anyways, often contradictory with itself, and just too much: "Big Bad Dark Lord of Evil want SMASH!" cliche. Which just did not fit the "let's screw with everything about modern medieval fantasy" the original Athas had going (one dragon, sticks-and-clubs wasteland, magic is damning and destructive, look ma no gods!).
Agreement about the Cleansing Wars/Rajaat junk messing up the game. It was poorly executed as a history anyways, often contradictory with itself, and just too much: "Big Bad Dark Lord of Evil want SMASH!" cliche. Which just did not fit the "let's screw with everything about modern medieval fantasy" the original Athas had going (one dragon, sticks-and-clubs wasteland, magic is damning and destructive, look ma no gods!).
again it needs to be streamlined back from day one to not have the contradictions...but the idea it self is darksun to me, and to atleast some others. It is the origin of that dragon, and it is why magic hurst the land. Heck the fact that this world was once lush and green make the current world all the more tragic
Does anyone know if the whole Hafling origin race/Blue Age/Rajaat history was part of the original concept of Dark Sun or was it tacked on as the game line developed?
When I interviewed Troy, he admitted that having halflings be the creator race was in the scope of the design original boxed set. It was not in the original boxed, by design, but would be dripped out over the course of the setting's products.
Halflings be the creator race was one more of those twists on standard D&D that the designers of DS. Never before had halflings been given such an elevated position in a setting's story. Dragons, demons, elves, etc. always get the limelight as among the beings at the founding of the world. Halfings getting that spot, they felt, was perfect.
again it needs to be streamlined back from day one to not have the contradictions...but the idea it self is darksun to me, and to atleast some others. It is the origin of that dragon, and it is why magic hurst the land. Heck the fact that this world was once lush and green make the current world all the more tragic
Definitely the rise of the defilers should remain the reason that the world is a wasteland. But really, that's all that's needed. Just hints of the past: scattered ruins, evidence of old religions and forgotten races.
Related to that, I know it defies balance but defilers should have the edge over all other casters. It defies logic why one would even be a defiler when the path of the preserver give equivalent power. Let them be the great villains they should be!
again it needs to be streamlined back from day one to not have the contradictions...but the idea it self is darksun to me, and to atleast some others. It is the origin of that dragon, and it is why magic hurst the land. Heck the fact that this world was once lush and green make the current world all the more tragic
The contradictions actually don't bother me much, I only mentioned them to be complete (and actually, I felt the contradictions helpful in establishing the "lost/unknown/history-into-legend" feel).
It is the literary merit of everything about Rajaat and the Cleansing Wars that bother me much more, which can't be fixed with a simple fact-facelift: it's just poorly written and conceived, cliche, a trope. And very much anti-DS. (Seriously, if they keep that stuff, they might as well keep space halflings and surfing druids, which, while goofy, are at least more original.)
IMO the Cleansing Wars plotline and the whole immortal super-wizard idea was limiting in an uncreative way ("Oh, look, another Big Bad Dark Lord want SMASH...who can't be killed and is lurking and waiting to strike at the world again from his hiding place/prison...plus a big war") compared to the rest of the setting, which went out of its way to avoid standard fantasy tropes of that very sort.
It is not as though one needs those elements to explain the state of the world, why magic is dangerous, or where the dragon came from, because none of those things are necessarily dependent upon those particular circumstances or individuals. They are only one possible explanation for them. In fact, I doubt that you yourself cannot come up with better or different explanations for one dragon? A once-green world turned to desert? And destructive magic?
Honestly, I would like it left open and mysterious for groups to flesh out for themselves, rather than being tied to one concept, especially a concept I feelt very strongly is cliched and does a disservice to the setting.
But OP, that's your answer: Rajaat is Sauron in a funny hat, if he won the War of the Ring and then his Nazgul trapped him in an extradimensional prison. But not executed nearly that well. Because he's only Sauron if Sauron used to be a club-footed orphan who went mad and decided to destroy the world because everyone felt sorry him and what a genius he was.
I like the Cleansing War, it's kind of a Magical World War II that was win by the ''evil'' side. It's turn so wrong that near all races died in the process and the land also died, so the winner didn't have much to take after the War.
If feel like an apocalypse cause by Greed and Violence. It's start as a mad man who teach powerful defiling magic to greedy followers and these Generals turn to their minions granting them power, maybe proto-templars.
So in the end, the ''Champions'' settle down in the surviving towns of a wasteland, wanting more. Some start searching for Dragon Metamorphosis spells like Nibenay and Kalak and other fighting between themselves, destroying some cities (like Yaramuke and others).
They are not a bunch of evil friends, they are greedy, powerful immortals who don't feel any regret for what they have done and each of them want to rule the others. It is a long term race for who will become the Ruler of the world.
It is the literary merit of everything about Rajaat and the Cleansing Wars that bother me much more, which can't be fixed with a simple fact-facelift: it's just poorly written and conceived, cliche, a trope. And very much anti-DS. (Seriously, if they keep that stuff, they might as well keep space halflings and surfing druids, which, while goofy, are at least more original.)
Well I see the cleansing war as part of the trope breaking (for D&D anyway, maybe not miveis) becuse the PCs can't stop it...the BBEG...that wizard in a hat...isn't the main villian, he iis a boogie man. The war ended long ago, he one, but then was betrayed...show me any D&D setting with something like that?
I'm not fond of the "Rajaat hated how ugly he was so he decided to unmake the world".
There is room there to tack on further details to make it more interesting. If WotC is going to present the history of the Blue Age, Green Age, Cleansing Wars, etc. in the 4e DS campaign book then I hope they add that kind of info.
In fact though, I'd rather hope they don't present that info, just like they did not in the original boxed set.
However, info about the primordials in the Manual of the Planes offers some tools to tack on some more details . . .
"In the end, the deities prevailed. They killed several of the great primordials, imprisoned others, and forbade the rest from ever again walking the world. Chained and raging in divinely crafted prisons, the ancient beings lie hidden within the cosmos."
This can fit just fine as happening before the Blue Age.
"They wait for the hour when they can unleash elemental retaliation upon all of creation."
Certain primordials who were forbidden from returning to the world defied the gods and returned upon Blue Age Athas, unleashing the great unmaking force that was the Brown Tide. Halflings tapped the power of the Pristine Tower and undid the Brown Tide, but caused the end of the Blue Age.
"Every once in a great while, a single primordial erupts into the world, sending chaos roiling in its wake."
During the Green Age, the pyreen Rajaat, deep in studies on the nature of the world and the universe, discovered a prison of a Chaotic Evil primordial (I'll call it Xeoth, the Unmaking Vortex). Rajaat came too close to the cosmic prison, became warped and mistakenly released the primordial. Xeoth didn't kill Rajaat, instead used him as a surrogate to stealthily cause chaos instead of directly acting upon the world. The primordial-puppet-Rajaat taught a group of followers a how to tap into a chaotic power source that would unmake living creatures allowing the user to take the energy and wield it as magic. Unknown to the users of the power, every time someone uses this chaotic power source (arcane), evil primordials gain most of the power while the tiny remainder was used to power the arcane spells. As the followers of the pupper-Rajaat defiled, the imprisoned evil primordials gained in power.
In time, the followers of Rajaat learned the truth of the Rajaat's situation and decided to betray him and return the elemental primordial to a prison. While the followers schemed, the primordials that wandered to cosmos took the opportunity to coordinate with the imprisoned primordials to break out of the bindings. The imprisoned primordials unleash the power granted them by the defiling to create a permanent barrier between the mortals and the gods.
The barrier (the Gray) in place now, the primordials (most were unaligned) would now be allowed to continue the cycle of creation and annihilation. A few unaligned primordials desired to keep the chaotic evil Xeoth, the Unmaking Vortex, away from the world. While researching a way to betray Xeoth/Rajaat, one follower contacted some unaligned primordials. Those primordials offered to teach the method to recreate a prison. The prison would need to be powered by immense amounts of energy, the unaligned primordials would provide a portion of it through each of the followers of Rajaat, who would need to take the energy and repeatedly imbue the prison.
The followers agreed to tie themselves to the elemental primordials, receiving the primordial energy. In time, the followers found ways to keep some of the primoridial energy for their own use and substituting sacrificed living creatures in an epic ritual. As certain followers disappeared (Kalidnay), were killed (Yaramuke), withdrew (Daskinor), etc. the remaining followers had to increase the required living sacrifices to continue imbuing the prison.
Anyway . . . enough rambling. I'm not sure how much more interesting that is. It kind of replaces Rajaat with a kind of Lovecraftian Azathoth. Leaves what we know in place, just as a thin veneer over "the real reason".
Well I see the cleansing war as part of the trope breaking (for D&D anyway, maybe not miveis) becuse the PCs can't stop it...the BBEG...that wizard in a hat...isn't the main villian, he iis a boogie man. The war ended long ago, he one, but then was betrayed...show me any D&D setting with something like that?
Nearly all fantasy settings have a cataclysmic war in the (ancient) past, usually ended by a group of heroes, by internal strife among the villains (ie: evil destroys itself, ala DragonLance), or some deus ex machina.
After all, the PCs can't stop the world-altering Last War in Eberron, either...because it happened in the past. Just having something happen in the past is not "trope-breaking" -- particularly since a "world-changing cataclysmic war in the ancient past" is bog-standard fantasy history. (Heck, 4E is built on the foundational idea of points-of-light and ancient-cataclysm. And, hey...LotR? Morgoth? Numenor and Valinor?)
Throwing in a Dark Lord or Big Bad Who Can Break The World on top of that, as PART of that, who is ultimately defeated just when his victory was within reach?
How is that "trope-breaking"? That is every bad fantasy novel that's ever been written since Tolkien! (Especially when, also, the Big Bad isn't a boogie man since no one even remembers him or the war now...making him the forgotten, lurking evil Big Bad. Oh my. Another one?)
Both are tropes no matter what kind of slap-dash paint job you put over them (the horde of minions are HUMANS instead of ORCS!), or when you set them as events. It ultimately it leads to the let-down of: so the world is the way it is because a walking cliche happened? Just shoot me now.
Athas deserved so much better and something vastly more creative and different for its history than a framework fans of fantasy have seen a thousand plus times.
The Blue Age and halfling lifeshapers? Neat-o!
Hubris bringing about the Green Age and mutant races? Cool.
A cataclysmic war led by an immortal uber-wizard with crazy plans who has hordes of minions and evil lieutenants? This $#!^ again!?
It was a huge let-down given how creative the designers had been with the material presented in the 1st boxed set and how they avoided standard fantasy cliches like that.
Maybe you're a younger person who hasn't read a lot of fantasy or played D&D for 20-plus years, so this is all new stuff to you and so it is interesting. I don't know. But it isn't to me. It's VERY old hat. And there has to be something more inventive that can be done with the setting's history.
Which I why I'm hoping those elements are simply stripped out and we can see what the community will do with it free from the lazy burden of Rajaat and the Cleansing Wars.
Rajaat is an insane godlike being essentially, to make all the other godlike sorcerer-kings tremble. It's really...overly unnecessary. Also, the entire Prism Pentad needs to not exist. The cleansing wars is one way to explain the absence of standard fantasy races...another way would be "It's not a standard fantasy world". Much more elegant and leaves room for an alternate history. Why do you need to have a history to explain that your world isn't like Tolkien? Maybe it just never was like that.
I'm not fond of the "Rajaat hated how ugly he was so he decided to unmake the world".
Anondson, how's your history? Central Europe, early 20th century, gent by the name of Adolph? You know the guy that started the worst genocide of that generation. Being, what he considered, ugly was one part of that transformation from failing artist to a genocidal leader. Make him immortal and have him discover life-sucking magic and you have the recipe for Rajaat. Historically we really know so little about Rajaat or the time in which he lived.
And for the record Rajaat wasn't trying to unmake the world, he was trying to remake the world back into a golden age.
Anondson, how's your history?
*rolls eyes*
Are we back again on the Let's Bring Back Gods Into Athas bandwagon?...since we missed those so much from...well, all the other D&D settings evar.
Phoenix_M, don't Hitler your way in or out of any internet-based argument. Fail every time. For sure.
Are we back again on the Let's Bring Back Gods Into Athas bandwagon?...since we missed those so much from...well, all the other D&D settings evar.
Well, to be sure, trying to work with the existing 4e cosmology does bring us close to having to consider gods. The 4e DS interview with James Wyatt mentioned Shamans venerating primordials. The 4e cosmology (As detailed in the 4e Manuals of the Planes) mentions primordials lost a struggle with the divine gods.
It could be said that in the 4e DS cosmology there have never been any such thing as gods, only leaving primordials since creation and there never was the primordial/gods war in the heavens. Or there needs to be an accounting for why the 4e DS cosmology has primordials all over the place, but no gods, in contrast with expected 4e cosmology.
I think WotC will cover the topic of the differences between the 4e cosmology and the 4e DS variant. It wouldn't be presented in the primary DS Player Guide, for sure, but would show up in the 4e DS Campaign Guide just as the 4e Eberron Campaign Guide touches on the Eberron cosmology. I also think WotC will want to recycle as much as possible from the core cosmology. I just don't trust that WotC will leave the question of whether there were or never were gods unanswered when they do 4e DS. It would be helpful one of the WotC designers could confirm or deny this . . .
Rajaat is more complicated than the stereotypical - 'destroy everyone so that I can rule the world in perfect evil ' villain. In his view, If you read 'Rise and Fall of a Dragon King' - the World does not belong to him; in fact it doesn't belong to any of the races of the Rebirth - That's why they all have to die. It's a twisted form of charitable conservation. Apparently, he really did want to give the whole world back to the halflings - after butchering every other sentient race and defiling the land to starve out the survivors. He's not just some typical evil overlord who wants to rule the world, he's a true believer in a twisted ideology, which makes him all the more dangerous.
Pen, I said Adolph. I never said that "H-word".
Now how did we get on the subject of gods in Dark Sun? I thought we were talking about Rajaat - despite being all powerful on Athas he's not a god.
If you read 'Rise and Fall of a Dragon King' . . .
Thing is, RaFoaDK is controversial in its canon status, even more so than other novels.
Rajaat is more complicated than the stereotypical - 'destroy everyone so that I can rule the world in perfect evil ' villain.
This is true, as is GMfPG's note above about RaFoaDK's canon status being questionable. And the attempt at complexity is a slight saving grace...but slight.
The fact remains he is still just an "evil, immortal, uber-wizard with terrible plans for the world and hordes of minions led by evil lieutenants". The exact details don't matter: we've all seen it in numerous forms again and again, done well or done poorly. It's a staple of fantasy literature with its roots firmly planted in Tolkien.
In fact, the "complex" evil uber-wizard is just a repeat of the classic Dark Lord, Sauron, who did what he did and became what he was based on complex circumstances, including his driving desire to ensure the lives of all the people of Middle-Earth were ordered and perfect...by his almighty hand and vision of course.
Also, Eric, total agreement with the comment above about a godlike being that makes all the other godlike beings tremble being just overly unnecessary...it's silly. Dark Sun jumped the shark with that...like when Stargate jumped the shark with the Ori: "An undefeateable enemy even MORE powerful than your existing super-powerful enemies that can't be defeated!" It just became absolutely freaking goofy.
I mean, those guys couldn't think of new storylines with existing setting elements that didn't involve ramping up the power of the main big bad every season? Really? Oh brother. Hire new writers! Could you imagine if Howard had written the Conan stories like that? Or any classic fantasy or S&S literature involved the writer creating even more stupidly powerful enemies with each iteration, ala Dragonball Z?
I like the Cleansing War, it's kind of a Magical World War II that was win by the ''evil'' side. It's turn so wrong that near all races died in the process and the land also died, so the winner didn't have much to take after the War.
If feel like an apocalypse cause by Greed and Violence. It's start as a mad man who teach powerful defiling magic to greedy followers and these Generals turn to their minions granting them power, maybe proto-templars.
So in the end, the ''Champions'' settle down in the surviving towns of a wasteland, wanting more. Some start searching for Dragon Metamorphosis spells like Nibenay and Kalak and other fighting between themselves, destroying some cities (like Yaramuke and others).
They are not a bunch of evil friends, they are greedy, powerful immortals who don't feel any regret for what they have done and each of them want to rule the others. It is a long term race for who will become the Ruler of the world.
I agree, I like Rajaat and the Blue Age secret history. I don't think the Green Age was Tolkien-esque, it may have been similar with knights running around and 'fake gods", but there were still Life-Shapers and Psionic Artifacts, which would have made the setting different. What I do not like is how so many Sorcerer Kings fell at the end of the Prism Pentad series. I have no issues with Kalak dying, but leave the rest. You need to have something to kill during the epic levels. In a setting like DS, Epic level characters are going to want to kill the SK's and Borys/Dregoth. What else is there after 20th level?
I guess I like a little dynamism in my setting, but taking out too many BBEG's changes too much of the setting. The players should being the ones killing the SK's, not NPCs.
The fact remains he is still just an "evil, immortal, uber-wizard with terrible plans for the world and hordes of minions led by evil lieutenants". The exact details don't matter: we've all seen it in numerous forms again and again, done well or done poorly. It's a staple of fantasy literature with its roots firmly planted in Tolkien.In fact, the "complex" evil uber-wizard is just a repeat of the classic Dark Lord, Sauron, who did what he did and became what he was based on complex circumstances, including his driving desire to ensure the lives of all the people of Middle-Earth were ordered and perfect...by his almighty hand and vision of course.
If the exact details don't matter then every story has been done before. and no I have not been playing for 20 years I started in the 90's...so only 15 almost 16 years. I don't see Sauron in Rajaat at all. I admit it could be written better, but I don't think it needs to be written out. Also if you think it will be you are setting yourself up for disapointment... read what the current Devs said about the prism pentiad...
Also, Eric, total agreement with the comment above about a godlike being that makes all the other godlike beings tremble being just overly unnecessary...it's silly. Dark Sun jumped the shark with that...like when Stargate jumped the shark with the Ori: "An undefeateable enemy even MORE powerful than your existing super-powerful enemies that can't be defeated!" It just became absolutely freaking goofy.
The problem is you are not complaining about the ori...your anolgoy only works if you say apothis is what jumped the shark. You know why, becuse the first story introed Raj...and Troy Denning (you know the creater of the setting) always had him in mind... Now I agree the ori story sucked (for many reason from almost a complete change of cast, to wast of epasode, to 'fake gods' that might as well have been real) but this is diffrent
Besides the point...but I liked the Ori storyline, and the new cast was necessary to keep the show going yet a great choice of actors it turned out.
If the exact details don't matter then every story has been done before.
Do you understand how literary tropes and cliches work and why they are different from just "stories that have been done before"?
In speech or writing, cliches are turns-of-phrase empty of actual meaning because they are lazy speech and have become trite common expressions, losing any merit they might once have had, particularly when utilized in writing because it does not make the reader/listener think or engage with the statement.
"Water under the bridge" is a cliche because it is a common and overused phrase. So your above-quoted objection is the equivalent of trying to argue using the idea that "everything must then be a cliche because most words are commonly used in speech", and failing to recognize the difference between cliched speech and regular speech that uses common words.
Similarly, tropes are simply commonly repeated (even overused) elements of fiction, on their own neither good nor bad (use and presentation counts); but they are tropes regardless of the details involved (Google "TV Tropes" for an overview of tropes, how they work, and how many there are).
Oftentimes, tropes become cliches: overused fictional elements that end up substituting for plot/setting/characterization. Things like evil, immortal, uber-wizards with grandiose plans and minion hordes.
So a story about an "evil, immortal, uber-wizard Dark Lord", no matter the details, is a story about a "evil, immortal, uber-wizard Dark Lord". Just because he's wearing a funny hat (humans instead of orcs! invented magic! etc!) does not make him functionally different from any other evil, immortal, uber-wizard Dark Lord in any literary or creative sense. It is a trope (and almost certainly a cliche at that point).
The problem is that standard fantasy tropes, especially cliched tropes, were things that Dark Sun was ostensibly attempting to get away from. And yet suddenly we have Rajaat.
Don't tell me Mr. Denning could not have made Rajaat far more compelling and utilized far fewer tropes and much more originality in the presentation and history of that character than taking a page from the book of tropes and going the cliche route of: evil, immortal, uber-wizard, horde of minions, evil lieutenants, crazy plans for the world, war-monger/authority is force, but-actually-misguided, eetc. Sauron rip-off.
I admit it could be written better, but I don't think it needs to be written out. Also if you think it will be you are setting yourself up for disapointment... read what the current Devs said about the prism pentiad...
Yes, it very much could and should have been (and should be) written better. Regardless...then I'll be disappointed and continue to rail against it as a terrible and uncreative background for an otherwise highly creative and divergent (from modern fantasy tropes) setting.
The problem is you are not complaining about the ori...your anolgoy only works if you say apothis is what jumped the shark. You know why, becuse the first story introed Raj...and Troy Denning (you know the creater of the setting) always had him in mind...
Can I be snarky and grade your spelling and grammar?
Anyways, that is true, Apophis may well be where SG1 jumped the shark. I don't know that it matters WHERE precisely it did so, as the point itself remains: each successive enemy was presented as more ridiculously powerful than the previous enemy, and the analogy being drawn was about how ramping up the power level of the Big Bad from the power level of the original is unnecessary (usually poor writing).Mr. Denning had him in mind from the start. And..? So? What's your argument there? That does not save it from being a bad story element from the get-go, or from being unnecessary "In this season, an EVEN MORE POWERFUL bad guy is revealed!" writing.
Afterall, If the creator of DBZ reveals all those absolutely stupid jumps in power of each new successive villain was plotted out beforehand, does that invalidate criticism of that element or suddenly make it good plotting because "it was intended"? No.
Which is why I agreed with the above poster's sentiment about throwing in an insanely godlike being that scares the other godlike beings being overly unnecessary.
Do you understand how literary tropes and cliches work and why they are different from just "stories that have been done before"?
I understand just fine, infact I am a regular at TV trope.com, and it is a funny site to waste many hours on, but the problem is that almost no story, setting, or character can't be put on the list somewhere...so where does it end?
So a story about an "evil, immortal, uber-wizard Dark Lord", no matter the details, is a story about a "evil, immortal, uber-wizard Dark Lord". Just because he's wearing a funny hat (humans instead of orcs! invented magic! etc!) does not make him functionally different from any other evil, immortal, uber-wizard Dark Lord in any literary or creative sense. It is a trope (and almost certainly a cliche at that point).The problem is that standard fantasy tropes, especially cliched tropes, were things that Dark Sun was ostensibly attempting to get away from. And yet suddenly we have Rajaat.
are you kidding me? Every D&D game world is full of trope in the broad sense of the word...it is the details that make it diffrent... your 'funny hat' is the character...Yes in broad stroke Rajaat is somewhat like this...in detail he is a unque creation of D&D world destroyers. Name me a setting that in 1991 has a character or backround like Rajaat... now another... how about just 1 more. Now if you have 4 I will admit it is an over used trope, but if you have to go to ebberon to find one I will expect a better explanation...
Don't tell me Mr. Denning could not have made Rajaat far more compelling and utilized far fewer tropes and much more originality in the presentation and history of that character
nowhere did i say it couldn't be improved. Heck if the right creative team came along maybe someday we will see improved versions of shakespear. I do have hopes this new Dev team will add a bit, take a bit away, and clean up the stories now with 18 years of hindesight and make it better.
HOWEVER I don't want to see a whle new origin...I want darksun.
Anyways, that is true, Apophis may well be where SG1 jumped the shark. I don't know that it matters WHERE precisely it did so, as the point itself remains: each successive enemy was presented as more ridiculously powerful than the previous enemy, and the analogy being drawn was about how ramping up the power level of the Big Bad from the power level of the original is unnecessary (usually poor writing).
but we are now talking apples and nukes...Apophis was the first villian of the show, nothing was 'bigger' about him. Heck the SOrcerer Kings and Rajaat are all part of the same thing. It is not a power level boost anymore then saying that going from the vampire lord to the ghoul king to orcus is a jump...on day one in keep of the shadow fell you heard the name Orcus, you always through 6 adventures got lead back to Orcus. When you kill the vampire in the 7th adventure, the ghoul king in the 8th...you don't stop and say "wait nothing should be bigger then the ghoul king this is DBZ crap" becuse day 1 in KoS you knew who the boss was...
Mr. Denning had him in mind from the start. And..? So? What's your argument there? That does not save it from being a bad story element from the get-go, or from being unnecessary "In this season, an EVEN MORE POWERFUL bad guy is revealed!" writing.
do your PCs fight level 1 monsters from game 1- game 155? Do your PCs level up from fighting level 1 monsters only? No of cource not. There is always going to be a set of bad guys at each teir...this is not reality it is not a movie even... You fight monster then mythic beasts...then sovirgn...then destroyer of worlds. You act like this is not emmbeded in D&D from day 1.
Afterall, If the creator of DBZ reveals all those absolutely stupid jumps in power of each new successive villain was plotted out beforehand, does that invalidate criticism of that element or suddenly make it good plotting because "it was intended"? No.
It deppends if it comes out in interview I would be suspect...but if at the half way point of season 1 it is revaled the BBEG is not the highest threat, that there are worse things out there...then the season ends with this guy getting beat, then next season having a bigger threat is no shock...if you know that you are fighting the 217th best warrior in the world along with a some what pwoerful mage...then you know there are bigger things.
The DBZ problem is it is always X is the best of the best...then Y is better...but how if X was the best???
Which is why I agreed with the above poster's sentiment about throwing in an insanely godlike being that scares the other godlike beings being overly unnecessary.
who are the godlike beings being scared?? not the dragon kings, we knew they could die in the orginal adventure... they are powerful but there is something more is NOT NEWS....
I've said my piece. You don't agree, and I don't think you are actually grasping the points I'm making given your responses, but that's fine. (Plus, and I apologize and don't mean this as an insult, but I'm having some serious trouble parsing all your meanings from your grammar.)
I will continue to argue that the whole EIUWiz concept is an overwrought cliche trope, no matter how they paint it up, and that I expect better for Athas from the design team, because I know they're capable of much better, and because I was promised better as a consumer with the first boxed set and their claims about the world. And you are welcome to say differently and believe the EIUWiz isn't a cliche trope and that it is OK in DS.
HOWEVER I don't want to see a whle new origin...I want darksun.
Me too! The original Dark Sun as presented in the first boxed set, not the DS with the silly and unnecessary items and fundamentally setting-altering plots and events they "revealed" later, whether or not they were part of the original setting bible. Because the latter isn't the Athas I fell in love with.
but we are now talking apples and nukes...Apophis was the first villian of the show, nothing was 'bigger' about him
Oh, you're right, I always mix up Apophis and Anubis. Switch that out: I'm talking about Anubis there, the half-Ascended Goa'uld.
but if at the half way point of season 1 it is revaled the BBEG is not the highest threat, that there are worse things out there...
Yes, and that has to be the most terrible writing I've ever seen. And it always is just lazy and unbelievable, or at least I've almost never seen it done well.
But, yes, that's exactly the problem, isn't it? It's fiction-based-on D&D or D&D-style fiction, complete with silly nonsense like "Oh, we don't fight goblins anymore, because they aren't dangerous, now we fight OGRES! And we aren't scared of bears any longer, either." And so on with a geometrically increasing power-level to the protagonists and antagonists. Pleh.
This is why I drifted away from D&D. Antagonists often return and as dangerous, or new ones rise to fill the void left behind, no less powerful, but no more powerful. Something is equally as dangerous now as twenty-years from now, no matter how skilled you are (ie: if things worked in reality like in D&D or CRPGs, firefighters would go from battling matches, to campfires, to house-fires, to the blazing inferno of the sun itself--ie: firefighters don't level-up).
Any opposition can be frightening, dangerous, and life-threatening when well-done--and I like that--so the whole monster-progression-of-power thing in D&D breaks my suspension of disbelief and dilutes my interest. I like games now where I can throw a goblin horde at the players in their first adventure and then later in their five-hundreth, with whatever between them, and have it be as worrisome and dangerous and meaningful as it was the first time around (or where I can play and have such thrown at me).
Anyways, waaaaay off-topic now, eh? 
Besides the point...but I liked the Ori storyline, and the new cast was necessary to keep the show going yet a great choice of actors it turned out.
Continuing tangent: Heh. Yeah, actually, I loved the new actors (though I missed Anderson). Thought they were good choices. But the constant "even more dangerous and powerful!" nonsense was still annoying.
I do think for the Ori storyline to have been effective, it needed a few more seasons to work it all out properly. Unfortunately, that isn't what they were given and it fell rather flat for me with a number of poorly resolved, scattered, or barren storylines that were rushed to conclusion.
Yay TV?
You know, considering that the entire conception of a D&D campaign is pinned to the idea of ever more powerful enemies, I might find your objection sort of amusing.
I understand it, of course. D&D more or less forces it by being a level-based system. But still.
What always bugged me about Rajaat was not so much his existance, or that he's more or less a cliche. It's that everything wrong with the world gets laid at his feet. In 14 thousand years of a Green Age, nobody else messed things up. Nobody researched Necromancy, or opened up a gaping portal into the plane of Magma until he came around. Nobody decided they didn't like the way their neighbor's smelled, or how they failed to cook their food before eating it, until Rajaat.
And all these terrible things the local dictators do today? It's to keep him locked up. ... I mean, I like some aspect of the idea that the SKs are acutally holding everything together, but still.
Having established him, he is now the crutch, the pivot around which everything revolves ... I've never been overly keen on the single BBEG responsible for literally everything that's gone bad in the world.
flip, everytime you answer, it's so wise that i wish that WotC have hired you as a consultant for DS4.
You know, considering that the entire conception of a D&D campaign is pinned to the idea of ever more powerful enemies, I might find your objection sort of amusing.
I understand it, of course. D&D more or less forces it by being a level-based system. But still.
What always bugged me about Rajaat was not so much his existance, or that he's more or less a cliche. It's that everything wrong with the world gets laid at his feet. In 14 thousand years of a Green Age, nobody else messed things up. Nobody researched Necromancy, or opened up a gaping portal into the plane of Magma until he came around. Nobody decided they didn't like the way their neighbor's smelled, or how they failed to cook their food before eating it, until Rajaat.
And all these terrible things the local dictators do today? It's to keep him locked up. ... I mean, I like some aspect of the idea that the SKs are acutally holding everything together, but still.
Having established him, he is now the crutch, the pivot around which everything revolves ... I've never been overly keen on the single BBEG responsible for literally everything that's gone bad in the world.
agree.
i like the cleansing wars, and the dragon and even the idea of a powerful immortal being wanting to restore the world to a previous age due to his own twisted self-loathing. if anything Rajaat wouldn't be solely responsible for all the horrible things that happened during the course of the green age, but he certainly could foment the fires of hatred and war. working from the shadows to sow seeds of hostility and rage. helping other magic-users with their researches and discoveries of defiling and preserving. teaching these to others. i did like the pentad novels, but i will never support nor like "Rise and Fall...". get rid of that one and everything is just peachy with me.
and as far as i know "cliched tropes" are pretty much what comprises the human narrative as a whole. the idea that it has to be completely new and innovative is frankly a delusion and covered in weaksauce.
Really, any reason for Rajaat's decent into genocidal "toolishness" could be contrived. I may even take a cue from books like, "Memiors of an evil step-sister" or "Wicked". What if Rajaat did it for.... *gasp*
LOVE!
This terrific French graphic novel I've read turns its own fantastic universe around at the end when the super-powerful good guy entities are shown to have committed treason and murder of the most heinous kind and for the most petty reasons: they stole the stone of immortality from the brow of the consort of this supreme zen and wise leader guy (named Ssîn), killing his consort and robbing him of his perfect and eternal love, and driving him into righteous vengeance into ravaging the world for millennia in an eternal search for the stone so he can revive the remains of his love...in the mean time the clueless mortal heroes of this tale think the remaining traitors are good guys and the evil sadistic f**k that's killing and torturing so many of these good guys is himself a bad guy.
At the end the world is revealed to have been a lie, all intentions of these supreme beings were reversed, and our big bad was driven by...grief over lost love.
I found many parallels between that graphic novel and the nature of the Athasian secret history, which led me to like both more: the evil sorcerer-kings in fact help protect what remains of the world by keeping Rajaat imprisoned, sacrificing so many of their precious humanity (in the form of the levy) to do so. Evil is not so evil, after all.
Plus Ssîn, the evil bad guy, has his own Champions called chevaliers-tonneres (thunder-knights), of which Hûrl is the greatest:
Flip for President!
So what everybody is saying, is that athasian history might not be complete? That Rajaat (being, what 14 thousand years old?) might be a more complex individual than what is written in the PP's one or two chapters?
I think it's safe to say that the entire history of Athas cannot be summerized in a couple of pages of writing. Rajaat probably plays a central role in the rise and/or fall of Magic on Athas as we know it - but I would hesitate to point all the fingers at Rajaat. It doesn't make sense, and nobody likes it.
Those conniving halflings are probably erasing and rewriting a lot of history - I blame the halflings instead 
Lot of good things here.
I do want a return to the first boxed set but I also want a full setting, in terms of history and conflict, with the designers explaining how they saw it unfolding but also some other ideas that can be used.
I do want to see some twists, such as some SKs (Oba?) wanting to help the world but hiding behind the easy defiling magic. Or keeping the bad guy imprisoned and if he is released, well hopefully the party is epic level already!
Personally, I think Rajaat is doing what he did because a former friend of his interupted his experiment, even though he thought he was helping, and in doing so, Rajaat lost his hair. Now, *that's* a motivation for a true villain!
What I also want is ideas on how to make it a post apocalyptic setting. Maybe the age before had technology? (Called tinkercraft in a novel.) Here are rules for it. Maybe the age was destroyed by technology that created magic but defiling is still easier. Here are rules for that. Make it a sandbox setting with lots of options and the DM and players pick what they want. Want to use the 4E cosmology? Here are rules for that.
Regardless, I am happy to have new Dark Sun stuff! Yay! I'm already a winner!
turlough
I actually like the concept of Rajaat. I feel that there is a lot left undocumented about his history and his motivations outside of what has been depicted in the pages of the Prism Pentad.
I agree with Flip in that everything wrong on Athas shouldn't be centered around or attributed him. There were surely other worldly threats beyond just Rajaat. There very well could have, but that information could have been lost through the centuries and unknown to the average Athasian.
The red devil is back!
The red devil is back!
I am for the time being ;)
So what everybody is saying, is that athasian history might not be complete? That Rajaat (being, what 14 thousand years old?) might be a more complex individual than what is written in the PP's one or two chapters?
It is interesting to note that Rajaat is never mentioned in Dark Sun game material prior to the 1993 release of City-State of Tyr (DSS1) and hardly at all in Dark Sun products from 1993 to the advent of the revised setting in the Fall of 1995. This indicates, of course that Rajaat wasn't introduced into the game material until at least the release of The Obsidian Oracle and then The Cerulean Storm, both in 1993. Most of the pre-revised setting information that can be had about him comes from the Prism Pentad of course, and we should consider whether the sorcerer-kings' description of their erstwhile leader should be considered trustworthy. When describing him to Rikus and Sadira, the sorcerer-kings certainly paint Rajaat in broad strokes--cliche, even; nevertheless, it is to these narrative, conversational descriptions that subsequent authors and designers have have clung most fiercely. It's certainly worth entertaining the possibilty that the Prism Pentad descriptions of Rajaat (and his earlier career especially) represent Denning's character's opinions, or perhaps the story as it was told to them in ages and ages past, not necessarily inalterable canon for the setting. I think I agree with others here when I say I would very much like to see Rajaat's motivations developed further as well. As someone pointed out above, indeed, one of Dark Sun's own "tropes" is that it twists or otherwise turns on its ear many of D&D's standard tropes intentionally. I think the one dimensional, rather transparent evil-sorcerer-as-adversary is certainly a D&D trope, whether we care to admit it or not.
Of course, circumstances changed considerable in the revised setting era. It is only then, that Rajaat is revealed as having always been a pyreen, and that more details are added as regards his motivations and machinations during the Cleansing Wars. I would argue that, in many ways, these are outgrowths of undertaking the sorcerer-king's descriptions of Rajaat as canon (minus the pyreen bit, which, near as I can tell, is a whole-cloth invention of Mr. Slavicsek's). I would be fine with future designers and novelists taking the time to re-examine and redevelop his career in the established setting, considering that perhaps there could be something more tragic, depraved, or even perhaps in some perspective noble to be found in such a character as Rajaat.
Kris
Really, any reason for Rajaat's decent into genocidal "toolishness" could be contrived. I may even take a cue from books like, "Memiors of an evil step-sister" or "Wicked". What if Rajaat did it for.... *gasp*
LOVE!
Well, the thing is, Rajaat's pretty ugly, you know how the old song goes, "I'd do anything for love, but I won't do Rajaat."
Wait, I'm probably misquoting that.
flip, everytime you answer, it's so wise that i wish that WotC have hired you as a consultant for DS4.
Seconded!
I actually wish there was a little more community involvement at WotC.
I've been a fan of many game settings and the death knell is usually when the authors (or publishers) made decisions that put them at odds with their fan base.
I know all fans are impossible to please but considering how excited people are a decade and a half later I'd bet us Dark Sun fans are pretty focused.
It just seems like these books are announced a year ahead, giving everyone time to talk, but they're already written by that time. It becomes to late to get the pulse of the community.
I'm not TO worried though. I've got the upmonst faith in James Wyatt, Bill Slavicsek and Rich Baker being involved based on their past work.
You know, considering that the entire conception of a D&D campaign is pinned to the idea of ever more powerful enemies, I might find your objection sort of amusing.I understand it, of course. D&D more or less forces it by being a level-based system. But still.
I know, I know. I'm amused by it, too, even having said it, given that we're discussing a D&D setting. That's why the increasingly silly power levels wasn't my first or central objection (and heck, that was all just trying to support why I thought someone else's objection up-thread about "and now the godlike evil sorcerers are suddenly all scared of an uber-godlike sorcerer!" was a defensible criticism), the vast-and-underwhelming cliche is my main objection.
What always bugged me about Rajaat was not so much his existance, or that he's more or less a cliche. It's that everything wrong with the world gets laid at his feet. In 14 thousand years of a Green Age, nobody else messed things up. Nobody researched Necromancy, or opened up a gaping portal into the plane of Magma until he came around. Nobody decided they didn't like the way their neighbor's smelled, or how they failed to cook their food before eating it, until Rajaat.
LOL. Yes! The Dragon is Rajaat's fault. The SK's are Rajaat's fault. The environment is Rajaat's fault. All the races dying are Rajaat's fault. Too many central and important things in the setting are all because of Rajaat, directly and irrevocably (which, you realize, is typical of bad BBEG fantasy cliches, right?).
It's like a bad Hitler joke: "Why do white guys hate blacks guys? Hitler! Why are oil company executives more interested in profits than the environment? Hitler! Who killed the last dodo? Hitler! Why is stealing candy from babies easy? Hitler!"
I think it would honestly work better if there was a big, stupid war in pre-history began by (not guided by, not finished by) the First Sorcerer, which destroyed the environment. And other things follow from that, either directly or indirectly -- but not directly because of the First Sorcerer as everything is now.
Also, quick correction: I noticed a couple folks who think everything we know about the First Sorcerer is based on just a couple pages in the PP. Not so. There's a number of 2nd Ed DS products that talk about Rajaat and give a larger overview of his history and effect on Athas (frex, I believe WotJC has a significant section).
quote] LOL. Yes! The Dragon is Rajaat's fault. The SK's are Rajaat's fault. The environment is Rajaat's fault. All the races dying are Rajaat's fault. Too many central and important things in the setting are all because of Rajaat, directly and irrevocably (which, you realize, is typical of bad BBEG fantasy cliches, right?).
It's like a bad Hitler joke: "
Real-world tyrants are always limited in the damage they can do, and how much effect they can have on the world, in large part because life is short. (In the real world) How might Alexander the Great have shaped the world if he could live for thousands of years? How many people could Adolph Hitler have sent to the death camps if he'd started hating Jews since the time of Christ? How many villages would have been ravaged by Genghis Kahn if he'd had fourteen milennia to raid and pillage?
A powerful immortal could not only change the world through his direct actions, but he could set other plans in motion indirectly and guide them over the centuries to grow to fruition over time.
A powerful immortal could not only change the world through his direct actions, but he could set other plans in motion indirectly and guide them over the centuries to grow to fruition over time.
I don't really see your point in stating that, given I think that's rather terribly obvious. Nor do I see how it, in any way, invalidates Flip's criticism about the way everything on Athas is directly the fault of or tied to Rajaat.
In fact, I can see it being a running Athasian joke whenever someone asks whose fault something is, they say, "Rajaat did it!"
Kalak rages, "Why is my pyramid not finished!? WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS DELAY!?"
His Most High Supreme Templar of Public Works trembles and answers, "Rajaat is, my lord!"
In Urik, the Lion King is eating his breakfast and finds the slaves have failed to bring him syrup for his pancakes. He summons them to his table and roars, "Neither man nor god can eat pancakes without syrup! Which of you fools has forgotten it?" And one brave slave whimpers, "Rajaat did, oh Maker of the Laws and Bringer of Justice!"
And some peasant out in the middle of nowhere whose kank herd has escaped their pen cries out to his family, "Which of you forgot to lock the gate to the pen? Which of you let the kanks escape? Whose fault is it that we will now starve to death, and which of you should I sell into slavery to feed us?" And his boy speaks up and says, "Rajaat!"
Meanwhile, Rajaat cackles insanely in the Hollow, knowing his wicked plans to delay the pyramid, deny a god his syrup, and let a bunch of kanks out of a pen have come to fruition. Then moves on gloat about his TERRIFYING plans to cause a low level functionary in Raam to lose his tax return forms and cause days worth of headaches, give some bad gas to the high chief of a minor halfling village one morning, make an ant expire from heatstroke, and cause a potter to stub his toe so bad it hurts for five entire seconds! MWUHAHAHAHAHA!
(The more I think about it, the more it seems like Rajaat is a twisted Athasian version of Elminster! hehehe)
Rajaat's last name is Murphy? I didn't know.
I'll shut-up now...
:applaude:
I think Rajaat being at fault for everything except the Brown Tide just illustrates what kind of power a group of epic level characters can do. Imagine if Rajaat, Borys, Kalak, et. al. were a group of PC's in their epic levels. You bet they would leave their mark on such a small area as the Tyr Region.
I think it's a matter of perspective, you are looking at it after all they had done, and pointing fingers at Rajaat as the origin of all thinks bad in the region. Now look at it from the other way, you have a group of 10+ epic level evil entiites in a isolated part of Athas, how would they NOT be the focus of all things that have gone wrong?
There is no one to oppose them, so they can do whatever they want. I would imagine that if ever anyone good or evil ever approached their level of power they would kill them before they became a threat.
Rajaat is the most powerful being in Dark Sun, but that ain't a bad thing.
I think he has lots of potential epic company in 4e: Elemental Evils, Socerer Kings, Mind Lords, Primordials, Demons, The Order, Thor-kreen Emperors, etc.
Throw them all at the PCs!
A powerful immortal could not only change the world through his direct actions, but he could set other plans in motion indirectly and guide them over the centuries to grow to fruition over time.
I don't really see your point in stating that, given I think that's rather terribly obvious. Nor do I see how it, in any way, invalidates Flip's criticism about the way everything on Athas is directly the fault of or tied to Rajaat.
My point in saying that is also terribly obvious: A deranged mastermind with the level of power attributed to Rajaat, who is able to live for fourteen milennia would be capable of accomplishing almost anything if he was active for that long.
i'm partially in agreeance here...a powerful immortal and super-powered sorcerers of an epic level would certainly have A LOT to do with the goings on of an entire region as well as a large era of time. i don't think anyone here is saying Rajaat plots the ills of all the world like kanks escaping and people in Raam losing their taxes...that's just a tad overexaggerated.
if anything Rajaat was the harbinger of the end of the Green Age...just as the brown tide was the harbinger of the end of the blue age...and the sorcerer kings are the spokes models for the age of sorcerer kings. he's obviously NOT responsible for what preceeded him and only marginally connected to what succeeded him (he did create many of the sorcerer kings so there's that guilt by association, but it was Borys who used the lens to become a 30th level dragon and changed the sun IIRC). at the end of the day each era in athas' history had it's baddies. not all of them were or are Rajaat.
in the timeline of the the original boxed set and even the revised setting Rajaat is sort of a lurking presence with very little influence outside of his prison besides just the fear of his release for those who know if his existence, i.e. - the sorcerer kings. so if anything he's the boogey man that the bad men fear. a PC or commoner has no clue about Rajaat. so he's really not the overall BBEG...just a lurking menace to those who know.
I think Rajaat being at fault for everything except the Brown Tide just illustrates what kind of power a group of epic level characters can do. Imagine if Rajaat, Borys, Kalak, et. al. were a group of PC's in their epic levels. You bet they would leave their mark on such a small area as the Tyr Region.
I
This is a great point. Events that have occured in the Tyr region are often mistaken as having global impact. So much of this world is left undiscovered. So, if you're narrowing it down to what could be a small region in comparison... then, it is entirely believable that this group of individuals could have a profound impact locally.
Penn, never said it wasn't. Just said he's a genre cliche (historical or not), Mindwrek pointed out he's that silly "even more powerful bad guy!" character, and Flip noted how all the important historical events/state of the world are laid directly at his feet (so I made a joke out of the "great immortal plans!" argument with just a tad of overstatement*ahem*).
But really, I can't stand him, at all. I think he's a terrible character, the equivalent of surfing druids and halflings in spaceships (worse, actually, because I'm almost OK with either of those). As a setting pet, he's as bad as Rikus and Sadira and the rest: "I invented magic. I made the Sorcerer Kings. I caused mass racial genocide. I destroyed the world. I'm the reason the Dragon is a scourge. Etc."
I think a much more thematically powerful story could be achieved by sifting out some of the blame for the state of the world to multiple, unconnected individuals, rather than someone who has been built into Athas' version of Satan. Especially given one of the big themes of DarkSun has been environmental (ir)responsibility.
Laying it all at the feet of a single individual as the one overarchingly responsible removes the power of the idea that it doesn't require a concerted effort by one bad man, just a lot of careless or uncaring, unconnected individuals doing their thing by themselves to make things worse for everyone.
That sort of background idea makes the world much more bleak and disturbing, because you can't just fight the Big Bad and stop it. It makes it much more difficult to be a hero when the problem isn't one you can lay at just anyone's feet. In fact, Rajaat presented as a scapegoat, rather than an actual Big Bad, would be a much stronger device.
Instead, as it stands, we're given the rather simplistic and political notion that the world's problems are all part of or because of a Master Plan of Evil.
My point in saying that is also terribly obvious: A deranged mastermind with the level of power attributed to Rajaat, who is able to live for fourteen milennia would be capable of accomplishing almost anything if he was active for that long.
Er, that's not your "point", that's a repeatition of your claim. It doesn't explain WHY you considered it a response to Flip's argument about the entire history and state of Athas being about Rajaat, as though no one else did anything at all for fourteen-thousand years without either Rajaat's command or express approval?
Yes, I agree that a powerful immortal being would be able to accomplish nearly anything they desired in that time, hence my reply about it being obvious. There's nothing to argue with in that idea. But in the context of Flip's statement, your statement seems to imply the argument "and therefore everything is his fault", which is a situation I find completely unbelievable, no matter how powerful Rajaat is.
History is always MUCH more interesting when you have multiple (unconnected) powerful figures interacting and tripping over one another's plans, desires, plots, strategies, and so forth. Not even via direct planned conflicts with or in direct support of one another, but as pure accidents--as collisions of circumstance. Which is also the way real history works.
Rmm. But I like him anyway! ;) And yes, he sucks.
People...go figure.
you do make good points rev.
the apathy of the masses and of larger and more powerful entities being part of the reasons the world is barren is very in line with the themes of the setting, and moreover rather apropos to our modern day world, no?
i do like Rajaat, but i'm in agreeance that his role needs to be tweaked a bit and a few more interesting elements be added. however, i'm not quite as willing to say he's as all-encompassing of a problem to the setting itself or that he's the sole problem of the setting as it was written originally.
It doesn't explain WHY you considered it a response to Flip's argument about the entire history and state of Athas being about Rajaat, as though no one else did anything at all for fourteen-thousand years without either Rajaat's command or express approval?
The boxed set does say that the Green Age was violent, cities went to war and conquered each other often, but no one but Rajaat mastered the Pristine Tower, created Defiler magic, used it to make sorceror kings and the Dragon. He wasn't the only 'bad guy', but he was responsible for the Cleansing Wars and Defiler magic that scorched Athas. He could do it because he was an ingenious immortal with thousands of years to plan and plot and experiment. Not the only bad guy I'm sure, but his scheme just did the most damage. Granted, real history doesn't follow a pattern like that, because no matter how evil, we're all just mere mortals. But this is fantasy. Sorry it bothers you so much.
I personally think Athas is awesome.
That's all very true, Penn, and everyone has made good points, whether or not any of us agree with them wholesale or not...but you also know I like to argue!
Anyways, yeah, I think everyone has said almost everything that can be said for why they like or don't or sorta. So let's argue about something original now...like a thread about defiling mechanics, Athasian paladins, or a new gladiator class! 
Sorry it bothers you so much.
Bad or lazy writing always bothers me.
Bad writing excused with "but it's fantasy!" also bothers me. The very existance of dragons defying the laws of physics is fantasy, but so is The Eye of Argon...yet only one of those bothers me.
Anyways, I believe that is the third time you have repeated your argument and points -- which (as mentioned) I agree with and that no one is disputing -- yet somehow keep missing what the criticism actually is and why your argument isn't a counter of it. So I don't think it is worth another round for either of us.
I personally think Athas is awesome.
Ah, yes, and clearly I don't because I think Rajaat is a stinky plot device that makes Athas less awesome? Touche, sir!
Penn, flip, everyone, after my involvement in the DS community for over a decade, someone has finally unmasked me, revealing me for the Athas hater I am and my true purpose here to destroy DarkSun from the inside! I shall now slink back into the shadows, DEFEATED!
Curse you, DemonwastesMarauder! Currrrrrssssseeee yoooouuuuuuu!!!!!...
Lolz, you go cowboy!
Ok, so people don't want aall problems laid at his feet...but they are not. He was the worst threat to the green age, and he and the champions ended it with the wars and defiling. However he got beat (Locked away). The sorcerer kings KEPT defeeiling , and so did others.
Killing, Rajaat does not 'fix' the setting. Infact it bearly helps at all. In reality (well in the game) it would make the Dragon Kings worse becuse they no longer fear hm.
And becuse everyone ignored this last time..."How is he overdone in D&D RPGs? What 2e settings have anything like Rajaat or the champions or the cleansing wars" (((To cut this off ahead of time, no it happens in books, movies, or other fantasy does not count, becuse that is what D&D gets its ideas from...and 3e or 4e only settings don't count, only things BEFORE rajaat)))
And becuse everyone ignored this last time..."How is he overdone in D&D RPGs? What 2e settings have anything like Rajaat or the champions or the cleansing wars"
Anything like? I think you are being too clever by half by excluding every setting that exists except for that small subset of AD&D 2nd edition settings. That said, since you asked . . . from memory.
Like Rajaat: Azrai (Birthright), Iuz or Tharizdun or even Overking Ivid V (Greyhawk), Master of the Desert Nomads (Mystara), The Emperor (Dragonfist)
Like the Champions: awnsheghlien (Birthright), Iuz's Greater Boneheart or Ivid's Animus (Greyhawk), Dark Lords (Ravenloft), eunuch sorcerers (Dragonfist)
Like the Cleansing Wars: The war leading up to Deismar (Birthright), Twin Cataclysms or the Greyhawk Wars (Greyhawk), anytime the Flaems and Alphatians know about each other, Glantri's purging of dwarves or clerics, (Mystara).
Like Rajaat: Azrai (Birthright), Iuz or Tharizdun or even Overking Ivid V (Greyhawk), Master of the Desert Nomads (Mystara), The Emperor (Dragonfist)
Like the Champions: awnsheghlien (Birthright), Iuz's Greater Boneheart or Ivid's Animus (Greyhawk), Dark Lords (Ravenloft), eunuch sorcerers (Dragonfist)
Like the Cleansing Wars: The war leading up to Deismar (Birthright), Twin Cataclysms or the Greyhawk Wars (Greyhawk), anytime the Flaems and Alphatians know about each other, Glantri's purging of dwarves or clerics, (Mystara).
Every setting has BBEG's, I don't think that's the important setting difference. The difference in DS is that the BBEGs won! The setting begins with no hope, just survival. The BBEGs have the known world under their control. That is what makes the Sorcerer Kings and by extension, Rajaat, different, they won.
Some here are looking at Rajaat and thinking, "The setting has another Arcane caster who is the BBEG, just like every other setting... boring!",while others look and see the differences, listed in previous posts.
All of the above quote settings have BBEGs bent on world domination/destruction, but that's what BBEG's do. When they get to the Epic levels what is left for them to do? It's the final part of their career path. If they don't want to to destroy the entire Tri-State area*, then they aren't a BBEG.
If your response is, "Why does DS even need an epic level BBEG?" Then what would PC Advanced Beings do? You need to have something for the 30th level PC's to do, otherwise your Dark Sun campaign may as well end at 10th level.
* Thanks Doofenshmirtz Evil Incorporated
Except they didn't "win". Rajaat ended up locked inside the Hollow by a band of champions, and the Cleansing Wars ground to a halt while the SKs retreated and created their various city-strongholds.
But the "immortal (check), evil (check), wizard (check) with vast armies of minions (check) and evil lieutenants (check), who commits terrible atrocities (check) and has a malign effect upon nature/the land (check), was defeated (check) and locked beyond space and time (check), but was responsible for a world-changing cataclysm (check) in the distant past (check)" is bog-standard for the genre. There's tons of stuff "anything like" that; heck there's stuff somewhat like that, because it actually avoids hitting every single note of the trope.
Though you are correct that the setting itself now -- with a half-dozen powerful, evil sorcerers trying to "protect" their populaces and not making vast power-grabs against one another or attempting to rule the world -- isn't a cliche at all. Then again, no one said it was.
An interesting way to really twist the trope in a unique direction might have been if Rajaat, rather than spreading dust and ash everywhere he went, spread water and storms, flooding the world in his mad attempt to return the Blue Age.
Then, when he was locked away, all of that was locked away with him, because he had tied himself to the water, to the elemental nature of it. Making one possible moral quandary for any players in the current setting: restoring the world's oceans and rains and bringing about global genocide, or letting the world continue to die in order to retain the life and freedom of all that which yet lives.
Seriously, what would you do?
Crazed Ocean cultist: "The oceans will return if we set free the Rajaat!"
Mighty templar of Hammanu: "Yeah, and he'll drown every last one of us!"
~fight with knives~
An interesting way to really twist the trope in a unique direction might have been if Rajaat, rather than spreading dust and ash everywhere he went, spread water and storms, flooding the world in his mad attempt to return the Blue Age.
Then, when he was locked away, all of that was locked away with him, because he had tied himself to the water, to the elemental nature of it. Making one possible moral quandary for any players in the current setting: restoring the world's oceans and rains and bringing about global genocide, or letting the world continue to die in order to retain the life and freedom of all that which yet lives.
Seriously, what would you do?
Crazed Ocean cultist: "The oceans will return if we set free the Rajaat!"
Mighty templar of Hammanu: "Yeah, and he'll drown every last one of us!"
~fight with knives~
That's the problem with bemoaning overused tropes, anything else you come up with is just another trope. Yes, you added a twist, but that's what DS is, a trope with a twist. Rajaat's reason for wanting to kill all the other races is a pulp theme, the evil scientist who wants to kill humanity to return the world to a simpler time. The twist is that he wants to give the world to Halflings. From a metagame point of view, Halflings being a race of importance has never been done before, so it's fresh, and a bit funny as well. From a setting point of view it's surprising, because Halflings are savage cannibals, again not a race of important beings, another twist.
I'm not sure you can come up with a reason why Athas is a dead/dying world that is not a trope. I tried to come up with something, but they've all been done before, and I think that's the point. Everything HAS already been done before, it's the twists that make it unique. You may not like the twist that was revealed and have ideas on what you think is a better twist, but that's just personal preference.
I don't think you can get away from tropes, or even find one that is underused. The magic of the trope comes from well crafted storytelling, which creates compelling twists on the trope.
You missed out Spelljammer's BBEG: the Witchlight Marauders. Possibly the biggest Baddest Evil Guys (well, things) creatures ever in D&D, hehe!
That is what makes the Sorcerer Kings and by extension, Rajaat, different, they won.
Moving the goalposts. You are really just changing the hats they wear.
Rajaat is not an extension of the Sorcerer Kings and they are not extensions of Rajaat. I'll grant you that what was done with the Sorcerer Kings (evil won in the distant past) is remarkably different than other settings.
To some, changing the hats is profoundly enough of a difference. To others changing the hats is superficial.
That's the problem with bemoaning overused tropes, anything else you come up with is just another trope...I'm not sure you can come up with a reason why Athas is a dead/dying world that is not a trope...
I don't think you can get away from tropes, or even find one that is underused...
*sigh* As indicated earlier in this thread, there is a significant difference between overused tropes (the equivalent of lterary cliches) and plain-old tropes. When this "everything is a trope" argument arose before, I noted there is a well-understood difference between common words and cliches.
After all, would you argue that because your favorite catch-phrase is a cliche, therefore all language must be a cliche? Of course you wouldn't, because you would be ignoring how those elements are defined and actually function in language and fiction.
That analogy holds for tropes and their use. Would you argue that because your favorite trope is a cliche, therefore all tropes must be cliches? Again, of course not. Yes, tropes are the common phrases of fiction, but some of those phrases (or perhaps common uses of those phrases) have become literary cliches because they are overused.
As any decent writer knows, you can find and use tropes that are not overused, or use tropes such that they don't hit on every single note of the trope, or such that you alter more than the trope's surface details.
Also, we aren't talking about halflings. We're talking about Rajaat. No one is saying, "halflings being important is so cliche!" Rajaat wanting to give the world to the halflings doesn't make him not a cliche, or "original" ie: "not anything like" anything in other D&D worlds.
Finally, that single twist I mentioned above likely wouldn't be quite enough to save Rajaat from literary cliche-status, though with a few other serious twists to the elements of the usual trope (including a few of the superficial tweaks already utilized with him), it likely would.
You missed out Spelljammer's BBEG: the Witchlight Marauders. Possibly the biggest Baddest Evil Guys (well, things) creatures ever in D&D, hehe!
I swear these were the inspiration for the Bugs in the Starship Troopers movie more than the description of the Bugs from the Starship Troopers novel.
*sigh*
*Sigh* is right. Here's my challenge to you. In the Dark Sun setting, set up a 30th BBEG who goals would conflict with the players without using an overused trope , but also one that still would be relevant enough to get the players involved. I don't care if you use Rajaat or not, just use the parts of the setting you do accept, and fill in the holes.
I'm not saying it is impossible, but complaining about something with no alternative solution doesn't solve anything, it just makes you sound whiny.
Here's my challenge to you. In the Dark Sun setting, set up a 30th BBEG who goals would conflict with the players without using an overused trope , but also one that still would be relevant enough to get the players involved.
Why have your challenge focus on setting up just one ultimate BBEG?
Myself, I reject that there has to be just one ultimate BBEG that is the source of every naughty thing that ended up happening. Likewise, if I were to have Rajaat be a factor in my campaigns I would never give him stats. Rajaat, at this point in the setting's story, would be an unleveled force of nature. Regardless . . .
Sure, a single campaign often needs the focus of one single bad guy to be brought down at the end. Hard to avoid tropes here in D&D. But I disagree that the entire setting has to have the same quality. A setting is far more interesting when there are a multitude of dangerous forces equally competing for the interest of heroes at every tier of hero strength.
You missed out Spelljammer's BBEG: the Witchlight Marauders. Possibly the biggest Baddest Evil Guys (well, things) creatures ever in D&D, hehe!
I swear these were the inspiration for the Bugs in the Starship Troopers movie more than the description of the Bugs from the Starship Troopers novel.
hehe, maybe so ;) the tertiaries and secondaries were a right pain, and ugly too :p
(Starship Troopers was a great flick, if you realized it's tongue was firmly in its cheek :D )
I'm not saying it is impossible, but complaining about something with no alternative solution doesn't solve anything, it just makes you sound whiny.
Why, each time a point you want to defend is countered, have you changed what the discussion is about, and then tried to sneak the already-countered point back into the dialogue? For example, we were talking "Is Rajaat a cliche? Is there 'anything like' him in other published settings?"
Last time you shifted to arguing instead "Well, halflings as the first race is original!" This time you have shifted to arguing "30th level characters need something to fight!" And ignored the the actual questions posed and the answers to them, jumping on to the next topic without conceding any point (and often reiterating the failed point later as if it was never answered).
For example, you ignored all the details in the post about how and why not all tropes are overused tropes in order to just repeat your provably empty claim that everything is an overused trope and so no one can get away from such. And threw in a little pointless ad hom as a red herring, insisting that pointing out a problem without offering a solution is "just" whiny.
(Which would be an interesting point to make to automotive engineers who can now dismiss the complains of focus groups with "offer me a solution, or don't complain!" Or those damn hospital patients, whining about this and that problem without telling the doctors how to fix it! And, if you buy that claim about whining, you've never taken a high level philosophy or mathematics course...)
Yet I can say "There's something wrong with that" without needing to say "And here's how you fix it", because the lack of a solution does not invalidate the existence of a problem (American health care, anyone? Or I should just shut-up if I can't offer a solution to THAT complex mess of a problem, because otherwise I'm just a whiner?). I may not have an answer, but I don't have to blind myself to a problem because I do not, or just "shut up" about it.
Despite that, I have in fact listed a couple alternative ideas that could have been explored on the issue of Rajaat and etc...but then spent more time dealing with shifting goalposts, defensive apologetics, and denials that there even was a problem than the exploration of possible alternatives.
Like most writers, I'm actually not-too-bad at coming up with what you state above is "impossible" (or at least very, very difficult) -- avoiding literary cliches -- as for most writers, that is one of the very first things you learn to do as a writer if you want to be at all good. Isn't that ridiculously hard.
As at any level, I would tailor a 30th-level challenge to my PCs, their specific interests, desires, successes, failures, friends and enemies. Not pick from a list, or pre-design my campaign's story-arc (the creation and progression of the story is the players' job in play; not mine before play).
I would also make sure that any potential opposition they faced was complex and multi-facted, enmeshed in the rivalry of a number of different groups in competition or conflict, and let them choose whose side they were on (making it hard to pick a Big Bad for them or build it into the setting before I even know what they care about in the setting, and how that may change over time).
As well, adventures or plots do not need to revolve around the beating of a Big Bad at the end. The Big Bad at Bottom of Dungeon idea of play can be pretty fun in the right circumstances, but it certainly isn't all there is to gaming or design, D&D or otherwise.
Obviously, the Dragon and any SKs whose plans are opposed to the PCs for one reason or another should all be obvious items on the list of potential opponents, played right. As should specific, powerful groups of individuals, not necessarily individuals themselves, such as a horde of undead souls, a group of powerful psionicists working in concert, or even a horde of desert beast(s). Nor does killing or fighting with those groups necessarily need to be the resolving factor in play.
Certainly situations could be utilized as well, such as a difficult negotiation between city-states in order to prevent an all-out destructive war (or ensure a victory in such), a romantic interest who needs to be saved from powerful slavers, or one who just simply needs to be wooed -- perhaps with the present of a rare flower from the Forest Ridge.
None of these sorts of stories require a BBEG. Many times, you don't even need any sort of main, central guy as the opposition. Frex, I hear that attempting to even infiltrate Ur-draxa is stupidly difficult/suicide-mission deadly for even 20th level characters, and does not necessarily have any real Big Bad to fight, just whatever you need to do within, get from, or destroy in the city. A whole adventure or series of adventures could very easily be built around getting into the city and getting out again in order to retrieve an object for a patron. No BBEG necessary: just psionic/magical defenses, traps, and groups of soldier-guards, defilers and mystics, and a kaisharga here and there.
But how would I develop it? Couldn't say. My 30th-level challenge isn't something I could pick out of a hat because it is the result of thirty levels worth of character behavior and interaction with the existing environment and personalities.
But it should be fairly clear to anyone with any experience in fiction writing that it is not necessary to use cliches as the only possible opponents or plots for powerful characters to deal with, given a modicum of creative talent and understanding of what makes a trope a cliche, and what tropes have become cliches (and why/how). Especially as decent writers do manage to avoid using cliches all the time in the telling of stories, even about powerful personages.
Of course, that has nothing to do with Rajaat being a cliche or being anything like similar characters in other game settings (let alone in genre fiction).
Fine, lets get back to your assertion, is Rajaat an overused Trope? Yes he is. My assertion is that you can use overused tropes as long as you add twists to make it interesting enough. I belive that the twists in DS make him interesting again by having him want to commit racial genocide and leave the only Halflings. That is a new twist. The reason I brouhgt up the Halflings is because Rajaat's story is linked to Halflings, not to divert the subject
I asked you to come up with an alternative, not to divert the subject, but to illustrate that 1 or many BBEGs of epic levels are overused by definition. Sure you can create one for your specific players, but that's not the point, you can do that with the existance of Rajaat and just have the players story not intersect with him. From a game designed point-of-view, to tell the story of why the setting is the way it is as a means to drive a setting, a BBEG as a foil drives the story.
Perhaps I am not making myself clear, at the heart of what I am saying is, I personally do not think Rajaat being a cliché at his core is not by definition a bad thing because his ultimate goal is unique. You belive that his core makes him trite no matter the fluff. I disagree and assert that the fluff is enough to make him an interesting BBEG. I challenged you to come up with a setting BBEG (or BBEGs) to attempt to show that as a game designer making a BBEG is difficult because it has all been done before.
In the end is doesn't matter if WoTC will either use the story of Rajaat, or they don't. It will be interesting to see if they do or not though. Ultimately it should not matter. Both sides of the debate can use him or not when they run their games.
Fair enough.
I challenged you to come up with a setting BBEG (or BBEGs) to attempt to show that as a game designer making a BBEG is difficult because it has all been done before.
But I believe I had done that, using Rajaat even(!), over a number of posts pointing out various small ways to alter his presentation and historical context/behavior that wouldn't just have superficially altered the trope (ie: funny hats do not make a trope different) but turned parts of it on its head. In other words, and speaking as a game designer and writer myself, it isn't that difficult.
Frex, you believe that "the way I want to destroy the world" makes a huge difference in the "wants to destroy the world" part of the trope, such that it makes the whole in total not a cliche/overused even with all the other parts of the trope intact, and I do not (not as is).
It also seems you believe there must be a BBEG designed directly into the setting for the highest of high-level characters to fight or clean up the mess of? A point I would aslo highly disagree with (I've played too many good games that need no such element).
How about you two agree to disagree .
Now, chew on this idea: For your 30th level challenge, instead of having just one, have eight (one in each city state, plus the dragon). Rajaat becomes something of a non-issue then: he's too far removed from anyone or anything a group of PC's would interact with, also he's already defeated - the only thing characters could really do is unleash him and that's (IMO) like battling a hurricane not an entity.
Alright...
Didn't mean to kill the thread here guys. Just throwing out alternate ideas.
I am really feeling this discussion in a few ways:
- I like Rajaat as the original Defiler idea
- I agree the idea that "all wrong with Athas is Rajaat's fault" is lame
- I like the cleansing wars, but it is too much for Rajaat to be responsible for the cleasing wars
AND Defiling magic
I want to approach the challenge of how to reconcile all this, especially since I am setting up to DM a Dark Sun campaign. 4E rules, original box set timeline, my custome setting. Here's my idea, in its formative stage, open to suggetions and criticisms (just be nice!):
Rajaat invents magic on Athas, as described in the Revised box set history. Rajaat teaches defiling to his 15 champions. Need a reason why he teaches here. Maybe cause he's the didactic type? Not that far fetched, since one form of immortality is to invent something this profound and pass it on. Discovery of the power of defiling to elevate mortals to immortals and eventually Dragon (similar to the actual story here, but this might come from Borys instead of Rajaat, since he is the one who accomplishes it and invention explains his head start).
To power the rituals to achieve immortality, one must steal the requisite life force. And not randomly. Specifically, to achieve immortality one must steal the life force of an entire race. Thus, the Cleansing Wars are born. Not because Rajaat wants everyone dead, or to return the world to halflings. Because each of the Champions, independently, seeks immortality and genocide is the key. Rajaat could've even been against this abuse, and they imprisoned him for that. He was the only one powerful enough to stop the Champions individually, so they mutineed together to remove him as a threat. I need another step to go from immortal to Dragon.
The rapacious abuse of defiling over the course of millenia results in the end of the Green Age, the immortal Sorcere-Kings, the Cleansing Wars, and the ultimate demise of the missing races. So it is all still sort of Rajaat's fault, but not in the same way.
greyorm is right about good settings having many, independent, factions pursuing thier own agendas. I don't want the Sorcerer-Kings to present a Unified Evil Under The Dragon. In that case nothing has changed. I've only shifted who the BBEG is. I need a way to go from genocide grants immortality to some sort of balance-of-power status quo between many powers. I also need a complicating factor to eliminate the simplicity of defiler=sorcerer-king=dragon=evil. I need shades of gray. Part of the answer is when the sorcerer-kings stopped and looked around they realize the world they are creating isn't worth ruling (or at least, living in forever). And we have a game-theorist's playground (forgot the name): I (sorcerer-king) can continue to poison Athas in my pursuit of power, but if everyone does that Athas is toast. Yet, if I stop, what assures me others will also?
Thoughts?
If you read the dragon bowl blog post, it sounds like primordial presences and the cleansing wars may well go into the 4e DS setting. So, what if Rajaat didn't so much invent magic as disseminate it. Maybe a corrupt primordial gave him the means. And if the question of defiling vs traditional arcane is not sufficiently answered by the corrupt primordial source, I was thinking that the primal spirits of athas blocked the intrusion of arcane energy into their pristine world and that this blockage was overwhelmed by the invention of defiling magic and preserving magic still coming from the land. So here you have one big bad guy whether tentacled or behorned or what have you that is distinct from Rajaat and may well be as powerful as modern Rajaat at the very least.
I suspect that one way that DS Will get shoehorned into 4e design is having dormant primordials. These are epic enemies in themselves and also help frame the pervasiveness of elemental clerics.
I think the biggest problem with Rajaat was that they released him ,I think leaving him as a part of ancient history is the best way too use him.
Rajaat invents magic on Athas, as described in the Revised box set history. Rajaat teaches defiling to his 15 champions. Need a reason why he teaches here.
Defiling has often been assumed to be the "base" magic type on Athas, that is, if you don't control yourself you automatically defile. Preserving was said to have been invented later by Rajaat, and might be viewed as a learned skill-set difficult to master and maintain against the ease and addiction of defiling.
I know this has never worked out logically in canon history: if defiling came first, and is (as it is often presented) easiest and addictive, that any caster can resort to whether a defiler or not, and preserving requires extra effort and control, then how was defiling any sort of "secret method" only fifteen people were allowed to figure out? That never made any internal sense.
So say, instead, Rajaat taught magic, at the time synonymous with defiling, to his first fifteen students. Or perhaps: those fifteen were the most powerful of the first students...the ones to survive, as the various would-be defilers killed one another off in ancient feuds, power-struggles, and attempts at dominance. Because that ended up being what wizardry did to you over time: the inherent destructiveness and addictiveness of the power's use warped its students mentally, as power and addiction tends to do to people.
I admit, due to the influence of Glen Cook and the Taken, I'm fond of "The Fifteen" method, myself. Rajaat's very first students of the new art of wizardry, the Fifteen, eventually became corrupted by their own power and decided to seize the world for themselves, individually, perhaps occasionally working in short-term partnerships rife with betrayals and double-crosses.
During the time of these "wars", either Rajaat--having failed to forsee the damning long-term effects of magic and thus wracked with guilt for their results--or some wizard less bloody-handed and more deeply moral and terrified with himself than any of his kindred (perhaps even one of the Fifteen) discovered a way to use magic that did not destroy the land, and began teaching it to underground rebel groups opposed to the devastating wars of sorcery that were withering the land and turning it barren, given that wizardry was needed to fight against the wizardry of the defilers.
There's a number of ways to play this that bits could also be mixed and matched from:
Rajaat tried to stop the defilers, and was destroyed/imprisioned/tortured in raw elemental chaos/etc. Someone else later discovered preserving magic.
Rajaat tried to stop the defilers, went underground and taught new students a more refined, less destructive method of arcane spellcasting. Some decided the ends justified the means and abandoned it for the power of defiling.
Rajaat hid himself away from the wars and refused to teach magic, even his newly discovered preserving magic, out of fear that even the best users of magic would eventually succumb to the temptation of defiling. Somehow, word got out or was forced out.
To power the rituals to achieve immortality, one must steal the requisite life force. And not randomly. Specifically, to achieve immortality one must steal the life force of an entire race. Thus, the Cleansing Wars are born. Not because Rajaat wants everyone dead, or to return the world to halflings. Because each of the Champions, independently, seeks immortality and genocide is the key.
That there is hot stuff. Great idea.
I really like this twist that you got here, greyorm. But, what if we took it a bit further.
Maybe they imprisioned him before the wars.
Maybe he started the preserver jihad to fight against the defilers.
Maybe he is the Warbringer because he made the secret wars of genocide an open thing in his fight against it.
Maybe the Fifteen (Love the Black Company!) just lied about that like they have so many other things.
Maybe the Eradication (where the SK's killed many druids) happened to silence them and keep the truth hidden.
I liked the history the way that it was written, but I also like twists, like what we have seen previously in this post. I much prefer the SK's as a group that infights and can't get along more than a united front.
Thank you for the compliment, greyorm. I like the direction(s) you've proposed for Rajaat, magic, teaching, etc. I appreciate the input (from everyone), as I am filling in my own version of the history and it is very helpful to get feedback and new ideas. I've a few other thoughts, not well organized yet, that I want to share:
First, do we need preserving magic at all? There might be a meta-game, "balance is important", kind of argument to provide a magic class that isn't better than other classes (and the nature of defiling suggests a Defiler would be). That aside (there are ways around "balance" issuses), why not take it as far as "magic is powerful, and derives that power by usurping life" and stop? That is truly a different twist on D&D canon, and has a dark world feel I really like as a storyteller.
Contrasting with the above, I like this idea of Rajaat as founder of the Veiled Alliance. As suggested, he teaches preserving to thwart the world-pillaging of the defiling 15 (and others, presumably, after the initial roll-out of the defiling product-line). The 15, previously fighting each other to be in position to eradicate certain races to obtain immortality (or after this happens), briefly come together to stop Rajaat cold by imprisoning him. This could even stay close to canon, where several of the 15 side with Rajaat, and are brutally handled for it. The two things I don't like about this, as proposed here, are (1) I really like the defiling-only version of Athas (above) and (2) I want to be careful about setting up, "Rajaat the Guilty Good Guy"; he needs to be more comlex than that.
I've an Oedipus Rex idea I think fits into this history well to explain Rajaat's dissemination of defiling magic. What if, in his time in the Pristine Tower, Rajaat has visions of a desolate future Athas? He sees Athas, post-Cleansing Wars, in the age of the Sorcerer-Kings. At the time of the visions, he's only just discovered the power of magic, and doesn't fully understand it (nor does he fully understand the future he's glimpsed). In order to thwart the future of his visions, he acts quickly to spread the power of magic to the 15. Except that, oops, he just created the situation that led to the bleak future he envisioned, as the corrupting (defiling) nature of magic and its widespread use becomes apparent. But, as in the great tragedy, now the deed is done and the world is the worse for it. This could be married with the many ideas of others suggested in this thread.
One final note, and just a personal opinion. I saw the bit suggesting primordials for Dark Sun. I understand this connects to the original ideas of elemental clerics very well. Nonetheless, I don't dig it. No Gods means no Gods, and Primordials are just another form of God. I much prefer the atheistic nature of Original Athas, where only the power and pursuits of humanoids shape the world. Athas still had "spirits of the land", which fit in fine with the primal classes. And I think it is really important that the denizens of Athas can't point fingers at some Unknowable Uber-being and blame the ills of Athas on it. Tne Dragon fills this role already, and is more compelling (to me) because he is so real. He's not some legend, people have seen him, and it is not good.
Thoughts?
An addendum of something I think works, aknowledging defiling as the only magic, the oedipal "fate sucks" idea, and cnahumck's idea of Rajaat as War-Bringer for fighting against the Cleansing Wars:
After Rajaat realizes what he has wrought upon the world (defiling magic) in his attempts to save it from a bleak future. He then bears witness to the Cleansing Wars waged by his 15 in search of immortality. This is still Green Age Athas, which means (to my recollection of canon) Halflings are still a dominant power on Athas.
Rajaat treats with the halfling Nature-powers (benders/masters/whatever) to declare war on the 15 or succumb to the devastation they bring. Now we have Rajaat as War-Bringer, since his adminishments of the Halflings precipitate an epic war between the Immortal Defilers (the ones that don't side with Rajaat, anyway) and the Halfling civilization (empire?). A possible twist, other details aside, is that Rajaat plans to rule the New Halfling Athas after using their power to undo his previous mistake with the 15. Similarly interesting, if wiping out a race fuels the rituals of immortality, what might Rajaat become if he can usurp the Halfling Nature-power, marry it with magic, and use the military strength of the Halflings to destroy all the other races?
The resultant clash between the Halfling Nature-power (which, as the Brown Tide showed, has its own dark side) and the SK defiling magic wreaks havoc across Athas, creating the warped land of Dark Sun as we know it. The war ends when the halfling civilization is destroyed, Rajaat is imprisoned, some of the SKs are toast, The Dragon is born (this might've been what gave the Defilers the victory), and there isn't life force enough in central Athas to sustain the global conflict and the power it brandishes. And now we have a multifaceted Rajaat: Rajaat the original Defiler, Rajaat the crusader against the Cleansing, Rajaat the War-Bringer. Not so good guy/bad guy.
This respects the intertwining of Halflings and Rajaat from the orginal canon. As written here, it sounds like it is All About Rajaat again. But I don't think so. This post is simply written from the angle of Rajaat's role in the greater conflict. The halfling civilization and the 15 are just as important, and need pages unto themselves to unravel their roles in this history.
Getting a little big for its briches, but there is good material in there. Thoughts?
Maybe they imprisioned him before the wars.Maybe he started the preserver jihad to fight against the defilers.
Definitely like that. Was thinking along similar lines but didn't run and check the timeline to see when the jihad happened. Also liking the idea that Rajaat is the Warbringer not because HE brought war, but because he was responsible for training the Fifteen, who are the madmen who then waged war with the powers he had trained them in. Or, as you say, Rajaat brought the wars of genocide to public consciousness (and sought champions to fight back?).
Maybe the Eradication (where the SK's killed many druids) happened to silence them and keep the truth hidden.
Is there a way to tie that into the Dragon rituals? If one even wanted to keep the whole "All SKs are nascent Dragons" thing (which I'm not a fan of, personally. I like the Dragon being its own thing, and the SKs being their own thing).
Maybe the Dragon is really a manifestation of the tortured soul of Athas? One of the BIG Spirits of the Land, or a conglomeration of smaller ones, warped and twisted by the rampant use of defiling, bloodshed, and death into this monster-of-monsters.
And perhaps it was born literally from the Dragon's Bowl, as per the legend, ripping itself free of the very earth in a vast volcanic explosion that both raised the volcano and caused it to collapse in on itself, as it sought to both flee the destruction around it and yet rain down savagery and death on the mortal races who so upset the balance of the world.
...And Myron herded the shattered remnants of the Druid Orders to the blazing plains of Selem, and there surrounded them with his armies. They were tied and fires were lit beneath them as with witches of old, and the plain became like unto a forest of burning trees. A forest that screamed with thousands of voices, filling the sky with the stench of fresh charnel and hiding the sun behind clouds of ominous black smoke kin to raging night itself.
Beneath the screaming druids a fire lit itself in the earth, perhaps by their dying design, swelling up into a mountain, cracking and shattering the land as the plain shook and muttered molten words. The land swallowed the sorcerer's armies and scattered what few then remained, who burned as had the Orders when the mountain exploded.
With a noise that roared and screamed with a furious voice like all the burning druids crying out in unison, bursting from the fiery womb of the earth came the Dragon in flame and smoke and dark glory, draining dry the life of the few unfortunate living who remained on the quaking and swollen plains of Selem.
As the beast and its birthing flames rose amid a rain of fire, lightning, and ash, roaring again with that voice of a thousand baritone screams, the cacophony was echoed by rock of the earth as it buckled and fell, collapsing back in on itself, the whole of that land crumbling, falling inward and downward into a vast craterous bowl where once had been the blazing plains of Selem...
(Ok, a little cheesy, but five-minutes work. You get the idea.)
First, do we need preserving magic at all?
That's an interesting question. I know that in some of the fiction I write, which draws on similar themes and ideas, I've abandoned the idea of a non-destructive form of sorcery. But in other DS-inspired writing, I've kept to the idea that there are destructive and non-destructive forms. It really depends on what kind of story you want to tell.
This could even stay close to canon, where several of the 15 side with Rajaat, and are brutally handled for it.
I do like that. Heck, I like the idea that even the Fifteen banding together aren't really "banded together" so much as working together and looking for an opportunity to come out ahead or somehow get rid of their rivals (hence those who end up siding with Rajaat: figuring he's the horse to bet on, for the moment).
In order to thwart the future of his visions, he acts quickly to spread the power of magic to the 15. Except that, oops, he just created the situation that led to the bleak future he envisioned, as the corrupting (defiling) nature of magic and its widespread use becomes apparent.
Meh. I'm iffy on that. It's a common theme in time-travel or psychic-power stories, and it always leaves me cold because you can see the "oops, I caused this by trying to prevent it" coming a mile away.
No Gods means no Gods, and Primordials are just another form of God.
I don't know much about the Primordials or much of 4E's cosmology. But the elementals the Athasians worship have always been stand-offish and unconcerned with the moral races. Things in the elemental chaos that the clerics draw upon for their powers, but whom don't actually speak to them or necessarily care about mortal concerns, worship, or morality/philosophy.
One could sort of add a Lovecraftian Mythos bent to the idea, with elemental clerics the equivalent of Mythos cultists. So you have these Elder Things and Old Ones in the elemental chaos beyond the world, inhuman, old, impossibly alien and uncaring, who seek (re?)entry into the world (or whom are already here), and that some madmen worship with disturbing rites and dark prayers. But their evil is their own, it isn't guided or commanded or demanded by some eldritch thing.
And I think it is really important that the denizens of Athas can't point fingers at some Unknowable Uber-being and blame the ills of Athas on it.
Very much in agreement. I also think players shouldn't be able to do that, either (ie: "If we look at the history, the world is this way because of X. It's X's fault.").
A possible twist, other details aside, is that Rajaat plans to rule the New Halfling Athas after using their power to undo his previous mistake with the 15. Similarly interesting, if wiping out a race fuels the rituals of immortality, what might Rajaat become if he can usurp the Halfling Nature-power, marry it with magic, and use the military strength of the Halflings to destroy all the other races?
We get into the "why" again...why would Rajaat destroy all the other races? I'm a bit fuzzy on that in your alternate history here.
and there isn't life force enough in central Athas to sustain the global conflict and the power it brandishes.
Yes, definitely. It isn't that the SK's are good now, or saw the error of their ways, but that they can't continue their plans because just surviving now requires all their considerable might, and the world itself doesn't have the life-power left in it for another war. That's awesome.
To tie that in with the "seeing the future" bit above, perhaps Rajaat is the one who destroyed the world, deliberately, in order to stop the Fifteen. Realizing he could not stop them himself, that the wars would just go on-and-on, especially with their immmortality and various sorcerous powers that allow one to escape death, he decided to attack the source of their power in order to stop them from being ABLE to use their power.
Perhaps he did it by tying himself to some Nature Master biotechnology and into the life force of the world: so when he attacked/was attacked and banished, he took it all with him in a mutually-assured destruction scenario.
Or perhaps he used all that power to transform Borys into the Dragon, laying waste to the land in doing so AND creating a crazed, powerful creature for the SKs to deal with out of one of his own enemies. A thing that would continue to raze and burn and destroy for millenia, even if he were dead or gone, keeping the Fifteen in check no matter how hard they tried to restore the source of their powers.
Tangentially, it occurs to me that one plot line using the above might be that: all the SK's are suspicious of the Oba because she's always running about planting trees and trying to extend her forest, not because she's seen the light or anything. So they watch her carefully because it looks like she's trying to restore the world enough to let her continue her war against them, or gain the power for a final strike against one or more of them.
This thread appears dead. I wanted to thank everyone for their ideas. You really helped me put some details together for the non-canon DS campaign that I am planning.
Also, to greyorm, I read the "When Kritha met Misha" and really enjoyed it. You are a gifted writer, and I appreciate your input.
So I was poking around and found this Blog post from Richard Baker about Dark Sun (read it all, but check out the second to last paragraph. He mentions Rajaat creating his Champions...):
community.wizards.com/wotc_richbaker/blo...
Hi there, thanks for stopping by!
This week's update: I've finished up my rewrite of Avenger, and I'm still chugging away on Dark Sun design and development.
I'd love to talk about some of the mechanical stuff in Dark Sun--how does the mul character race work, what's a templar, and so on. But I don't think we're ready to reveal too much on this yet, so I'm going to stick to the geography again this week. The other day, I created mountains-specifically, a ring of highlands and low peaks around the Dragon's Bowl. Now, I've been accused of butchering the geography of existing worlds before, so let me explain a little about my reasoning. It's bothered me for a long time that the Dragon's Bowl, this thousand-foot deep depression, lies only a few miles from an arm of the Sea of Silt. Given the fact that the Wanderer's Journal goes on at length about how windborne silt fills the air for miles inland on a windy day, it seems clear to me that over time the Dragon's Bowl would fill with silt. In other words, it ought to be another dust sink. So that stretch of stony barrens between the Bowl and the Sea had better be some pretty high ground, something that dust wouldn't blow over or through. At least on the southeast edge, there need to be some hills or mountains there.
That got me to thinking about depressions and craters, and wondering what the Dragon's Bowl was originally intended to be. Was it supposed to be something like Egypt's Qattara Depression? The Dead Sea? Death Valley? Interestingly enough, the fact that it's ringed by 1000-foot cliffs made me think of another big hole in the ground I've seen ringed by 1000-foot cliffs - Crater Lake. Crater Lake is, of course, a collapsed volcano (Mount Mazama). So *that* got me thinking about a volcanic origin for the Dragon's Bowl, which in turn led me to thinking about volcanic calderas like Yellowstone or Ngorongoro in Africa. If the Dragon's Bowl was a darned big supervolcano that went off a zillion years ago, it could very well have collapsed down into its current configuration. And, of course, speaking of craters, the Dragon's Bowl might be an impact crater, like Meteor Crater in Arizona (but much bigger). Now, both the caldera explanation and the impact crater explanation help solve my initial conundrum about the Dragon's Bowl-because either would leave low mountains/highlands/impact ridges around the Bowl's edges. In fact, the Dragon's Bowl rim might actually be a couple of thousand feet in elevation, so the floor is actually well above the Sea of Silt (Crater Lake is a good 5,000 feet up, after all). So, I took my Sharpie and added some low mountains and broken highlands around the Dragon's Bowl.
Some folks would say that I really overthought this. It's a fantasy world, and the answer could be "it's magic" or "the gods willed it so." That's certainly true, and I probably could have left well enough alone... but some Dark Sun fan's going to pick up the campaign guide next year, look at the map, and he *won't* wonder why the Dragon's Bowl isn't filled with silt, like I did. I think that's why it's important to look after details like this in world-building. Inconsistencies focus the reader's attention in the wrong places, so you want to make sure that the inconsistencies you place in the world are the ones you really want to be there. Sure, inconsistencies may also lead to creative opportunities in the explanation, but you really want to pick your fights there.
Here's an inconsistency that, in my view, demands explanation: silt. Silt doesn't behave the way dust, sand, powder, or anything in our experience would seem to behave. It's a completely fantastic terrain, one that has no correlation to real-world deserts. If the Sea of Silt was a gigantic dead sea bottom, cracked and parched, with muddy spots left, I could imagine that. We've all seen lakes that dry up (or are drained). But it's a seabed full of dust that doesn't blow away, and doesn't compact down to something like sand or clay. Early in the Dark Sun revision process, I toyed briefly with the notion of pushing to make the Sea of Silt into a parched sea bottom in order to solve this inconsistency... but ultimately that would have wreaked real havoc with the existing narrative of the world. So with the Sea of Silt, I backed off.
I talked it over with the other designers, and we decided to let silt stand as it was described back in the 1991 boxed set. But that certainly demands at least some sort of explanation. If the Sea of Silt couldn't occur naturally but is there anyway, then clearly it must be what it is from extra-natural causes. We had another notion rattling around that Athas is a world more heavily influenced or sculpted by elemental powers than the typical fantasy world... so maybe the silt is a kind of terrain that you might be able to find in the Elemental Chaos. It's a mix of air, earth, and water that exists as something of an intrusion of elemental properties into the natural world of Athas. Something long ago *transformed* the sea into dust. The water didn't just evaporate or drain off (at least, not completely); it was changed into something else. If Athas is a world where the gods are absent, was this the work of a Primordial? Does that Primordial remain in Athas, maintaining the Sea in its current state? Or is it the effect of a colossal spell that was cast during the Cleansing Wars, much as the sun was darkened by Rajaat's creation of his Champions? Here's a spot where cleaning up an "inconsistency" pushes you into fantastic world-building and creative answers to a question. My fellow designers and I came up with an answer we liked; in about 11 months you can see for yourself which way we decided to go.
That's all for now. Next time, I think I'll duck back over to War at Sea and talk about a favorite topic of fans there: Is there a US bias, and if so, why?
This thread appears dead. I wanted to thank everyone for their ideas. You really helped me put some details together for the non-canon DS campaign that I am planning.Also, to greyorm, I read the "When Kritha met Misha" and really enjoyed it. You are a gifted writer, and I appreciate your input.
Apparently, I missed this reply when you made it. Apologies. Glad the thread helped! Also, thank you for the kind words about my writing: they mean a great deal.
Let us know how the campaign goes!