Athasian Goblins?

[Urpriest]

So apparently Athas has goblins in it. They aren't in the list of Vanquished Races, and they've even been in an early Dark Sun adventure. But unlike Tieflings, Dragonborn, and Eladrin, the book doesn't say anything about what sort of role they play in the setting. This is especially annoying since there isn't any pre-4e material on them since they weren't in the setting then. Now I've got a player wanting to play a goblin in Dark Sun, and I have to come up with something to tell them about their race's culture and how others view them. Are there any hints in any other DS 4e materials?

[Tegu8788]

Perhaps they are particularly ugly Halflings.

[Tiki Snakes]

I'm pretty sure the Goblins are all Dead.


155th King's Age (-2,695)

Ral's Defiance: Daskinor Goblin Death, 14th Champion of Rajaat exterminates the last goblin from the face of Athas

Ral's Slumber: Wyan of Bodach, 12th Champion of Rajaat obliterates the last pixie from the land.

At least, that's what I recalled and that's what I found. I do seem to recall a published something goofed and included one or two, despite there being none to include.

So, it's pretty easy what to tell him, should you go ahead with it regardless.
They're dead. They're all dead. They were wiped out a very long time ago. Perhaps a few were kept as breeding stock for Gladiatorial reasons, or a single tiny tribe survived, hidden in some distant forgotten corner of the world, slowly but inevitably dwindling and becoming more prone to mutation as their gene-pool was simply too shallow to be able to save the species in the long term.

Or he's a freak one off, survivor via freaky magical accident/preserved in carbonite/resurrected from preserved skeletal remains by a crazed defiler/insert one-off-incident here.

[Tegu8788]

There's always that tower surrounded by mutants, just about any race could come out of their. Turned an Elf in essentially a Dragonborn.

[Urpriest]

I'm pretty sure the Goblins are all Dead.



At least, that's what I recalled and that's what I found. I do seem to recall a published something goofed and included one or two, despite there being none to include.

So, it's pretty easy what to tell him, should you go ahead with it regardless.
They're dead. They're all dead. They were wiped out a very long time ago. Perhaps a few were kept as breeding stock for Gladiatorial reasons, or a single tiny tribe survived, hidden in some distant forgotten corner of the world, slowly but inevitably dwindling and becoming more prone to mutation as their gene-pool was simply too shallow to be able to save the species in the long term.

Or he's a freak one off, survivor via freaky magical accident/preserved in carbonite/resurrected from preserved skeletal remains by a crazed defiler/insert one-off-incident here.

I don't think that applies in 4e, though, since they're left off the list of Vanquished Races. Are the Dark Sun Wikia updated to 4e?

[Tiki Snakes]

I have no idea and have loaned my Dark Sun book to someone so that they will run it for me.

But I'm pretty sure the general idea is that it's pretty largely unchanged, historically, except that it's placed right at the end of (I don't know, whatever series of books kills the Sorcerer King of Tyr? Kalak wasn't it?)

So I've no idea why Goblins wouldn't be wiped out all of a sudden.

EDIT - Alright, from what I can see, if I'm looking in the right place, that doesn't look like the sidebar you are talking about is supposed to be any kind of exhaustive list. It talks about the listed races being amongst those wiped out.

So, unless the lore is contradicted elsewhere in the manual, it's safe to assume that they're gone. See also the Languages section for it's complete lack of mentioning Goblins as additional circumstantial evidence.

[Shatteredtower]

The only time goblins appeared in Dark Sun was during its season of Encounters, and in a manner that didn't commit you to treating them as goblins. This season also used draconian stat blocks for what were instead intended to be lizard folk warped by defiling magic. The Dark Sun Monstrous Compendium suggests the use of adjusted stat blocks for lizard folks and orcs as ssurrans and tareks. It also has a template to adjust creatures that would be out of place in Dark Sun's environments, so there's clearly a lot of precedent for taking something familiar and calling it something else.

The campaign guide suggests that it's possible to accomodate players who want to play a race that shouldn't exist in the setting, giving several examples for a gnome. The 2E setting set precedent for that with lizard folk with the Last Sea supplement, for example. Perhaps the last goblins were desperate vermin trying to survive on the Great Savannah, lands entirely under the control of the thri-kreen nations. A creature displaced in time (whether directly or as the result of petrification or other form of stasis) also works.

Either way, you're left with no obligation to create a goblin culture. It's possible to leave this almost entirely in your player's hands. All you have to do then is decide if it's going to have greater relevance in your campaign.

[obryn]

Yeah, while all goblins are dead, that's not necessarily a reason to forbid them from a player. PCs are special; that's part of the point.

The Pristine Tower can mutate a bunch out of nowhere, for one. For another, if you're near Giustenal, Dregoth is mucking around various non-Athasian worlds all over the place and he might have brought a few in, himself. (That's how we got a gnome in the party.)

Or they can be a new race that happens to use goblin stat blocks. Really, it's easy to be flexible here and it's not like goblins are overpowered.

-O

[Boci]

Since this topic seems to have resolved itself and my question is semi-related:

Why does Darksun make genocide such a major component? Call me cynical but it just seemed like TSR (I assume) going “How do we show that this world is new, dark, mature and edgy? I know, genocide”. It’s a shame because the Darksun is already those things, the defiler magic, the tyrannical sorcerer kings, the image of the last Dragon winning and bellowing triumphantly at its prize: a barren, lifeless kingdom all to himself. That’s to say nothing of the how. How could they be so sure all the members of the race were killed? (I assume it involves magic, so this one bothers me less, but it’s still an issue).

I haven’t done any research on this, so maybe I’m being unnecessarily harsh, but I just wanted to hear what others thought and see if my suspicions were justified.

[Tegu8788]

There is a plot that I will spoil, in the books that explains the reason why. As for the how, as I understand it magic had some part of it, but if you kill enough of a species, it will be unable to reproduce, and hence, go extinct.

In the books, there was an attempt to "purify" the world so that only one race was left, halflings if I recall correctly. The original dragon wanted to kill all the other races so that halflings could take over the world, but his plans were stopped by his generals, the sorcerer-kings, when they realized that their genocides were only the first round, and that they would be next.

[Tiki Snakes]

Since this topic seems to have resolved itself and my question is semi-related:

Why does Darksun make genocide such a major component? Call me cynical but it just seemed like TSR (I assume) going “How do we show that this world is new, dark, mature and edgy? I know, genocide”. It’s a shame because the Darksun is already those things, the defiler magic, the tyrannical sorcerer kings, the image of the last Dragon winning and bellowing triumphantly at its prize: a barren, lifeless kingdom all to himself. That’s to say nothing of the how. How could they be so sure all the members of the race were killed? (I assume it involves magic, so this one bothers me less, but it’s still an issue).

I haven’t done any research on this, so maybe I’m being unnecessarily harsh, but I just wanted to hear what others thought and see if my suspicions were justified.

The concept behind Dark Sun wasn't so much that it was Darker and Grittier, but that it was Dark, Gritty and Unfamiliar. So standard enemy races are wiped out in the backstory, surviving pc races are radically changed from how we find them elsewhere and exotic new things are added.

As I understand it, magic was involved in the cleansings, but only in the sense that the people orchestrating it were hideously powerful evil sorcerers wielding world-damaging magic without restraint. The actual genociding was essentially just a matter of finding and killing every memeber of the race they could find. It also wasn't always successful. I think several of the Big-Bad's champions tried to kill the dwarves for example, whilst other races succumbed to the first champion to be set the task of killing them all. Others survived that, only to be wiped out by a later, more competent or lucky champion.

As for how they could be sure? Well, they essentially couldn't, I guess. Hence one of the suggestions in 4e for ways to introduce members of a "Cleansed" race being that they come from a tiny pocket of surviving members of said race. But in general, given their might and their resources at the time, the champions could be pretty confident that once they'd cleansed a race, they'd probably done sufficient damage to wipe them out even if they had missed one or two unique individuals in far flung corners.

But yes, to reiterate, the point of all that genocide is more to provide a setting without the overly familiar rather than purely genocide for its own sake. It also adds quite a bit of menace to the surviving Sorcerer Kings.

[Boci]

But yes, to reiterate, the point of all that genocide is more to provide a setting without the overly familiar rather than purely genocide for its own sake. It also adds quite a bit of menace to the surviving Sorcerer Kings.

Okay, but wouldn't it have made Darksun even more unfamiliar if the cleansed races had never existed? I dunno, maybe I'm just nit picking...

[Tiki Snakes]

Sure, but for whatever reason, they didn't go with that. Possibly due to Planescape also being a thing? Something about the idea of there being a certain tendancy to start with the same raw materials? I don't know, but I figure it's something like that.

EDIT - Also, it's very much a post-apocalyptic setting, so using the things you don't actually want as fodder for the apocalypse? That makes plenty of sense, I guess.

[Boci]

EDIT - Also, it's very much a post-apocalyptic setting, so using the things you don't actually want as fodder for the apocalypse? That makes plenty of sense, I guess.

That...would actually have worked a lot better IMO. As the impact of the defiler's magic spread and resources dwindled, skirmishes, often along race lines, become increasingly common and sometimes developed into full scale battles and wars. Since then massive casualties have stabalized the situation to an uneasy peace, the following races are presumed to have not survived.

[Tiki Snakes]

No, I mean, the Sorcerer Kings using their foul magic in genocidal quests? That IS the apocalypse, in Dark Sun Canon. It's directly what happened.

"Some random wars happened?" Much less interesting, to my mind.

[Boci]

No, I mean, the Sorcerer Kings using their foul magic in genocidal quests? That IS the apocalypse, in Dark Sun Canon. It's directly what happened.

"Some random wars happened?" Much less interesting, to my mind.

It may seem like that initially, but I think once you look deeper you'll find the opposite is tue. Decades of racial struggles and wars over resources will shape the world the game takes set in. When did certain races start to lose the battle? When did their extiction start to become a possibility? What tactics did each side use? How did they change? What results visible in the campaign world are the result of this forced adaptation? Who were the famous champions of each race?

Sure "Powerful magic users inact genocide" is larger, more deliberate and thus more malignant. But I would ask what effect it will have on the game other than explaining how the world got there.

[Tegu8788]

There is also a fair amount of "Our X are different." Having existing races gives players a familiar starting point, then tweaking them is easier than building a dozen brand new races. It also means that existing materials can just be ported over, giving the new world lots of support.

The world is dying, and everyone knows it. It's not just post-apocalyptic, the apocalypse is ancient history. They genocides didn't happen recently, the Sorcerer-Kings, the generals in charge, have been ruling for over a hundred years as I recall. This is after the long, long wars, and they imprisoned the Dragon.

[Tiki Snakes]

It may seem like that initially, but I think once you look deeper you'll find the opposite is tue. Decades of racial struggles and wars over resources will shape the world the game takes set in. When did certain races start to lose the battle? When did their extiction start to become a possibility? What tactics did each side use? How did they change? What results visible in the campaign world are the result of this forced adaptation? Who were the famous champions of each race?

Sure "Powerful magic users inact genocide" is larger, more deliberate and thus more malignant. But I would ask what effect it will have on the game other than explaining how the world got there.

If a race is gone, what does it matter when they started to lose the battle? What matters is who is left, and what state the conflict left the world in. Which is to say, with several supremely powerful unscrupulous monsters in charge of the smoking ruins of the world, a handful of city-states perching on the lifeless ruin of a once verdant world and with the majority of surviving races changed almost beyond recognition by what had to be done to survive both the conflict and the world it left them with.

You keep talking like the fact that it included Genocide is particularly relevant. It kind of isn't. The important thing about Athas is that powerful magic users destroyed it. They abused magic that killed off life in the area and made it all but impossible for life to recover there. They slaughtered all but indiscriminatingly using this singularly destructive magic and only halted their cataclysmic campaign when it became obvious they would become targets themselves. The setting as it stands is entirely shaped, from the geography to the politics to the creatures within it (both the surviving races and the many freaky things that have sprung up since) by the actions of these supremely powerful and utterly selfish god-kings. The Sorcerer Kings ARE Dark Sun. The genocides they were tasked with are merely one of their many crimes and a flavourful explanation why familiar foes are absent.

Sure, you could write a post-apocalyptic fantasy setting without them, and with such races either still present or simply never having existed, or even having gone extinct due to more mundane reasons. It might even be an interesting setting.

But it wouldn't be Dark Sun. I feel that the setting you are suggesting lacks a certain bleak grandeur and if the events of it's past are to remain meaningful, it also means both that the events start to feel much less remote and the focus of the setting starts to veer away from what you would do to survive in such a setting towards a more introspective focus on those who have gone. That's the thing, you see. Dark Sun isn't, as a setting, about what the Sorcerer Kings did, or the genocides of the past, or even the destruction of the world. It's about you living in the burning wastes, the only remaining strongholds of civilisation in the desolation being ruled by grotesquely powerful tyrants and the entire world being hostile in the extreme to the point where simply travelling is a perilous matter of life and death even for seasoned adventurers. That and the implied question of "Well, what are you going to do about it?"

[Boci]

If a race is gone, what does it matter when they started to lose the battle?

Because that influences how the remaining races act and form alliances.


You keep talking like the fact that it included Genocide is particularly relevant. It kind of isn't.

And that's kinda my point. Why have genocide if its only going to be a footnote in the setting backstory?


The Sorcerer Kings ARE Dark Sun.

I never advocated removing them. I praised them in what I liked about the setting.


But it wouldn't be Dark Sun. I feel that the setting you are suggesting lacks a certain bleak grandeur and if the events of it's past are to remain meaningful, it also means both that the events start to feel much less remote and the focus of the setting starts to veer away from what you would do to survive in such a setting towards a more introspective focus on those who have gone.

I disagree. The two seem similar enough that you can have both, even use one to reinforce the other. Its a constant struggle to survive and the dead races are a reminder of how utter the desctution can be. Its not just you, your entire race could die out. It has happened to others.

[Tegu8788]

When plants have psionic powers that try to kill you, Dark Sun is harsh.

I do think that a book that covered that kind of story you are talking about Boci would be cool, and I would enjoy reading it, if for no other reason than practice with detailed world building.

But, while I can't speak for the designers, I suspect that they weren't interested in having that much detail. From the company whose products gave rise to the phrase "A wizard did it!" I suspect that they were more interested in just setting up a world, then allowing gamers to play in that existing world.

I would enjoy playing in the kind of game set in the middle of the end times, that's not what Dark Sun in. The end times came, the world lost. In Dark Sun, it's like starting the game against the final boss, and all you have is a pistol that's out of ammo. And both your arms are broken. And you have on cement shoes. And you are hammered. And the fight is underwater. Burning water.


In your world, there is still some hope. In Dark Sun, hope died long ago.

[Tiki Snakes]

If you remove the genocidal campaigns of the Sorcerer Kings then you risk making them not really the sorcerer-kings anymore. It leaves them as simply warlords, who clashed races together as the world burned. That's a real step down, and a step towards more moral greyscale than they really deserve.

I think the setting loses a lot by changing the Sorcerer Kings like that.

As for issues of racial survival and racial alliances? Athas is kind of past the point where those are overly relevant themes. There simply aren't major racial groupings like that. There is a large human bias, on account of the Sorcerer Kings, and their cities being the ones that still exist, but otherwise racial issues just aren't a major theme or concern. Not in that way.

Dark Sun's focus is much more strongly on you, the individual.

[Boci]

Okay, thank you, that has helped me understand Darksun better. The only real point I disagree with is that "racial issues just aren't a major theme or concern". Maybe that was the origional intention, but I read a Darksun novel (its was about the young man who became a tribe-of-many due to some supressed childhood trauma) and racial issues seemed to be pretty important once he got to the city.

[Tegu8788]

Racism is still prevalent, as are all the other -isms. But the kind of racial unity that exists in most settings is completely gone. I haven't read that book, do you remember the title?

[Boci]

Google says The Outcast (he was a Tribe of One, not Tribe of Many).

[ghost_warlock]

In your world, there is still some hope. In Dark Sun, hope died long ago.

Not if you've actually read the novels. :smalltongue: Especially, Rise and Fall of a Sorcerer-King. I won't say much more than that because, well, spoilers.

As for the goblins, yeah, they're supposed to be dead. I'm also pretty sure that some of the 4e Darksun modules have goblin enemies that are encountered here and there.

If nothing else, have the player play a no-Raven-Queen-refluffed revenant goblin - definitely a precedent for intelligent undead on Athas. Practically the same ability score bumps anyway. No idea why a goblin would suddenly get bigger after dying, though (revenants are Medium-sized). :smalltongue:

[Boci]

Okay I think I have another questions: why did the Sorcerer King's stop their plans for genocide? They control the world, so why are there any races beyond the humans?

[ghost_warlock]

It wasn't their plan to exterminate all other races - that's what their boss Rajaat wanted them to do. When they rebelled against him and imprisoned him, they decided they didn't want to continue on the genocidal mission that had ruined their world.

Incidentally, humans weren't the 'chosen ones' - they were actually up for eventual extermination, too. That's part of why the sorcerer kings rebelled. Rajaat's chosen master race was actually halflings.

[Tegu8788]

It's better to rule a desecrated world than no world at all. The sorcerer-kings, from a certain point of view, are the heroes. They stabilize a dying world, and maintain culture so that they remaining races can continue. After the apoclypse they created, they provided a solution.

[Boci]

It's better to rule a desecrated world than no world at all. The sorcerer-kings, from a certain point of view, are the heroes. They stabilize a dying world, and maintain culture so that they remaining races can continue. After the apoclypse they created, they provided a solution.

Okay, I like this, adding a slight layer of complexity to the big bads (of the setting, if not of the story). But why would continuing genocide have destroyed the world? Is it noted that it was (presumably amongst others) one of the magic spells that was big enough to seriously kill off the planet's plant life?

I thought it was the act of becoming a sorceror king (and the addictive nature of magic combined with their raised upper limits) that destroyed the world.


Incidentally, humans weren't the 'chosen ones'

Yeah, but they were as far as the Sorcerer Kings were concerned.

[Tiki Snakes]

Well, the Sorcerer Kings were Rajaat's chosen. It's just that he hadn't told them that he would eventually kill them, too, so they turned on him/each other when they figured it out. The cleansing had only ever been Rajaats goal. So, with him gone, the Chosen who were left didn't really have any incentive to continue with the plan, so they just kind of left it and wandered off to set themselves up as god-kings.

Also, it wasn't some big event or certain spell that broke everything. The chosen were powerful sorcerers, using extra powerful magic taught them by Rajaat. It was extra powerful because it sucks in life-force from around them, killing plant-life, small animals, sometimes even people nearby and preventing anything growing there for a very long time. This is what Defiling is. It literally kills the world, a little bit at a time.

So, continuing trying to genocide everything (even if they had a reason to anymore) would have meant more defiling, so less world left. And there really isn't that much left already.

The act of becoming a Dragon is pretty bad, but you don't really...become a sorcerer king. They are simply the surviving champions of Rajaat, afaik.

[Boci]

The act of becoming a Dragon is pretty bad, but you don't really...become a sorcerer king. They are simply the surviving champions of Rajaat, afaik.

That's just my lack of knowledge on the setting. I was using the term dragon and sorcerer king interchangeably. So are the sorcerer king's not using much magic then?

[Tiki Snakes]

That's just my lack of knowledge on the setting. I was using the term dragon and sorcerer king interchangeably. So are the sorcerer king's not using much magic then?

No idea.
But almost certainly less than when they were actively trying to wipe out entire species at a time. (Especially because their boss very much seemed to subscribe to "You have failed me for the last time!" style penalties. They were...motivated.)

[LibraryOgre]

To me, Dark Sun isn't really post-apocalyptic, despite being after an apocalypse. It's more of a "this world sucks, but we're used to it." It's not post apocalyptic, IMO, because it doesn't deal much with getting past the apocalypse, but rather deals with the world being horrible... as it has been for generations.

Dark Sun was one of those second-wave worlds that said "Ok, you've seen the standard types of worlds (FR, GH, DL), now let's look at what we can do when we push the concepts a bit (SJ, DS, BR, PS)". In a number of those second-wave worlds, one of the big things was "What races can we remove, add, or change, to make it a bit different from the standard?"

Oh, and sorcerer-kings? Basically, as mentioned, each was a Dragon. However, they had a connection with an Elemental Vortex, allowing them to empower priests (templars), meaning they NEEDED to do less magic... they could have others do it. Using psionics let them cover a lot of needs, and save spells for the things spells did best. Plus, in later iterations of the rules, a dragon could decide to preserve for a while, casting spells in a less damaging fashion if they had something they wanted to keep whole.

[Boci]

Dark Sun was one of those second-wave worlds that said "Ok, you've seen the standard types of worlds (FR, GH, DL), now let's look at what we can do when we push the concepts a bit (SJ, DS, BR, PS)". In a number of those second-wave worlds, one of the big things was "What races can we remove, add, or change, to make it a bit different from the standard?"

Okay. And later on though, didn't Dragonlance start to become more Darksun-ish with the Cataclysm? The book I read had bronze as the pinnacle of mundane craftsmanship and elves didn't know how to use bows, which was bloody hilarious.


Oh, and sorcerer-kings? Basically, as mentioned, each was a Dragon. However, they had a connection with an Elemental Vortex, allowing them to empower priests (templars), meaning they NEEDED to do less magic... they could have others do it. Using psionics let them cover a lot of needs, and save spells for the things spells did best. Plus, in later iterations of the rules, a dragon could decide to preserve for a while, casting spells in a less damaging fashion if they had something they wanted to keep whole.

Is it possible for a powerful defiler to become a dragon/sorcerer king? Because one of the characters in Outcast seemed to think it was.

[LibraryOgre]

Okay. And later on though, didn't Dragonlance start to become more Darksun-ish with the Cataclysm? The book I read had bronze as the pinnacle of mundane craftsmanship and elves didn't know how to use bows, which was bloody hilarious.

Nope. The Cataclysm actually happened about 300 years before the original now of the setting (quick check shows Dragons of Autumn Twilight took place in 351 AC). The Second Cataclysm, 32 years later, made some changes but didn't take it in a Dark Sunnish direction. Definitely some elements of the post-apocalypse, especially locally, but since most people didn't have much magic to start with, its loss/reorganization didn't impact as much as it might.

One difference between Dragonlance and Dark Sun is that Dragonlance was very much aware of its history, and had a number of novel series set in the distant past from the "now". Dark Sun, after the Cleansing Wars, was pretty static for centuries, even millennia... as befits a Barsoom stand-in.


Is it possible for a powerful defiler to become a dragon/sorcerer king? Because one of the characters in Outcast seemed to think it was.

Per 2nd edition, it was not. While you could become a Dragon, that wouldn't give you the link to the Elemental Vortex which would let you empower clerics. It might, but you'd have to figure out how to bind an elemental vortex on your own, and few dragons would bind it in such a way that would give someone ELSE power (the Sorcerer-Monarchs had theirs bound to them by Rajaat).

[obryn]

Oh, and sorcerer-kings? Basically, as mentioned, each was a Dragon. However, they had a connection with an Elemental Vortex, allowing them to empower priests (templars), meaning they NEEDED to do less magic... they could have others do it. Using psionics let them cover a lot of needs, and save spells for the things spells did best. Plus, in later iterations of the rules, a dragon could decide to preserve for a while, casting spells in a less damaging fashion if they had something they wanted to keep whole.
The hilarious thing here is that the psionics system in the 2e Complete Psionicist is amazingly risky. Like, "You can disintegrate yourself pretty easily or lose access to all your powers or pass out" 5% of the time you use something with a strong effect. And another 5% chance you either get some backlash or it doesn't work properly. And if your attributes are too high, like all the sorcerer-kings' are, you can never get a "critical" success. So it's almost unthinkable that the sorcerer-kings made it to 20th level as psionicists in the first place, much less survived thousands of years using it!

I'm guessing this was fixed in the Skills and Powers version. :smallsmile:

-O

[Shatteredtower]

To me, Dark Sun isn't really post-apocalyptic, despite being after an apocalypse. It's more of a "this world sucks, but we're used to it." It's not post apocalyptic, IMO, because it doesn't deal much with getting past the apocalypse, but rather deals with the world being horrible... as it has been for generations.

Moreso than Oerth or Faerun, I got the impression that Athas was set up as as a world ripe for change. If the source material didn't provide mechanics for bringing about that change, it's because a campaign should leave that up to the players.

Then along came the second boxed set, wherein all the significant changes to the world were assumed to have occurred around the players, making them witness to someone else's story. The changes fit well within the terms you've laid out for a post-apocalyptic setting, but I wouldn't call the results an improvement.


I'm guessing this was fixed in the Skills and Powers version. :smallsmile:

In exchange for making most of the telepathy powers worthless against another psionic creature. Most aggravating.