Terraforming Athas

[Malroth]

You are a high OP Lv 17 Druid from a generic setting when the POWERS THAT BE inform you that in one week you will be sent to attempt to revive the dying world of Athas.

The rules
ECL 17 normal WBL with druid as highest casting class, If also an arcane caster will have to Defile to regain arcane spells once in Athas.
Build must have been viable in original world before being assigned terraforming duty.
Create Water and Decanters of Endless Water will not function on other side.
You will be transported with all the gear you can carry and any willing minions that are in your space when 1 week of prep time is up.

What build/tricks would you use to rebuild a planet?

[Flickerdart]

How does Planar Shepherd interact with the cosmology on Athas - do you get to keep your old plane, or are you boned cause it's no longer in the setting?

[Malroth]

I'd say you keep your old plane which will probably make the entire exercise incredibly easy but it'll be fun to see what happens.

[JeminiZero]

Create Water and Decanters of Endless Water will not function on other side.
Well, water is clearly one of your biggest concerns, and the inability to simply conjure it into existence will be problematic. So the first thing I would try to do is to circumvent this limit in some fashion. I was thinking of opening a gate (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/gate.htm) to the plane of water, but it might not exist/no longer be accessible in Athas cosmology.

So instead try this: Use Rock to Mud (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/transmuteRockToMud.htm) to turn the limitless supply of barren rock into wet mud. Maybe add on Purify Water (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/purifyFoodAndDrink.htm) to turn the mud into drinking water.

[Flickerdart]

So instead try this: Use Rock to Mud (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/transmuteRockToMud.htm) to turn the limitless supply of barren rock into wet mud. Maybe add on Purify Water (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/purifyFoodAndDrink.htm) to turn the mud into drinking water.
To be fair, nothing in the spell suggests that the mud is wet. Dry mud is a perfectly adequate result of the spell.

[Gildedragon]

There is a spell that summons a tsunami. Doesn't seem to need water existing beforehand, so there is that... but there is the problem of washing out the soil, so less good

Summoning water elementals maybe?

Make goodberry based fertilizer?

[Ravens_cry]

To be fair, nothing in the spell suggests that the mud is wet. Dry mud is a perfectly adequate result of the spell.
You know, except the part that describes creatures as sinking into it. Try that with dry mud.
Or the line near the end that says
Evaporation turns the mud to normal dirt over a period of days.
If it's not wet mud, what is being evaporated?

[JeminiZero]

To be fair, nothing in the spell suggests that the mud is wet. Dry mud is a perfectly adequate result of the spell.
The last line does suggest the mud is wet-ish

Evaporation turns the mud to normal dirt over a period of days. The exact time depends on exposure to the sun, wind, and normal drainage.

[Flickerdart]

You know, except the part that describes creatures as sinking into it. Try that with dry mud.
One can sink into a great many dry substances, including quicksand, gravel, loosely packed soil, debt...

[Rakaydos]

Quicksand is NOT a dry material. Far from it.

[Flickerdart]

Quicksand is NOT a dry material. Far from it.
Isn't it though? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_quicksand)

[Baroknik]

1) Spam flashflood from Sandstorm -- 8th level spell to create 100,000 cf of water.

2) Look into the prestige class Lord of Tides to help carry 850 lb of water at a time back.

3) Buy a bunch of Dust of Dryness (Sandstorm) that can absorb and release water. Interesting note: this stuff stores water at 1:1, but every 10,000 gallons produces a flashflood (as the spell) for a turn. Since 1cf = 7.2 gal water, you can have exponential growth of you water amounts (every 10,000 gallons yields 720,000 gallons after use).

[Ravens_cry]

Isn't it though? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_quicksand)

Would you describe that as 'mud' though? Silt, certainly, but mud? Also, how would evaporation change that into dirt?

[Coidzor]

Isn't the real question what the reaction of the sorcerer kings would be? And Borys, for that matter.

IIRC, the Mind Lords are the only other real potential source of trouble for a high level character and their neck of the woods doesn't need terraforming, so they can be avoided.

Maybe the Thri-Kreen have some kind of threat though?

[Chronos]

Even using every spell slot you have every day for creating water in the most efficient way available is going to be too slow. A problem like this, we need to address at the source, not just treating the symptom. And that means that we need to figure out what blasted Athas in the first place, and reverse it. Killing all of the defilers would be a good start, but that still doesn't address why arcane magic is based on defiling to begin with.

[ArcaneGlyph]

Shape shift into a creature that is good at sniffing out water.
Shape shift into a tunneling creature and look for artisan wells.
Start making connected under ground tunnels to connect the wells.

That would be my line of thinking.. once you gt the water above ground start using plant growth spells and knowledge nature / survival to get things going.

Not the best plan, but maybe a point to start thinking off..

[DigoDragon]

Killing all of the defilers would be a good start, but that still doesn't address why arcane magic is based on defiling to begin with.

There's a spell that kills the target by drawing out all the water from the body. Could cover two issues this way. :smallbiggrin:

[unseenmage]

A Spellclock (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/cw/20070312a&pf=true) of Wish (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/wish.htm): Create Magic Item: Spellclock of (insert spell that creates water as a side effect here; I suggest metamagic-ed Iceberg (Fr) or Fimbulwinter (Fr)) sitting next to a Spellclock of Awaken Sand (Sa) next to a Magic Mouth-style resetting trap that tells your newly created sand friend to take a water-making-clock and go wet the world could definitely do it.

And the more of the original two Spellclocks you start with the faster your job gets done.

TLDR: Two Spellclocks, one for Wishing up Spellclocks of water making and another for magic-ing up minions to carry watermaking Spellclocks across the land.

[Inevitability]

Fimbulwinter could work. It'd make it rain for at least four weeks in a 17-mile radius, so spend all your 9th and 8th spells on it, cast it in an area, move on to the next, return when the spell ends. A few weeks of continuous rain and snow should be enough to create water.

[Larkas]

If your objective is merely creating water, the above methods should work. Maybe your master is an Archduke of Water that wants to reverse the loss of power to Silt or something?

Regardless, you'd be just replacing a sandy desert with a watery one. Athas' problem isn't the lack of water, or at least not primordially. The problem with Athas is that apparently the world has a limited supply of life, and for whatever reason arcane magic there siphons life around the caster (even for preservers; it just happens much more slowly). That probably has something to do with the lack of conduits to the Outer Planes. Maybe the Brown Tide severed that connection and created the Gray, who's to know. You have to solve THAT before you try adding life to Athas. That solution probably will include shutting down every arcane caster, specially defilers, beforehand. Good luck dealing with the sorcerer-kings, and even the Dragon, though: those are epic spellcasters you will have to deal with just as a starting point, and their powers don't come only from arcane magic. If you manage to do that (pretty big IF there), you will have to find a way to add more life to the world, probably destroying the Gray in the process, and even creating/resurrecting/awakening/beating some sense into the sphere's Overdeity. That's no easy feat, and it certainly doesn't involve a simple 9th level spell. That's a real deep epic campaign right there. A pre-epic Druid have no real hope for success.

And let's entertain for a moment the thought that a Druid CAN simply create life from thin air, even in Athas. Do you really think it could escape the grasp of a sorcerer-king and prevent being turned into a sort of "magic battery"?

[Inevitability]

This is the first time I've seen someone on this forum refer to 9th level spells as 'simple'.

[Lord Haart]

the POWERS THAT BE inform you that in one week you will be sent to attempt to revive the dying world of Athas

sent to Athas
Crap your pants. For a whole week. Then fertilise Athas with what you've got.

[Larkas]

This is the first time I've seen someone on this forum refer to 9th level spells as 'simple'.

Weird, right? :smallbiggrin:

[Ravens_cry]

Weird, right? :smallbiggrin:
Reminds me of that TNG episode where Q suggests as a solution to a problem to 'Change the gravitational constant of the universe'.:smalltongue:

[Gildedragon]

Reminds me of that TNG episode where Q suggests as a solution to a problem to 'Change the gravitational constant of the universe'.:smalltongue:

Which they then did; for a loose definition of universe
So what ways have we got to change athas's plane's fundamental constants... For a loose definition of plane

An acorn of far travel in a plane like the plane of radiance, wood, or water might allow yours spells to work as if you were boosted by that plane. If not maybe planar bubble (cleric spell though) or precipitate planar breach (arcane)

Or spellclocks of controll weather, slowly cool the land; and induce rain.
Spelltraps of Irresistible (if you're gonna be hopping across broken planes stop by Kalamar to get that metamagic) Preserver's Bane to hurt anyone trying to harm your works.
Probably want to War spell both of these.

Summon a nitrogen elemenatal: get their help to make fertilizers

[Phelix-Mu]

There are actually a couple spells unique to Athas that are kosher 3.5 material that really help with this process.


Nurturing Seeds
Abjuration
Level: Drd 0
Components: V, S, M, DF
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Touch
Target: Up to 10 seeds touched
Duration: Permanent
Saving Throw: None
Spell Resistance: No
You render up to 10 cuttings or seeds dormant and
suitable for transport. The seeds or cuttings can
then be taken to an area where inclement weather,
lack of moisture, or other problems have kept
plants from growing. The dormant seeds or
cuttings are planted there and will magically take
root and can be used to start new patches of
vegetation, anchoring the soil and creating an
environment suitable for more plants to survive.
This spell protects the transplants from normal
weather conditions, but defilers, hungry animals, or
unnatural phenomenon (like Tyr-Storms) can still
destroy the plants.
Material Components: A tiny bit of dung and a
drop of water.


Rejuvenate
Transmutation
Level: Clr 6, Drd 5
Components: V, S, M
Casting Time: 1 round
Range: Close (25 ft. + 5 ft./2 levels)
Area: Circle of ground extending out to range
Duration: Instantaneous
Savings Throw: None
Spell Resistance: None
You grant the ability to support vegetation to an
area of ground. In the case of ground made sterile
by defiler magic, rejuvenate dispels the ground’s
sterility, making it immediately capable of
supporting vegetation. A circle of ground extending
out from you is enriched and moistened, and a
blanket of fine grass appears instantly. The soil and
grass are not magical, however, and are subject to
normal weather conditions. However, the grass will
survive for at least a week, even in the worst of
weather.
The spell may also be cast on any ground short
of solid rock. If cast on an area that can already
support plant life, rejuvenate increases the ground’s
fertility as the enrichment effect of the spell plant
growth, and the range is a half mile.
Material Components: A seed (any kind) and a
drop of water.


Return to the Earth
Necromancy
Level: Clr 2, Drd 3, Dance of Decay 1, Tem 2
Components: V, S
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Close (25 ft. + 5 ft./2 levels)
Targets: Corpses or corpse-like creatures
Duration: 1 round/level
Saving Throw: None
Spell Resistance: Yes
You can decompose a body just by casting dust or
earth at it. You need to spend 4 rounds to
decompose a Medium corpse. (Double the time
required for each size category larger than Medium;
halve the time for each size category less than
Medium, to a minimum of 1 round). Corpses
decomposed by this spell can still be restored to
life, but cannot be turned into undead.
You may throw earth or dust as a ranged touch
attack (maximum range 10 ft., no range increment);
the earth deals 1d12 points of damage to corporeal
undead and constructs that are composed of dead
flesh or bones.


The source for these spells was Athas.org, which was granted some manner of licensing rights by WotC to be an "official" 3.5 source, so they should function just fine in that world's strange planar structure and limits on magic. Enough spamming of the first two will solve a huge part of the problem.

The corpse disposal is mainly useful in case you have a way to come up with corpses, and at RAI turns the corpse into organic material (the normal result of when a body is "decomposed"). A large problem on Athas is the supply of organic material, severely limited due to the lack of life generally. So, if you could spam stone to flesh, for instance, you might have a good supply of organic materials that bypasses the normal need for a lifeform to be involved in the process.

Water creation has pretty much been covered. A number of spells explicitly create water that remains after the main effect of the spell ends. A small problem will be that spells like blizzard, flash-flood, and tsunami will devastate the area they are cast on, since soil not anchored down will be washed away quickly, likely exposing rock and leaving the area worse off than it started. Also, note that control weather may not work the same on Athas, since their weather is different; storms created on Athas may not result in rain, or may cause more damage than their otherworldly counterparts. Not sure if that is RAW, but I'd be surprised if there wasn't something in the Athas material that already addresses ways in which the standard core spells that could fix Athas' problems.

But, I agree with the above posters that note that anyone that shows up and rocks the boat will be ruthlessly hunted down by the powers that be and that have an interest in preserving the existing balance of power. While a well-equipped and prep'd druid can probably handle the average defiler, the real problem, as noted, are the sorcerer kings and creatures of that scale and might.

[Gildedragon]

The solution to that is starting far from the other fellas. Rock the boat gently, killing defilers and nurturing the land (and teaching folks about crop rotation) for XP into epic levels. Form a band of adventurers (if you didn't bring one as part of your equipment; and even then the more the merrier) including a couple of artificers (their magic isn't arcane so: yay!) and psions (or pianos if autocorrect is right).
Trick is getting into Epic all stealthlike

[Chronos]

Nurturing Seeds is way too easy, since, as written, that spell could terraform Mars, much less Athas. That's far too powerful to make any sense as a level 0 spell.

And scouring the land with your water-making spells shouldn't be a problem, if you start by carving out basins that you're going to turn into lakes.

[John Longarrow]

To be fair, nothing in the spell suggests that the mud is wet. Dry mud is a perfectly adequate result of the spell.

See the definition of MUD (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/MUD?s=t)

On topic, use Tsunami to clear out spaces in the wastes. Once you have bedrock, Stone to Flesh to give you basic organic material. Pour some good soil on top to start decomposition. Move to the next spot.

[Coidzor]

I suppose there are locations outside of the Tablelands that they don't really pay attention to, so there's potential to lay down the groundwork for something, I suppose?

Not quite sure how powerful the halflings actually are, but they scare the generally higher level Athasians, so they might be a threat or at least problematical to take control of. I can't remember if the Thri-Kreen are powerful enough to be a problem or if they're just geographically isolated enough that they don't have any influence from the Sorcerer Kings and the like.

Granted, if this is after Borys and all but 3(4?) of the Sorcerer-Kings have died, that changes things up to some extent, I'm sure.

What is the "average" Defiler and "average" Templar anyway?

[Rubik]

Since you're being inserted into Athas from outside of Athas, make sure you bring as many seeds of as many different types as you can, especially grasses and trees, and make sure you have as many resetting traps or spellclocks of those two spells mentioned earlier as you can manage. Get yourself a collar of perpetual attendance for an at-will Unseen Servant effect, cast Fimbulwinter, allow it to go for a day or so before Dispelling it, then Rejuvenate the land, have the Unseen Servants pass the seeds close to the trap/clock to Nurture them, then plant them. Cast Plant Growth a few times until seeds are produced, and repeat the process, ad infinitum, until you have a vast sprawling grassland and woodland. Train other druids in this process.

Also, collect all the non-defiler arcane casters you can and retrain them into spell-to-power erudites. Now they've got all the spells (and powers) as psionic powers, and they no longer negatively impact the land, then use them to capture the defilers and Mindrape them into not defiling anymore, then retrain them, as well.

[Ruethgar]

Get an item of infinite War Prestidigitation that has the Downpour and Grass Growth side effect made by a Divine Bard(wouldn't want to fiddle with arcane just in case). Whenever you use the spell, it rains. Use prestidigitation to make seeds, they have to be attended objects, but as their creation is not a change to an object that last indefinitely. The plant eventually cycles out all of the fragile prestidigitated material and technically becomes useful as it ages. Because it is a War Spell, you get CL*25 the yield in objects created, let's assume CL 3. So 75 seeds every round as a swift action with Swift Concentration(why the hell wouldn't a caster have it?). You also get about 100 5ft squares of grass per round(assuming you DM is a being difficult and makes the grass grown only one cell at a time 100 get's you the equal of a human in native grass cells which should be enough). And lastly you can make about a 40ft cube of water per round.

As a Warforged while still casting spells like Plant Growth and Rejuvenate all day long and using up the swift actions on the prestidigitation, you can make a 1000ft cube of water every day, 1 million seeds of let's say Aspen, and up to about 1mile squared of grass(using the low end only about 0.5 miles squared). Make the grass bamboo to get more use out of it.

[Gildedragon]

Since you're being inserted into Athas from outside of Athas, make sure you bring as many seeds of as many different types as you can, especially grasses and trees, and make sure you have as many resetting traps or spellclocks of those two spells mentioned earlier as you can manage. Get yourself a collar of perpetual attendance for an at-will Unseen Servant effect, cast Fimbulwinter, allow it to go for a day or so before Dispelling it, then Rejuvenate the land, have the Unseen Servants pass the seeds close to the trap/clock to Nurture them, then plant them. Cast Plant Growth a few times until seeds are produced, and repeat the process, ad infinitum, until you have a vast sprawling grassland and woodland. Train other druids in this process.


Easier than nurturing would be to use 50 of them for a continuous item of
Rejuvenate Land. Make a few minor schemes of that spell, pass them to other Druids and Preservers. Retrain preservers into artificers: more schemas, more land healing traps. Not arcane so no problem.

Bring hundreds of livewood (and that other living wood...) toothpicks, use them as sapling starters

For briberies bring lots of Shapesand and aurorum and riverine (ideally in the form of shapechanging fine-sized shurikens) if the promise of land rejuvenation won't keep wandering folks quiet about your work at the periphery, then trade goods might.

Creating oceans is a good idea
Enveloping pit full of quintessence + quintessence trap can be good to keep plants and animals safe for transport (you will want to make the seas into living ecosystems)

Once you hit epic researching a "rainy, mild weathered-age" spell (something between ice age and global warming) would not be remiss

[ArqArturo]

One can sink into a great many dry substances, including quicksand, gravel, loosely packed soil, debt...

You can also fall in love.

But never fall into a tanning bed (http://theoatmeal.com/comics/running4).

[Larkas]

Not quite sure how powerful the halflings actually are, but they scare the generally higher level Athasians, so they might be a threat or at least problematical to take control of. I can't remember if the Thri-Kreen are powerful enough to be a problem or if they're just geographically isolated enough that they don't have any influence from the Sorcerer Kings and the like.

Well, the most powerful being in the Athasian universe is technically a halfling, so... :smallbiggrin:

[Phelix-Mu]

Nurturing Seeds is way too easy, since, as written, that spell could terraform Mars, much less Athas. That's far too powerful to make any sense as a level 0 spell.

And scouring the land with your water-making spells shouldn't be a problem, if you start by carving out basins that you're going to turn into lakes.

And yet I didn't make it up. Keep in mind that, aside from being useful for growing a forest in a world where that doesn't much happen, the spell will actually have a really, really small impact on the game. Compare with defiling itself, where each spell defiled can burn up yards worth of radius of soil/plant life, mainly leaving sand, if I recall correctly. And, for a defiler, there is not much reason not to defile if there is an opportunity to do so (though we can discuss whether that whole mindset makes any sense at all).

While I do like the stone to flesh plan, it isn't on the druid spell list. Do we have a trick available for acquiring it as a druid spell?

[Gildedragon]

It is on the Urban Druid spell list
and it is a healer 5 spell, so an artificer-made thingamabob would work, from a minor schema to a custom item of x times per day

[Coidzor]

And, for a defiler, there is not much reason not to defile if there is an opportunity to do so (though we can discuss whether that whole mindset makes any sense at all).

Wait. They defile even when they don't have any spells they need to cast? :smallconfused:


Well, the most powerful being in the Athasian universe is technically a halfling, so... :smallbiggrin:

Is that what Rajaat was? Never was quite able to get a bead on him beyond his evil plan and managing to be one of those too powerful to kill types.

Edit: You know, it's too bad a Living Spell Rejuvenate would be completely useless.

[ArqArturo]

1) Spam flashflood from Sandstorm -- 8th level spell to create 100,000 cf of water.

2) Look into the prestige class Lord of Tides to help carry 850 lb of water at a time back.

3) Buy a bunch of Dust of Dryness (Sandstorm) that can absorb and release water. Interesting note: this stuff stores water at 1:1, but every 10,000 gallons produces a flashflood (as the spell) for a turn. Since 1cf = 7.2 gal water, you can have exponential growth of you water amounts (every 10,000 gallons yields 720,000 gallons after use).

The lord of tides can also create a two-way portal from where you are, to another plane you've visited, so it makes it interesting if you can manage to open a portal to the elemental plane of water (if allowed).

The Lord of Tides can also extract water from living creatures, just like a sponge. And you can say this while doing it:

The average human male is about 60% water. Far as I'm concerned that's a little extravagant. So if you feel a bit dehydrated in this next round, that's normal. I'm gonna hit you with Class Feature and see if we can't get you down to 20 or 30 per cent.

[Larkas]

Is that what Rajaat was? Never was quite able to get a bead on him beyond his evil plan and managing to be one of those too powerful to kill types.


Yep. Well, their direct successor, in any case. His idea to save the world and bring back the Blue Age actually goes through exterminating every non-halfling humanoid in Athas (all the other races differentiated from halflings after the Brown Tide, and he reasons that these other races have to be gone and give their life force back to the world).

So yeah, if Rajaat himself went to such extremes measures to save the world and failed (though it's not clear if he would've been successful had him not been betrayed), our hypothetical Druid had better put some SERIOUS effort behind his attempt if he wants to have anything resembling success. I said it before and I'll say it again: no simple spell of any level will save Athas, you have to actually mess with the world in a fundamental level. Let's not forget that the world is much farther gone now than in Rajaat's time.

[ArqArturo]

We could merge it with the world of Eredane. It has plenty of water.

[toapat]

While I do like the stone to flesh plan, it isn't on the druid spell list. Do we have a trick available for acquiring it as a druid spell?

Extra spell or spell research.

Im wondering if a custom Rod of Intensify Spell is considered "Unfair"

Intensified extended Widened Fimbulwinter drops 13 feet of snow per day, for 192 weeks, or 1344 days. Considering we can directly manipulate what type of snow comes down in fimbulwinter, lets say we get snow that melts down at a 5:1 Ratio: This spell generates for us 3351 cubic miles of water over 3.6 years. Interestingly this means if we just spend one slot on it per day for the entire duration of the first spell, then we appear to be 20% of the way through the volume of the pacific ocean


Its starting to look like we need Rip-Repping wishclocks that can pump out some rediculous spells to actually make a dent on the environment permanently. Rejuvination does help alot, expecially considering its AoE is modified by Enlarge spell, not Widen.

[Gildedragon]

So reading the Athas spell lists.
Spell traps / clocks of War Conservation and Backlash would help keep defilers at bay.
Tie it in with Rejuvenate and defilers' effects become minimal and curtailed.
Little automata of Create Oasis would likewise be interesting for Athas. Since they won't move once they've created the oasis the oases last indefinitely


On that note there are also these Epic (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/spells/verdigrisTsunami.htm) Spells (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/spells/verdigris.htm) which spell out (eventually) less worry about producing plant life, cause... well... they generate a lot of it.

[Mnemnosyne]

Not just the world, but the sun. Fixing Athas would have to start at its root with changing the red sun back to yellow or even blue. The Pristine Tower probably can't do it, because even the halfling nature-masters that originally built it didn't try to use it to reverse it; they probably knew that the change they had wrought in order to end the brown tide was irreversible, at least with the power of the Pristine Tower.

Without fixing that root cause, any amount of terraforming would be undone simply by Athas' natural environment reasserting itself. And let's keep in mind that alongside Rajaat, there were all the other Pyreen, the not-crazy ones, that had 66,000 years before Rajaat even discovered magic, and another several thousand after, to come up with a solution. If they had come up with something, then after Rajaat was defeated they would have used the Pristine Tower to reverse the damage, but the fact that they didn't suggests that the Pristine Tower is probably flat out incapable of that.

[Rubik]

Why not commission a trap that creates repeating traps of Rejuvenate on, say, ordinary rings, then hand those rings out to everybody, including defilers?

[Elderand]

Plan: use spell clock, resetting traps to cast spell to save the issue.

Flaw: Defiling is the default, your wonderous spelltrap, spellclock is going to be defilling everything around itself.

[Rubik]

Plan: use spell clock, resetting traps to cast spell to save the issue.

Flaw: Defiling is the default, your wonderous spelltrap, spellclock is going to be defilling everything around itself.Not if it's not arcane magic, it won't.

[toapat]

Not just the world, but the sun. Fixing Athas would have to start at its root with changing the red sun back to yellow or even blue. The Pristine Tower probably can't do it, because even the halfling nature-masters that originally built it didn't try to use it to reverse it; they probably knew that the change they had wrought in order to end the brown tide was irreversible, at least with the power of the Pristine Tower.

Without fixing that root cause, any amount of terraforming would be undone simply by Athas' natural environment reasserting itself. And let's keep in mind that alongside Rajaat, there were all the other Pyreen, the not-crazy ones, that had 66,000 years before Rajaat even discovered magic, and another several thousand after, to come up with a solution. If they had come up with something, then after Rajaat was defeated they would have used the Pristine Tower to reverse the damage, but the fact that they didn't suggests that the Pristine Tower is probably flat out incapable of that.

Realistically designing a sunshield to be targetted with Nailed to the Sky is actually rather low priority. the Fimbulwinter i described is necessary to maintain what advances are made, we need animate spellclocks that move fast and cast Enlarged Rejuvenations.

Nourishing seeds is actually worthless, because while it lets plants grow in dead soil, it doesnt revive the soil like Rejuvenation. The reason we want it is only because generating the volume of water we need will take 7.2 years. With 7.2 years in a box made of Walls of Force and with enough magical illumination, our Druid Messiah will be raising alot of crops while manufacturing alot of robots to save the world.

[Gildedragon]

Without fixing that root cause, any amount of terraforming would be undone simply by Athas' natural environment reasserting itself. And let's keep in mind that alongside Rajaat, there were all the other Pyreen, the not-crazy ones, that had 66,000 years before Rajaat even discovered magic, and another several thousand after, to come up with a solution. If they had come up with something, then after Rajaat was defeated they would have used the Pristine Tower to reverse the damage, but the fact that they didn't suggests that the Pristine Tower is probably flat out incapable of that.

Thaaat's gonna be tricky and probably needs the problems of the world to be temporarily fixed...

A temporary fix for the lack of solar radiation for life: Faerzress though how to get that is anyone's guess

A longer term fix is probably to renew the sun... some epic transmutation magic is probably in order... Maybe ripping into the +energy plane?

[toapat]

Thaaat's gonna be tricky and probably needs the problems of the world to be temporarily fixed...

A temporary fix for the lack of solar radiation for life: Faerzress though how to get that is anyone's guess

A longer term fix is probably to renew the sun... some epic transmutation magic is probably in order... Maybe ripping into the +energy plane?

Stars in DnD are holes in the universe directly connected to the plane of fire. im not sure there is a way to fix them at all.

My personal opinion is to use Nailed to the sky on a sunshield which has thousands of bottles of air attached to it (alternatively Decanters of endless air) and repeating spell traps that fire lightning bolts. Have the platform just manufacture Ozone.

[Gildedragon]

Stars in DnD are holes in the universe directly connected to the plane of fire. im not sure there is a way to fix them at all.

My personal opinion is to use Nailed to the sky on a sunshield which has thousands of bottles of air attached to it (alternatively Decanters of endless air) and repeating spell traps that fire lightning bolts. Have the platform just manufacture Ozone.

I thought it was to the positive energy plane.
(A shift from + to fire could explain the shift to red and the scorchyness)

In any case, making a new hole or repairing the old one would be interesting

[Larkas]

So... Turn a batch of preservers into Avangions (http://www.lomion.de/cmm/avangion.php)? :smallbiggrin:

[Coidzor]

So... Turn a batch of preservers into Avangions (http://www.lomion.de/cmm/avangion.php)? :smallbiggrin:

Always seems like it'd just too much trouble for what you get with those.

[Chronos]

Wait, the original change to Athas's sun was wrought by mortals, wasn't it? If it can be done, it seems like there should be at least a chance that it can be undone.

[toapat]

So... Turn a batch of preservers into Avangions (http://www.lomion.de/cmm/avangion.php)? :smallbiggrin:

not really, Preservers are small time.

5 Miles in diameter? Im considering the druid to be a coward when hes not teraforming half the planet Through Armegeddon

[Larkas]

not really, Preservers are small time.

5 Miles in diameter? Im considering the druid to be a coward when hes not teraforming half the planet Through Armegeddon

I believe that is actually what pushed Athas down the slope that turned it into the wasteland it is now :smallbiggrin:

[Gildedragon]

I believe that is actually what pushed Athas down the slope that turned it into the wasteland it is now :smallbiggrin:

Wizard's Law #1332: Two wrongs might not make a right, but two (or more) apocalypses do

[toapat]

I believe that is actually what pushed Athas down the slope that turned it into the wasteland it is now :smallbiggrin:

Athas was killed by lazy mages.

this Druid reincarnates it through Fimbulwinter, Fimbulwinter is one of the first events of Ragnarok.

The problem i have with other people suggesting using Fimbulwinter across the planet is that you sorta need the spell to run a while before it actually starts beating out Extended Persistant Blizzard.

too bad you cant finish with the castings of fimbulwinter on day 1345 with an Energy Substitution (Fire) one and have it eat through the massive glacier over your Dome of Force

[Larkas]

Now that you mention it... What about drawing Ragnorra to Athas? :smallbiggrin:

[toapat]

Now that you mention it... What about drawing Ragnorra to Athas? :smallbiggrin:

the world is too dead to call her, no matter how well the Malshapers seed the path

[Coidzor]

Athas was killed by lazy mages.

Is that what caused the Brown Tide? It seemed left vague everywhere I've seen it discussed. Or are you saying that laziness is what lead to the ancient halflings making the Pristine Tower (and Dark Lens?) in the first place?

I'm not quite sure lazy is quite the term I'd use for Rajaat and his champions. Crazy, yes. Stupid, maybe. Puppy-eating Evil, almost certainly.

[toapat]

Is that what caused the Brown Tide? It seemed left vague everywhere I've seen it discussed. Or are you saying that laziness is what lead to the ancient halflings making the Pristine Tower (and Dark Lens?) in the first place?

I'm not quite sure lazy is quite the term I'd use for Rajaat and his champions. Crazy, yes. Stupid, maybe. Puppy-eating Evil, almost certainly.

Defilers in general, at least from what i understand Preserving was discovered shortly afterwards but it didnt catch on.

[magotter]

The average human male is about 60% water. Far as I'm concerned that's a little extravagant. So if you feel a bit dehydrated in this next round, that's normal. I'm gonna hit you with Class Feature and see if we can't get you down to 20 or 30 per cent.

Nevermind the human body; you're a minion master. Buy every single item, spell, power, gear, etc related to summoning things. Animals, monsters, aberrations, all of it. Fill all your slots with Summon Nature's Ally II, then summon 1d4+1 Cows each time. As soon as they arrive, slit their bellies. Cattle can bleed for hours on end without dying, and your spell's duration, while long, will end much sooner than that. Just keep filling the world with water extracted from blood and natural bodily fluids. Make the summons piss and **** everywhere. Bam, you've got fertilizer, urea (which is great for plants), and water. If you accidentally kill the summon, it just poofs home anyway. If not, you've got resources. Get worshipped as a primitive nature god, not unlike the brutal, hardcore types worshipped by early celts and nords. Now, I know this is all cruel, but Circle of Life, baby. Death begets new beginnings.


Oh, and I'm sure someone will bring it up, but I don't see anything written about spilled blood and body parts disappearing once the summon does, sooo.....

[Gildedragon]

Nevermind the human body; you're a minion master. Buy every single item, spell, power, gear, etc related to summoning things. Animals, monsters, aberrations, all of it. Fill all your slots with Summon Nature's Ally II, then summon 1d4+1 Cows each time. As soon as they arrive, slit their bellies. Cattle can bleed for hours on end without dying, and your spell's duration, while long, will end much sooner than that. Just keep filling the world with water extracted from blood and natural bodily fluids. Make the summons piss and **** everywhere. Bam, you've got fertilizer, urea (which is great for plants), and water. If you accidentally kill the summon, it just poofs home anyway. If not, you've got resources. Get worshipped as a primitive nature god, not unlike the brutal, hardcore types worshipped by early celts and nords. Now, I know this is all cruel, but Circle of Life, baby. Death begets new beginnings.


Oh, and I'm sure someone will bring it up, but I don't see anything written about spilled blood and body parts disappearing once the summon does, sooo.....

Chicken Infested!
There's your corpse fertilizer + water source!

[Coidzor]

Nevermind the human body; you're a minion master. Buy every single item, spell, power, gear, etc related to summoning things. Animals, monsters, aberrations, all of it. Fill all your slots with Summon Nature's Ally II, then summon 1d4+1 Cows each time. As soon as they arrive, slit their bellies. Cattle can bleed for hours on end without dying, and your spell's duration, while long, will end much sooner than that. Just keep filling the world with water extracted from blood and natural bodily fluids. Make the summons piss and **** everywhere. Bam, you've got fertilizer, urea (which is great for plants), and water. If you accidentally kill the summon, it just poofs home anyway. If not, you've got resources. Get worshipped as a primitive nature god, not unlike the brutal, hardcore types worshipped by early celts and nords. Now, I know this is all cruel, but Circle of Life, baby. Death begets new beginnings.


Oh, and I'm sure someone will bring it up, but I don't see anything written about spilled blood and body parts disappearing once the summon does, sooo.....

So that's definitely in the lead for the most brutal approach. Probably a bit too much on the brute force though.


Chicken Infested!
There's your corpse fertilizer + water source!

The one power against which even Rajaat is powerless. :smallamused:

[Larkas]

Is that what caused the Brown Tide? It seemed left vague everywhere I've seen it discussed. Or are you saying that laziness is what lead to the ancient halflings making the Pristine Tower (and Dark Lens?) in the first place?

I'm not quite sure lazy is quite the term I'd use for Rajaat and his champions. Crazy, yes. Stupid, maybe. Puppy-eating Evil, almost certainly.


Defilers in general, at least from what i understand Preserving was discovered shortly afterwards but it didnt catch on.

Casting wasn't the cause for the Brown Tide. It hadn't even been invented at the time. Nor was manifesting, for that matter. Halflings of that era used some kind of "lifeshaping", which was some kind of magical bioengineering, though explicitly not arcane (but see below).

The Brown Tide was caused by these lifeshapers' desire to increase the yield of the oceans. They tried increasing its general lifeforce. Suffice to say that it backfired tremendously.

Now, the lifeshapers dealt with forces they didn't quite comprehend when making whatever unleashed the Brown Tide. It is subtly implied that these forces were arcane, and that the Brown Tide was caused by defiling of epic proportions. An analogy: they split the atom thinking it would make the world around them more amenable to life.

The Pristine Tower was actually constructed to end the Brown Tide. It succeeded - at the cost of turning the blue sun yellow, a vastly decreased sea level and the splitting of the halflings into several divergent races. It was misused by Rajaat only much later.

[Seer_of_Heart]

Chicken Infested!
There's your corpse fertilizer + water source!

Go home guys the thread has been won. :smalltongue:

[ArqArturo]

The one power against which even Rajaat is powerless. :smallamused:

Are undead poultry on the same power level as Pun-Pun?.

[Coidzor]

Are undead poultry on the same power level as Pun-Pun?.

Imagine if you will Rajaat, standing victorious over the blasted corpses of his former champions, the head of Borys at his feet. Suddenly the earth itself begins to hum & the already darkened sun is plotted out as an immense and infinite tidal wave of chickens roils across the surface of Athas. Within seconds he is caught up in this tide and engulfed, buried in a sea of life before he can even collect his thoughts.

Try as he might to use his magicks to suck the life from these chickens and destroy them, more come to replace them. Always more chickens.

It is the beginning of the Feather Age of Athas.

[Gildedragon]

So athas is terraformed: we got infinite water and nutrient rich soil... however in the process we suffocated and crushed every being on the planet's surface.
Now what?

[ArqArturo]

Tell the news in Sigil that a rich, uninhabited planet, is ready for the plundering.

[toapat]

Tell the news in Sigil that a rich, uninhabited planet, is ready for the plundering.

Athas is supposed to have always been poor in metals. it would be more practical to just set up a tourism agency and run a small house of curios.

[Gildedragon]

Question is now, can we get a pig big enough to start fusion and give birth to a new sun...

[ArqArturo]

Ok, now that is just getting too silly.

[Malroth]

Some good ideas so far, Iceburg, Fibulwinter and to a lesser extent Lord of tides solve the water problem quite nicely even with just the Druids own spell slots.

Spell Clocks of Renewal were also a good idea but how are you getting a spellclock of Wish? I did restrict you to WBL at the beginning of the journey (plus nobody with a spellclock of wish would sell it at any price) and I doubt your 1/year wish you get from Zodar shapechange would be enough to build your own with any sort of efficiency.

The Nailed to the sky Sunshade has its potential depending on how a DM rules the sun works, If its an acutal star like our universe's that's gone to the Red Giant phase thats burning off the water due to its increased proximity to the planet then a heavy sunshade might help, but if its a permanent gate to the plane of Fire that's been corrupted somehow and is outputting less energy than before then blocking the sun would further hasten Athas' demise

Seeing Chicken Infested was a hilarious abuse of the most broken Flaw ever printed but relies on the existance of infinite free actions per turn, with any finite limit it looses out to the other methods so far.

[magotter]

So athas is terraformed: we got infinite water and nutrient rich soil... however in the process we suffocated and crushed every being on the planet's surface.
Now what?

Did you not hear me before? You've got summoning powers. You've got wildshape. Make like the mythic deity Echidna and start breeding with urrrrything. What part of Savage and Primitive Nature God of Death and Life needs more explaining?

It's just metal enough that those hard rocking bards will dedicate an entire epic poem to you. Kill things, beget life, slaughter a dying planet to make way for a new one. So. F*cking. METAL.

[toapat]

Some good ideas so far, Iceburg, Fibulwinter and to a lesser extent Lord of tides solve the water problem quite nicely even with just the Druids own spell slots.

Spell Clocks of Renewal were also a good idea but how are you getting a spellclock of Wish? I did restrict you to WBL at the beginning of the journey (plus nobody with a spellclock of wish would sell it at any price) and I doubt your 1/year wish you get from Zodar shapechange would be enough to build your own with any sort of efficiency.

The Nailed to the sky Sunshade has its potential depending on how a DM rules the sun works, If its an acutal star like our universe's that's gone to the Red Giant phase thats burning off the water due to its increased proximity to the planet then a heavy sunshade might help, but if its a permanent gate to the plane of Fire that's been corrupted somehow and is outputting less energy than before then blocking the sun would further hasten Athas' demise

Seeing Chicken Infested was a hilarious abuse of the most broken Flaw ever printed but relies on the existance of infinite free actions per turn, with any finite limit it looses out to the other methods so far.

You only need one wish trap, A single use one at that (or the Zodar wish). You use that one to wish for a resetting autonomous wish trap which you have produce wish traps. In a day you have enough manufacturing that you can generate the necessary army of autonomous all terrain Enlarged Rejuvinate traps.

At the end of 7.2 years you have to get out to the planetary icewall that you created and start casting earthquakes, because you need to thaw the 60 mile tall block of ice that you built and having it all be one solid chunk isnt doing you any good. You want to have manufactured in that time an infinite use Wall of Fire item.

The sun is not really notable if it obeys the normal laws of physics. Just become something with immunity to fire, fly into its core, and then use one of the creation spells to make hydrogen. If its a hole to the plane of fire, its similar to the gate spell, which means we need to find a way to move the planar breach in the plane of fire closer to the core.

[Ruethgar]

To further add to my post, you don't need to be a druid to have that item. Wasting your first level feats on wealth you could probably get it as a level 1 human commoner. Take Create Device:Rune Circles and you can make the item on your own though it has one third the production rate, you avoid all magic and make them cost a mere 95 gold to build with Blazing Forge, but also make them usable by up to 8 people at a time instead of one so a net gain of 166% production. Does have the limitation of movement though, but cheap enough you could just use casual ranks in a Craft or Profession to pay for it pretty quickly.

[unseenmage]

...

Spell Clocks of Renewal were also a good idea but how are you getting a spellclock of Wish? I did restrict you to WBL at the beginning of the journey (plus nobody with a spellclock of wish would sell it at any price) and I doubt your 1/year wish you get from Zodar shapechange would be enough to build your own with any sort of efficiency.

...

Runic Guardians (MM2) are an alternative way to repeat an up to 6th level spell 1xday.

With the 'Constructs are Magic Items' rules interpretation they can be Wish-ed for just like Magic Items too. Or, more WBL friendly-ly, they can be improved just like any other Magic Item by paying x1.5 to add an existing effect to them.
So, add Decanter of Endless Water 1xday Custom Magic item of metamagic-ed Fimbulwinter to a Construct a few times then send it out into the world to spread it's liquids far and wide.

How I usually afford Spellclocks...
Not that Renewal was my idea but my usual method for shattering WBL is to use Spellsong Nightingales (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/cw/20070115a) with Water to Acid (St) and Create Water in them. Two uses of Create Water and one of Water to Acid nets you enough acid for sale that you make a profit even with buying vials or barrels for storage and even with my usual houserule of 'sell in bulk for 1/4 price'.
Add in Elation (BoED) and Distilled Joy (BoED) for craft xp and you're set.

The acid is a consumable so it doesn't wreck economies like printing free gp either (though it could very likely wreck ecologies/populations). You become limited by charts in the DMG/MIC for how much gold settlements have for buying stuff instead of WBL.

[Ruethgar]

With the 'Constructs are Magic Items' rules interpretation they can be Wish-ed for just like Magic Items too. Or, more WBL friendly-ly, they can be improved just like any other Magic Item by paying x1.5 to add an existing effect to them.
So, add Decanter of Endless Water to a Construct a few times then send it out into the world to spread it's liquids far and wide.


The Decanter is specifically prohibited, however you could get the Downpour side effect or another water creating spell.

[Eldan]

Some good suggestions on nutrients and water. Let me suggest one more thing that has been sadly neglected: one of my favourite items, the Feather Token: tree.

For a humble 400 gold, you get a fully formed oak tree. Our druid can easily get a hundred of those for a fraction of his wealth. The canopy is forty feet in diameter per tree. A hundred of these trees produces about three and a half acres of dense, old-growth forest. Not much, I know, but a very good start and much faster than seeds.

[toapat]

The Decanter is specifically prohibited, however you could get the Downpour side effect or another water creating spell.

Hense, why i was focusing on Fimbulwinter. When intensified, that spell generates the most water per casting of any spell in the game, Extended Persistant Blizzard is the second best. Everything else is negligable and we are trying to hydrate a planet, not some small area.

[malonkey1]

Question is now, can we get a pig big enough to start fusion and give birth to a new sun...


Ok, now that is just getting too silly.

No, I think he might have something here. A sufficiently massive pig could definitely ignite nuclear fusion. Find a creature with a high enough Strength (let's say an Ankylosaurus, STR 29 with bull's strength cast on it to bring it up to STR 33, you've already got over 7 tons of pig. If you can get more boosts, then that's over a ton per additional point of strength. Enough to ignite fusion if you can really optimize, and if you're utterly nucking futs, you could even optimize it into a piggy singularity.

[Darkweave31]

Spell Clocks of Renewal were also a good idea but how are you getting a spellclock of Wish? I did restrict you to WBL at the beginning of the journey (plus nobody with a spellclock of wish would sell it at any price) and I doubt your 1/year wish you get from Zodar shapechange would be enough to build your own with any sort of efficiency.

Well first, you could just use zodar's wish to wish for a spellclock of wish (Would you say you wish for me to stop wishing?). That falls under the wishing for a magic item clause of wish.

Second, though I'm not entirely sure about the RAW, each round you could possibly shapechange into a different Zodar for another wish.

For another abuse of wish shenanigans, use your favorite infinite wish loop to mass produce Abeil Queen (MMII) simulacra. They have 16th level druid casting and thus can spread the renewal and nurturing seeds. Alternatively solars for cleric 20 casting and wish SLA. Pump enough magic into the world and soon enough it'll start to look like eberron.

[unseenmage]

The Decanter is specifically prohibited, however you could get the Downpour side effect or another water creating spell.

My bad, honestly I just posted that item because I couldn't remember the name of it and, having found the name, forgot it was prohibited.

Odd quirk of 'Constructs as Magic Items' is that you can combine them with Custom Magic Traps or even Custom Wondrous Architecture (SBG) for discount magic effects that walk around. Make them big enough that they cannpt be carried and it's still within the RAI too.

[Coidzor]

Question is now, can we get a pig big enough to start fusion and give birth to a new sun...

I think they hit the limit in the thread where they were discussing how to make a commoner with a pig large enough to get max damage for a war hulking hurler. So probably not without waiting an awful long time with festering anger or going full Pun-Pun on the problem. You'd probably just want to go into Epic Magic for your solar creation needs. And I don't even want to think about what you'd need to do to compensate for the already existing sun and work with orbital mechanics.


Some good suggestions on nutrients and water. Let me suggest one more thing that has been sadly neglected: one of my favourite items, the Feather Token: tree.

For a humble 400 gold, you get a fully formed oak tree. Our druid can easily get a hundred of those for a fraction of his wealth. The canopy is forty feet in diameter per tree. A hundred of these trees produces about three and a half acres of dense, old-growth forest. Not much, I know, but a very good start and much faster than seeds.

Considering the starting state of Athas, you'd probably want to go with as much biodiversity as possible though. Probably borked enough that most concerns about invasive species are nonexistent.

[Gildedragon]

I think they hit the limit in the thread where they were discussing how to make a commoner with a pig large enough to get max damage for a war hulking hurler. So probably not without waiting an awful long time with festering anger or going full Pun-Pun on the problem. You'd probably just want to go into Epic Magic for your solar creation needs. And I don't even want to think about what you'd need to do to compensate for the already existing sun and work with orbital mechanics.


It ain't an Athas-Fixup if it doesn't initiate another more destructive catastrophe:
Fixing the soil -> Athas burried under chicken-mulch or a glacial age
Fixing the sun - > Athas falling towards the sun(s) in a spiral of DOOM

[Ruethgar]

Also as a note on Fimbulwinter and Blizzard, as a druid they are both eligible as a War Spells to get 425 times the normal amount of water from them which would cut down that 7 year plan a little at least.

[LordErebus12]

First of all, why do you want to ruin what makes this setting so different? Athas is supposed to be an example of why its important to care for the world.

[Eldan]

Considering the starting state of Athas, you'd probably want to go with as much biodiversity as possible though. Probably borked enough that most concerns about invasive species are nonexistent.

Certainly. However, the oak trees are a very efficient way of fixing the soil once it's nutrient-enriched. They provide structure and shade, they help with nutrient cycling and they vastly improve the microclimate. A few hundred trees provide an ideal starting point for some agroforestry to safely introduce other plants. YOu start with bushes around the edges of your oak forest to protect against wind. If your trees are spaced a bit apart so that you still get sunlight, you then get patches to start growing more trees and herbs in.

[Coidzor]

Certainly. However, the oak trees are a very efficient way of fixing the soil once it's nutrient-enriched. They provide structure and shade, they help with nutrient cycling and they vastly improve the microclimate. A few hundred trees provide an ideal starting point for some agroforestry to safely introduce other plants. YOu start with bushes around the edges of your oak forest to protect against wind. If your trees are spaced a bit apart so that you still get sunlight, you then get patches to start growing more trees and herbs in.

Point.


First of all, why do you want to ruin what makes this setting so different? Athas is supposed to be an example of why its important to care for the world.

I think part of it is to just see if there's a way other than using the power of plot itself. And then another part is to see what amusing, stupid, or amusingly stupid ideas others can come up with and the interplay people's ideas have.

[Eldan]

Has anyone thought about using Stone to Flesh as a source of fertilizer, by the way? It's sixth level, so there's probably lower level source, but it has the advantage of already being dead.

[Coidzor]

Has anyone thought about using Stone to Flesh as a source of fertilizer, by the way? It's sixth level, so there's probably lower level source, but it has the advantage of already being dead.

Yeah, came up towards the end of page 1/beginning of page 2, IIRC, but the Druid would have to be an Urban Druid or crib from the Urban Druid list or just have an item to cast it for them.

I think rejuvenate may just be more efficient than turning the ground into meat fertilizer though.

[LordErebus12]

I think part of it is to just see if there's a way other than using the power of plot itself. And then another part is to see what amusing, stupid, or amusingly stupid ideas others can come up with and the interplay people's ideas have.

Fair enough. I want to mention one more possible way to arrive there in Athas, which will be at the end of the post. No one mentioned it.

I know Spelljamming was supposedly impossible when it comes to being on the "Athas side"... Not enough life energy to draw arcane magic from to make the jump back to another realm, which would leave you stranded unless you were sacrificing a lot of slaves to do so. I'd also rule out portals or gates, even though the Gith used this method... I'm assuming that method lies with them and perhaps that method was blocked from the 'Athas side'.

That leaves two methods of escape: Ravenloft and The World Serpent Inn.

We can hardly call Ravenloft an escape, since there is little hope of that once you're there. That leaves this little tidbit...

http://i.imgur.com/yGXksIH.png

[Eldan]

Don't exclude Portals... Planescape mentioned Athas a few times and there's certainly portals from Sigil.

[Phelix-Mu]

While we are on about how to leave, I thought I'd mention some of the cool uses of lifeshaping that still exist, at least as late as 2e, though I do have a 3.5 conversion .pdf that I really have been meaning to read.

Athas actually has decent airship technology, if not widespread. The remaining halfling lifeshapers have things like airwhales that are basically living zeppelins, along with hang-glider creatures that are like rays, if I recall correctly. Combine these with an air bottle or a planar bubble and some wind control, and it might be possible to get almost off-planet (or at least close enough to use something like a solar para-sail to ascend to low orbit). It also helps that, if the druid can get past the paranoia of the remaining halflings, the druid might find some allies (or as close to allies as can be found on Athas).

So, basically, you could park your spelljammer helm in orbit and use some kind of jumpship or teleport down (one level dip in Seeker of the Misty Isle gets Travel Domain, IIRC). Then devise an ascent vehicle, and you'd bypass the normal restriction. Frankly, I'm kind of surprised that the Athasians didn't devise more interplanetary stuff before everything went pear-shaped.

I'd also like to posit the possibility of subterranean terraforming to avoid at least some of the sun problems. While being underground causes a unique set of problems all of its own, some application of magic and careful selection of plants and animals could probably fix much of this. The normal problem for underground stuff is fresh water supply, creating enough space, and air circulation. All of these are borderline trivial for a high-level druid; even Aberrant Wild Shape can get that stone-dissolving thing from MM1, and a few ranks in Craft(stonemason) or Knowledge(architecture/engineering) could allow you to safely create vast caverns. A bit of DM-ruling or RAW finagling on what counts as real sunlight, but if all else fails, just use a system of mirrors to move real sunlight down into underground cultivation areas in limited amounts, using shutters or time-delayed traps of darkness to regulate the proper amounts of daylight. Water is solved by carving out an isolated cistern-cavern and using flashflood or the like there, then using gravity pumps or some kind of summoned labor to move the water to where it's needed. Finally, air circulation shouldn't be a problem, as regular casting of control winds or a trap or whatever of that or similar could work, among many other possible solutions. Proper arrangement of plant-life will also help with air-scrubbing in the long-run, and even animating some plants to walk about the underground caverns, absorbing the CO2.

Other cool ideas that come to mind:
- Avoiding planetary issues by creating a moon around Athas that has atmosphere. This would require considerable intelligence/caution, as the result on the tides on Athas could be catastrophic, but if the druid doesn't care about indigenous civilizations, then its probably doable. Use a system of planar ring gates or ring gates to use organic materials generated on the moon via whatever down onto the planet (or just bomb the surface with soil from orbit). Making a huge rock with air around it is not totally trivial, but keeping the sun from burning the atmosphere away would be a much greater challenge. Solved by making the stuff that's growing live on the inside of the moon, instead of the surface.

- Ice assassin shenanigans: When is this spell ever not useful for removing limiters on power. If a DM has a liberal ruling or follows the RAW interpretation that says that any elemental with one of the four elemental subtypes is fair game, then a single ice/snow/water weird wild shape can seriously change a very large area. Copy yourself with ice assassin prior to going, make sure the assassins are tame by using the typical IA-IA Proxy Scheme, then have the copies use wild shape to become the appropriate type of weird. Getting access to IA is not trivial, but could be done via an early-entry Arcane Hierophant build, I believe. Having arcane casting on a world where using it is counterproductive seems silly, though. I'm sure some other build could manage some UMD or the like that would be more economic.

- Brown mold shenanigans: Useful for accumulating large amounts of organic material, because this stuff apparently self-generates when exposed to fire. Combine with one of the spells that decomposes plants, and bam, a perpetual source of compost; useful side effect is that, in complete contravention of thermodynamics, the plant sheds nonlethal cold damage, so also acts as air conditioning or cooling system for the stone on which it grows. Combine with green slime shenanigans to turn Athas into a slime paradise. Both these plans are best used underground, the better to control them and to avoid sunlight/weather vulnerabilities. Note that the DMG rules all slimes, molds, and fungi count as plants for the purposes of spells and effects that effect plants (page 76, IIRC). Very useful.

- Baleful polymorph shenanigans: Not quite up to the fun of PaO, but not far off in terms of the fun scale. Turn other things into animals, and colonize your new area with useful species. Special Warning: Don't pick rabbits. You thought Rajaat was bad? No way Athas will survive pink bunnies.

NOTE: Druids do have access to stone to flesh via undermaster (Spell Compendium p227), although note that decisions made after the casting of the spell and costly material component complicate making items of undermaster. Also, it's 9th level, but can be used to crank out five stone to flesh, so that's not terrible spell economy.

[Gildedragon]

Problems with making another Moon:
Athas already has 2... Madness lies in the path of trying to figure out orbital mechanics of 3 objects.
the diagrams for trying to grok 4 might tear a rift to the Far Realms.

Upside: you found a way out of Athas!

Transforming Athas's core back into molten iron rather than solid glass would be useful too... but that would kill psionics (maybe) as the lack of a magnetic field seems to have been what awoke the powers to begin with.

For plantlife: I mentioned a while back that when coming over to athas you got bales of toothpicks (ie: fine quarterstaves). PAOing them into plant seeds or saplings will have a permanent effect. With a suitable kn nature check you ought be able to know what sort of life is best for an environment.
For fauna: you get lotsa silk rope and PAO it into insects for polinization, shark or mammal leather into those types, and the feather fletching of arrows provides for birds

[Rubik]

Importing seeds would likely be the easiest course of action, especially since Nurturing Seeds will make them hardier than just about anything else you could do, and Plant Growth would force them into adulthood in one or two castings, making the growing seasons short indeed.

[Gildedragon]

Importing seeds would likely be the easiest course of action, especially since Nurturing Seeds will make them hardier than just about anything else you could do, and Plant Growth would force them into adulthood in one or two castings, making the growing seasons short indeed.

How are you maturing the plants via plant growth? The tangle? Not a v. Good option for trees...

[Rubik]

How are you maturing the plants via plant growth? The tangle? Not a v. Good option for trees...Overgrowth makes plants grow large and wild. It doesn't say what kinds of plants are targetable, meaning that seeds (which are still plants, albeit baby ones) still count.

[Phelix-Mu]

Importing seeds would likely be the easiest course of action, especially since Nurturing Seeds will make them hardier than just about anything else you could do, and Plant Growth would force them into adulthood in one or two castings, making the growing seasons short indeed.

Unfortunately, the RAW for actually maturing long-lived plant life is not well-supported. Trees can be made to become overgrown and thick with the entangle option, but it doesn't actually say anything about making them grow, or making saplings into trees. There is certainly room for interpretation, but a lot of this hinges on things like trees being very poorly defined in-game objects indeed.

EDIT: Seeds can't become overgrown without first becoming some type of plant. None of the mentioned plants actually gets bigger, insofar as "bigger" is an mechanic. They simply impede movement. So this is more of a shaping effect, than a growth effect.

The enrich option will likely speed things up (depending on DM interpretation of "potential productivity"), but not by much for many tree species.

Alternately, many of the plant creatures in the books have the potential to spread quickly, and ostensibly provide some of the normal effects of plants (anchoring soil, contributing to the creation of organic material). Several of them would be pretty terrible for the inhabitants of Athas, but, meh, I really only like the halflings anyway (personal bias). I would insert my burrow root apocalypse plan here, but I am still not sure if that actually works by RAW, or if it just worked in that one campaign by Rule of Cool.

[toapat]

Athas actually has decent airship technology, if not widespread. The remaining halfling lifeshapers have things like airwhales that are basically living zeppelins, along with hang-glider creatures that are like rays, if I recall correctly. Combine these with an air bottle or a planar bubble and some wind control, and it might be possible to get almost off-planet (or at least close enough to use something like a solar para-sail to ascend to low orbit). It also helps that, if the druid can get past the paranoia of the remaining halflings, the druid might find some allies (or as close to allies as can be found on Athas).

My opinion of the druid's philosophy for interaction with the locals would be This:

There are only 3 types of people in the world:

1: Me
2: People I have mindraped into total and unquestionable loyalty, Alternatively those which i have created through magic, and which are completely loyal to me
3: Mulch


My question is, do druids get any handy sources of genocide?

[Renen]

Build must have been viable in original world before being assigned terraforming duty.


Well first, I go to a psion and get Psychic reformation cast on me...

[Coidzor]

Transforming Athas's core back into molten iron rather than solid glass would be useful too... but that would kill psionics (maybe) as the lack of a magnetic field seems to have been what awoke the powers to begin with.

I'm trying to imagine how that would work. I guess the first part would be tunneling down there and then tunneling through the glass so that one would have access to all of it to turn it into iron and then work on reheating it with oodles of walls of fire and magma mephits in lava form, though I'm sure there's something more efficient that could be done.

Or, I suppose, one could just try disintegrating the glass and replacing it with a whole bunch of walls of iron and then reheat the core with a bunch of walls of fire and rely upon the sheer mass of fire and the insulation of the outer core/mantle to raise the core temperature back to proper levels?

IIRC, the wide-spread wild talents and the like are from the glass core and lack of magnetic field, but psionic potential and training should still be possible just less ubiquitous, especially for flora and fauna, which is probably good since the horrible psychic monster beasts are something of a problem too.


Problems with making another Moon:
Athas already has 2... Madness lies in the path of trying to figure out orbital mechanics of 3 objects.
the diagrams for trying to grok 4 might tear a rift to the Far Realms.

Upside: you found a way out of Athas!

Actually... What are the conditions on Athas' existing pair of moons? Are they such that terraforming them might actually be faster and safer than dealing with the Sorcerer-Kings, Dragons, Pyreen, Mind Lords, crazy halfling life-shapers(how do *those* still exist!?), and all that jazz?

...I wonder if Athas is finally the place to make critters from the Far Realms look at it and say "Nope" and turn around and go back...


For plantlife: I mentioned a while back that when coming over to athas you got bales of toothpicks (ie: fine quarterstaves). PAOing them into plant seeds or saplings will have a permanent effect. With a suitable kn nature check you ought be able to know what sort of life is best for an environment.
For fauna: you get lotsa silk rope and PAO it into insects for polinization, shark or mammal leather into those types, and the feather fletching of arrows provides for birds

Ahh, now that is a thought. I don't see how a Druid'd get it onto their list, but items of it would be handy enough.


My question is, do druids get any handy sources of genocide?

Other than Fimbulwinter and Blizzard, you mean?

[toapat]

Ahh, now that is a thought. I don't see how a Druid'd get it onto their list, but items of it would be handy enough.

Other than Fimbulwinter and Blizzard, you mean?

Extra spell lets you add anything, and we really badly need wall of iron + wall of fire, possibly Wall of stone as well.


Yes, sources of direct genocide.

I know we could depopulate the Tablelands pretty quickly (about 10 days per city) with Widened Exteneded Intensified Fimbulwinter, but we need things with the sort of range of Familycide.

alternatively we just bring like, 25 scrolls of Locate City Bomb, and kill everything.

[Renen]

http://i.imgur.com/NbmVAbC.jpg
If Athas has this, then its a definite nope.

[Coidzor]

http://i.imgur.com/NbmVAbC.jpg
If Athas has this, then its a definite nope.

Can't remember which variety of star wars critter that is, sorry.

[Phelix-Mu]

Wait, did someone just ask if druids can do genocide, lol?

Qualifiers:
1.) Not as flashy as wizards.

2.) Not as quick as wizards.

3.) Not as many ways as wizards (in large part thanks to lesser/wish).

Alright, so a few thoughts on killing people:

- Druids actually have great support for disease causing spells without having to build around it. Don't know how this would work on Athas, as everything is uber-tough and not much in the way of population centers, but any druid worth their salt can cast a few spells, decimate most of a city, target those that survive with debuffs before launching another round of death; most of everyone fails v the saves of a high-level druid using owl's insight. If the druid is high enough to have earth glide or the like, s/he can be all but unassailable as everyone starts hacking up vital fluids. Relevant Spells: breath of the jungle, contagion, mass contagion, contagious touch, pox, plague.

- I always liked this one, will take a while to kill people, but it lasts long enough to kill quite a few. I believe you can share it with your animal companion, or just use it on the companion if it seems like too much personal risk.
Swarm of Anguish
Transmutation
Level: Drd 9
Components: V, S, DF
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Personal
Target: You
Duration: 1 hour/level (D)
Your body and equipment transform into a swarm
of agony beetles with a collective will. This spell
functions as shapechange: You gain all
extraordinary and supernatural abilities (both
attacks and qualities) of the assumed form, but you
lose your own supernatural abilities. You also gain
the type of the new form in place of your own. The
new form does not disorient you. Parts of your body
or pieces of equipment that are separated from you
do not revert to their original forms. If the swarm
disperses, you die.
Agony Beetle Swarm: CR 13; Medium vermin
(swarm); HD 16d8+64; hp 136; Init +3; Spd 5 ft., fly
20 ft. (good); AC 21, touch 21, flat-footed 18; Base
Atk +12; Grp -9; Atk Swarm (4d6 plus agony); Full
Atk Swarm (4d6 plus agony); SA agony, distraction;
SQ darkvision 60 ft., immune to weapon damage,
vermin traits; AL N; SV Fort +14, Ref +13, Will +5;
Str 1, Dex 17, Con 19, Int —, Wis 10, Cha 1.
Skills: Move Silently +8.
Feats: —.
Agony (Su): Agony beetles attach painful
tendrils to their victims. A creature that takes
damage from an agony beetle swarm also suffers
indescribable pain, causing 2d6 points of temporary
Constitution damage.
Distraction (Ex): Any living creature that begins
its turn with an agony beetle swarm in its space
must succeed on a DC 22 Fortitude save or be
nauseated for 1 round. The save DC is Constitution based.

- Burrow Root Apocalypse: Alright, so I guess I should just lay it out there. MM5 has the creature burrow root. It has an ability that allows it to split when it's injured, IIRC. I once had a plan that involved wild shaping into one to split into two, and then each day repeat the splitting and split the existing ones. You'd need a way to contain them, since they have burrow speeds, but the math quickly becomes insanely stupid; in a matter of days a high-level druid could have thousands of them around, even with the caveat on only splitting once per day. They hunt creatures with blood. The druid can only control a few, but as long as the druid is in elemental form or plant form, they won't hunt the druid. Ideally, the druid makes a cavern beneath any city to be killed, surround it with walls of stone or transmute mud/sand to rock, then only leaves the one route out via transmute rock to sand when the burrow root herd is complete, a route that leads right into the city center. They have wounding, so any person struck is pretty much doomed unless they have class levels.

- Green slime: This plan only works at night, but I've always loved the idea of just filling a cavern with living stuff, then dropping green slime in there. The green slime eats and grows. Then carve a tunnel to the surface at night, and flood the cavern with water, flushing the green slime out into the [whatever]. Pretty much anything that isn't encased in solid stone or able to stay out of the water is eaten by the slime eventually. Bonus points if you can arrange this under otherwise induced darkness/magical darkness, since the longer the slime has to eat, the more effective it is.

Anyway, not sure if the burrow root plan even works. When I came up with it, I had a much less formidable grasp on the game, and I never dug through the Wild Shape errata again to double check if it still works (or ever should have worked).

[toapat]

2.) Not as quick as wizards.

More accurately, i was asking if druids can commit more efficient genocide faster then the Intensified Fimbulwinter's 2 day kill of all life in its AoE that isnt under a Wall of Force Bubble

[Phelix-Mu]

More accurately, i was asking if druids can commit more efficient genocide faster then the Intensified Fimbulwinter's 2 day kill of all life in its AoE that isnt under a Wall of Force Bubble

Well, efficient and faster do sometimes work against each other. A druid that uses the burrow root plan to wipe out a city hasn't used any spells, so can be doing the fimbulwinter thing elsewhere, too, or engaged in, you know, protecting the planet or whatever else floats his/her personal philosophy. Really, once you establish an upper limit to the silliness, there are all kinds of different stripes that you can put on it, but it all comes out in the wash. Genocide is genocide, and, frankly, killing people is really about the least interesting thing that can be done with magic generally, not just the druidic flavor.

My personal setup is Arcane Hierophant. To me, there is no more interesting fun than saving doomed ecosystems, thwarting unnatural aberrations from beyond reality, and recolonizing dead worlds. By mixing an intellectual and experimental view of magic with the wisdom not to totally screw the pooch in the process, and having access to both the sor/wiz list and the druid list, the limits really do start to disappear off in the direction of the event horizon. In one of my dreams, I used epic magic to split a black hole into a galaxy. That wasn't hard. The real trick was figuring a way to mitigate it down to a manageable level (thanks, Glasya).

[toapat]

Well, efficient and faster do sometimes work against each other. A druid that uses the burrow root plan to wipe out a city hasn't used any spells, so can be doing the fimbulwinter thing elsewhere, too, or engaged in, you know, protecting the planet or whatever else floats his/her personal philosophy. Really, once you establish an upper limit to the silliness, there are all kinds of different stripes that you can put on it, but it all comes out in the wash. Genocide is genocide, and, frankly, killing people is really about the least interesting thing that can be done with magic generally, not just the druidic flavor.

My personal setup is Arcane Hierophant. To me, there is no more interesting fun than saving doomed ecosystems, thwarting unnatural aberrations from beyond reality, and recolonizing dead worlds. By mixing an intellectual and experimental view of magic with the wisdom not to totally screw the pooch in the process, and having access to both the sor/wiz list and the druid list, the limits really do start to disappear off in the direction of the event horizon. In one of my dreams, I used epic magic to split a black hole into a galaxy. That wasn't hard. The real trick was figuring a way to mitigate it down to a manageable level (thanks, Glasya).

the real problem is by the RAW of the challenge we cant use Arcane Heirophant effectively because we would start as Arcane defilers, not Arcane Preservers, because one arcane spell and poof goes our druid abilities
even if our needs are more effectively met by it in terms of spells, being that we need at least 4 of the wall spells, thanks to the need of maximum power Fimbulwinters

It may just be easier (if much, much longer) to start with a wall of stone spell, break it off into a stone slab, and then Nailed to the sky the slab so we have a starting point for manufacturing a planet. However we need actual epic casting because we would need to repeatedly cast nail on the protoplanet as we added the iron core. Possibly we would want to research a Wall of Iron spell that uses the spawn conditions of Wall of Stone while building it to save usages of Nailed to the sky. Although i dont know how you make an actual atmosphere in 3.5 without resorting to a custom magic item of a Decanter of Endless Air.

We definitely need Leadership for a Midgard Dwarf Artificer cohort so we can manufacture all the magic items we need to do this, such as the unreasonably expensive Greater Rod of Intensify x2 we need for the 5x fimbulwinter/day to have a reasonably permanent ecological impact

Assuming we go the planetary manufacturing route, we need a bag of holding that we fill with gravel we fabricated from a casting of Wall of Stone in case we liquefy the mantle of the protoplanet too soon, and need a new target for Wall of stone. However i would consider items with unlimited castings of wall of stone and wall of iron already important to the objective because so much of athas is unusable material

the desire to sterilize the entire planet pre-terraforming comes from the fact that its going to be difficult to rejuvinate the area under the 60 mile thick glacier, so we would would want to do them on undefiled land. the problem is the Natives would try to stop the uber blizzards. after all that we use Earthquake castings to slowly carve apart the glacier to speed up the thawing of what basically is a mass with no thermal activity in it whatsoever

[Doug Lampert]

Chicken Infested!
There's your corpse fertilizer + water source!
+1

Go home guys the thread has been won. :smalltongue:
True. And yet people keep posting.

[malonkey1]

Pig-Bonded Commoner 1/Druid 16: Wildshape into a Huge creature with optimized carrying capacity (probably some type of dinosaur, as they are animal-typed and many are quadrupedal), pump strength to maximum while in this form. Your pig now provides over 14 tons of fertilizer. Kill it, chop it up, keep a piece (I dunno, a tooth or something) on your person, and spread the meat out across the ground.

[toapat]

Pigbond doesnt work for this at all. We would need the pig to attain a mass and volume sufficient to undergo Solar genesis, but the pig doesnt gain size categories for being made of pure lard

[Gildedragon]

Problem is that the pig does not, necessarily, increase in volume. Merely in weight

Also killing the pig would probably trigger the Porcus clause. Either because it (prolly) forbids killing it (afb) or as the metaphysical pig, its spirit, moves away from you as it travels to the afterlife.

[malonkey1]

Also killing the pig would probably trigger the Porcus clause. Either because it (prolly) forbids killing it

It does not forbid it, only requires you stay within a few feet of it.


(afb) or as the metaphysical pig, its spirit, moves away from you as it travels to the afterlife.

Use trap the soul. You now have a pig soul on your person at all times. You monster.

[toapat]

Use trap the soul. You now have a pig soul on your person at all times. You monster.

trap the soul stores the soul and body entirely, not just the soul.

[malonkey1]

trap the soul stores the soul and body entirely, not just the soul.

Wait, what spell am I thinking of, then?

[Coidzor]

Wait, what spell am I thinking of, then?

Sanctify the Wicked destroys the body and just houses the soul, IIRC, or at least they get a new body at the end of it? :smallconfused:

[Gildedragon]

New method: surprised no one mentioned it before
... Just let me set up the stage...

SUMMON RAGNORRA!

... Or if you're set on Wintertime for Athas, Daddy Lymie

[toapat]

New method: surprised no one mentioned it before
... Just let me set up the stage...

SUMMON RAGNORRA!

... Or if you're set on Wintertime for Athas, Daddy Lymie

I said basically impossible for getting Ragnorra, you need to bait her in with life that doesnt exist on athas.

and the 7.2/14.4 year long Fimbulwinter is only to generate oceans, not actually change the season

[Gildedragon]

I said basically impossible for getting Ragnorra, you need to bait her in with life that doesnt exist on athas.


Tch that's just a +20 to your bluff check, small potatoes
I mean sure you're Bluffing an Elder Evil but so what?

[malonkey1]

New method: surprised no one mentioned it before
... Just let me set up the stage...

SUMMON RAGNORRA!

... Or if you're set on Wintertime for Athas, Daddy Lymie

Yeah, but then you have to pull up some adventurers and go get rid of it after it's done. Plus, Ragnorra may flood the world with life energy, but it's twisted life energy. It'd take some serious lifeshaping to clean that up.

[Gildedragon]

Yeah, but then you have to pull up some adventurers and go get rid of it after it's done. Plus, Ragnorra may flood the world with life energy, but it's twisted life energy. It'd take some serious lifeshaping to clean that up.

It wouldn't be Athas if fixing a problem didn't cause two more.

Also: you can let the locals take care of Rags. Those dragons and sorcerer-kings, and creepy halflings can figure that out. (Cause you'll be wanting to skedaddle after having lied through your teeth to get Rags over)

[malonkey1]

It wouldn't be Athas if fixing a problem didn't cause two more.

Also: you can let the locals take care of Rags. Those dragons and sorcerer-kings, and creepy halflings can figure that out.

I actually wonder if the best way to kill Ragnorra would be to just get a bunch of defilers to prepare spells near her.

[toapat]

It wouldn't be Athas if fixing a problem didn't cause two more.

considering that the only problem encountered upto this point that doesnt involve Elder Evils is fixed by simply fixing that problem, you are incorrect.

The only thing we actually have that is problematic is reconstructing the planetary core, which would require epic magic to reverse its change into glass from nickle steel without outright destroying the entire planet.

Dead soil? Rejuvinate
Takes forever to have any significant impact? artificer buddy we bring along with us and hang out with during the 3.6/7.2 years of casting Fimbulwinter makes golems for 1.8 years and traps of Extended Rejuvinate for 1.8 years

no water? Widened Extended Intensified Fimbulwinter * 5 for 1344/2688 days

Atmosphere burned away by the sun? Nailed to the Sky a platform rigged with bottles of air hooked upto bellows which eject air into an area, with traps of Lightning bolt that begin firing after 5 years of operation

Defilers and monsters? every source of druidic genocide available.

Dying Sun: Shapechange (Fire Elemental) and a Scroll of Wish x2

[Gildedragon]

So checking Ragnora out
She's damn easy to bluff. For the wild out there bluff of Athas being lively, assuming she nat 20's, it is a DC of 45

+4 Cha, +2 from eagle's splendor, +20 GotA, +8 ranks and you've convinced her, +10 from taking 10 with Naberius (assuming 2 feats spent, can be psy reffed later), +2 feycraft armor

[Gildedragon]

cThe only thing we actually have that is problematic is reconstructing the planetary core, which would require epic magic to reverse its change into glass from nickle steel without outright destroying the entire planet.


If you can animate the core for one round, you can PaO it into nickel-iron permanently: as it becomes a creature, and the spell has no restriction on creature size. And it is the same kingdom, size, and INT.

[toapat]

If you can animate the core for one round, you can PaO it into nickel-iron permanently: as it becomes a creature, and the spell has no restriction on creature size. And it is the same kingdom, size, and INT.

We need Divine Ranks or epic magic to do that. Remember, we may not normally consider planets capable of supporting life as living creatures but they are. The problem is Athas is quite litterally dead.

[Phelix-Mu]

Alright, new idea is that the druid just drags/pushes Athas a couple million more miles from the sun. I think that should compensate for the increased output of the sun and allow for some more normal functioning of the planet's biosphere. It's probably a challenge beyond changing the core, but the outcome may be more predictable, since altering the core of the planet is going to mess around with the psionics or whatever, and I don't see that outcome being particularly well-defined (and thus might mess with our plan).

Hmm. Are the crystal spheres stated to be stationary anywhere? That would really stop this plan from working. And do planets in D&D actually rotate? I remember the disclaimer that says things work the same way in the real world unless stated differently, but this would make a rather large difference, so I wonder if RAW ever touched on it.

Well, the more I reflect on it, this isn't easier, without the fiat of epic magic, at which point we just animate Athas and tell it to get its act together. My best idea involved an arbitrarily large number of areas of reverse gravity in a screen between the sun and Athas, which would stop the force connecting Athas and the sun, and should cause Athas' own momentum to carry it away from the sun. Dismiss the reverse gravities once Athas reached the desired distance. The big flaws are the arbitrarily large number needed and the amount of time it would take to do that; without some self-replicating spellclocks or some such, I don't see any likelihood of reaching the needed size for the field to interrupt the connection meaningfully.

On the other hand, you don't have to stop the link, just lessen it enough for Athas to gradually drift. This should actually work even better if Athas rotates and we are adding significant mass (like via the fimbulwinter scheme's 60 mile glaciers), which should all increased Athas' actual momentum.

Also, earlier, someone mentioned 60 mile thick glaciers? Where are we getting that number? That would significantly displace the atmosphere of Athas, probably push down the continents substantially, and otherwise cause a whole bunch of problems, not to mention that the creation of such glaciers would be hard to reverse (aside from normal melting, which would take substantially longer due to drops in temp, with the possible exception of most of it going into the atmosphere and then being blown into interplanetary space by the sun's strength). I don't know if that much ice is actually helping or hurting.

Really outstripping my current working knowledge of physics, here, lol. I vaguely remember knowing how the math behind all this actually works, once upon a time. Good thing D&D has almost nothing to do with math, heh.:smallamused:

[ArqArturo]

Well, According to Spelljammer, most planets do rotate, so there's that.

[Larkas]

Now that you mention it... What about drawing Ragnorra to Athas? :smallbiggrin:


New method: surprised no one mentioned it before
... Just let me set up the stage...

SUMMON RAGNORRA!

... Or if you're set on Wintertime for Athas, Daddy Lymie

Yeah, no one mentioned it before. :smalltongue:

[Gildedragon]

Yeah I'd forgotten about that.
She is handy for the whole exuberant life bit. Trick is luring her there, but easy to bluff her.

[Eldan]

Alright, new idea is that the druid just drags/pushes Athas a couple million more miles from the sun. I think that should compensate for the increased output of the sun and allow for some more normal functioning of the planet's biosphere. It's probably a challenge beyond changing the core, but the outcome may be more predictable, since altering the core of the planet is going to mess around with the psionics or whatever, and I don't see that outcome being particularly well-defined (and thus might mess with our plan).

I'd have to do some simulation, but even back of the envelope calculations show that accelerating Athas enough to substantially shift it's orbit requires impossible amounts of power. Unless there's a spell that simply moves an object of undefined size and mass a certain distance, it won't happen.

Hmm. How strong would a character have to be to lift Athas and then teleport with it?

[toapat]

Also, earlier, someone mentioned 60 mile thick glaciers? Where are we getting that number? That would significantly displace the atmosphere of Athas, probably push down the continents substantially, and otherwise cause a whole bunch of problems, not to mention that the creation of such glaciers would be hard to reverse (aside from normal melting, which would take substantially longer due to drops in temp, with the possible exception of most of it going into the atmosphere and then being blown into interplanetary space by the sun's strength). I don't know if that much ice is actually helping or hurting.

Widen + Extend + Intensify on Fimbulwinter, Cast 5 times a day for 1344 Days on the same spot. The actual Single casting will only yield a glacier ~3300' thick

At the end of Fimbulwinter # 6720 on day #2688 the total Snowfall will have amounted to a glacier containing 60 miles of water vertically and with diameter of 160 miles., for a total volume similar to that of the Pacific ocean. This is because we can control the water richness of the snowfall to be twice that of average for the entire time, or with a 5:1 compression ratio. This is the greatest strength of Fimbulwinter over Blizzard, which doesnt give you the caster control over the type of snowfall.

Granted, after settling it should be about 60-70 miles thick

As for what happens seeing as its probably outside the atmosphere? If we keep after the main needed snowfall a Widened Maximized Fimbulwinter on the area we can preserve the glacier Nigh-Indefinitely because Fimbulwinter maintains prior accumulation on Athas when maximized.

The plan for melting it primarily is a combination of Widened Earthquake and wall of fire. the condensed atmosphere would ablate a non-insignificant portion of the icebergs a single casting creates.

For planetary damage caused by the iceberg, Not as bad as they could be.

As for changing Athas's orbit: At least going by Spelljammer stars are holes to the plane of fire, we can fix the star by using 2 wishes, one to return the Plane of fire end of the gate to its original point, and the second to anchor the gate there, and the results would, quite litterally, be instantaneous. also the added mass of the Fimbulwinters will throw Athas farther out from its star outright

Edit: The Salient Divine Ability i was thinking of was Gift of Life, the unlimited and perfect True Res. It is technically the fastest way to fix all of Athas' non Defiling or Solar problems

[Phelix-Mu]

I'd have to do some simulation, but even back of the envelope calculations show that accelerating Athas enough to substantially shift it's orbit requires impossible amounts of power. Unless there's a spell that simply moves an object of undefined size and mass a certain distance, it won't happen.

Hmm. How strong would a character have to be to lift Athas and then teleport with it?

Or, if the character is the only remaining life form on the planet, can it be his/her possession?

How about reducing the drag on the planet's movement by reducing the pull of the sun? Or by increasing the momentum of the planet, which, unless I'm mistaken, happens automatically when we meaningfully alter the mass of the planet (since created stuff on the planet is simply created, and is already moving/has momentum relative to a fixed point in space)? Sadly, all of the alterations so far considered probably don't amount to a big change in mass of the planet percentage wise.

[Mnemnosyne]

Alright, new idea is that the druid just drags/pushes Athas a couple million more miles from the sun. I think that should compensate for the increased output of the sun and allow for some more normal functioning of the planet's biosphere. It's probably a challenge beyond changing the core, but the outcome may be more predictable, since altering the core of the planet is going to mess around with the psionics or whatever, and I don't see that outcome being particularly well-defined (and thus might mess with our plan).

Hmm. Are the crystal spheres stated to be stationary anywhere? That would really stop this plan from working. And do planets in D&D actually rotate? I remember the disclaimer that says things work the same way in the real world unless stated differently, but this would make a rather large difference, so I wonder if RAW ever touched on it.

Well, the more I reflect on it, this isn't easier, without the fiat of epic magic, at which point we just animate Athas and tell it to get its act together. My best idea involved an arbitrarily large number of areas of reverse gravity in a screen between the sun and Athas, which would stop the force connecting Athas and the sun, and should cause Athas' own momentum to carry it away from the sun. Dismiss the reverse gravities once Athas reached the desired distance. The big flaws are the arbitrarily large number needed and the amount of time it would take to do that; without some self-replicating spellclocks or some such, I don't see any likelihood of reaching the needed size for the field to interrupt the connection meaningfully.
Crystal spheres are stationary relative to the primary of the sphere (whichever body is in the center; usually, but not always the sun, since Greyspace, for instance, has Oerth as its primary, and the sun revolves around the planet). There is, to my knowledge, nothing detailing what happens if you move the primary (perhaps it is impossible?) but some crystal spheres do not have primaries for various reasons, including the possibility that their primary has been destroyed (some are stated to be nothing more than debris fields full of fast-moving and dangerous debris that has long since pulverized any planets that once existed). In any case, the point of the primary not always being the largest body in the system implies another point: gravity does not work that way at all. Planets don't rotate around the sun because of gravity, because gravity simply ends at a certain distance from any object. Planetary orbits are perfectly circular as well (usually; again, exceptions may occur).

However, it is possible to alter orbits, just not through gravity. The Astromundi Cluster presents a crystal sphere in which the planets have largely been destroyed by a couple cataclysms, and more significantly, the illithids halted the rotation of Ushathrandra and all of its moons in their orbits, with the moons halted on the dark side of the air world (gas giant) and fixed in the darkness forever, so they would be comfortable living on those worlds without sunlight. So, although it is unspecified how they accomplished this task, it is at least established to be theoretically possible. Of course, the level of magic needed to accomplish it may not be possible in Athas' crystal sphere due to its local limitations.

[toapat]

Or, if the character is the only remaining life form on the planet, can it be his/her possession?

How about reducing the drag on the planet's movement by reducing the pull of the sun? Or by increasing the momentum of the planet, which, unless I'm mistaken, happens automatically when we meaningfully alter the mass of the planet (since created stuff on the planet is simply created, and is already moving/has momentum relative to a fixed point in space)? Sadly, all of the alterations so far considered probably don't amount to a big change in mass of the planet percentage wise.

How heavy is 170 Million cubic miles of water?

accoring to my google fu, im getting 306 million long tons per cubic mile

OK, plugging numbers in in Excel gets me 648.37 quadrillion tons of water

[Phelix-Mu]

Hmm, well, according to what Mnemosyne said, it sounds like things function much more akin to Aristotelian principles than Newtonian ones as far as the crystal spheres being more kind of symmetrical orbits all defined by properties unique to that sphere (potentially). This probably means a couple things.

1.) Gravity: Gravity probably isn't our problem here. Could it be a solution? Meh, that's totally unclear, and it seems that gravity in-game only represents a localized tendency for things to fall in a certain direction, not an omnipresent force.

2.) Momentum: Well, the worlds move in their orbits (or the sun moves), so clearly momentum is present. Adequate force, or the introduction of new mass at speed should represent a change in momentum. Because gravity isn't an issue, we probably don't have to worry about tidal forces ripping the planet apart (though centripetal forces may still be problematic if we are spinning the planet too fast...unlikely).

So, with proper application of force or alteration of mass, we should be able to alter the orbit of the planet. The major issue is now coming up with a non-infinite looping solution pre-epic.

I'm actually going to be optimistic here and say that, given my experience with optimization, such a solution exists.

EDIT: Now positing the super low-end fix of simply coating Athas in brown mold (DMG76). We might need a way to render the brown mold indestructible, but it counts as a plant, which means it's an object, which means we can probably come up with something. To quote "the temperature is always cold in a 30' radius around it." This is relevant because a patch of it doubles in size when fire is brought within five feet of it, which means it's fairly trivial to make an arbitrarily large patch of the mold.

[toapat]

I'm actually going to be optimistic here and say that, given my experience with optimization, such a solution exists.

the problem with that is i think we need something a little less progressive then the 7.2/10.8 years of Fimbulwinters and a little more spontaineous

Edit: Question, are there any ways to boost Know and Spellcraft checks into epic levels? because if there are we need a Half Dragon Midgard Dwarf Artificer to make the Greater Rods of Intensify Spell

[Phelix-Mu]

Check my brown mold solution. As far as the RAW says, it sounds like it will radiate cold perpetually, which should allow normal plants and animals to exist as long as a patch is nearby. And patches are easy to increase in size (the presence of fire causes its size to double "instantly"), and probably can be cultivated as per normal plants, as molds are generally treated as plants.

They are weak to cold, which destroys them, but these are normal plants that should be available on our druid's homeworld with a simple Kn(nature) check. So our druid could start with a very, very large number of them.

Oh.

Well, by a loose reading, nurturing seeds might affect mold spores, rendering them invulnerable to normal cold (which on Athas should only happen at night), but only cold damage was a real threat.

Hmm. Worth considering. A sufficient quantity of brown mold could absorb a pretty extreme amount of heat.

[toapat]

*snip*

while a solution, the exact functionality is questionable, as it looks like brown mold is a non-viable option for acting as soil before its purged with cold.

I was not actually talking about fixing the biosphere problems. Fixing those are pretty easy given time and artificers. I was talking about using the fact that mystic matter generation will alter the orbit of the planet but that, as far as i can tell, nothing really is effective at doing so and safe. Sure my FImbulwinter solution to restoring the ability to the biosphere will work at doing so but im not a master of orbital physics, so i cant tell you how that would work.

id also like to know exactly how much ocean to land athas had, and its diameter, to be able to refine the Fimbulwinter count

[8wGremlin]

Could you create large icebergs, fimbulwinter created ice blocks in space and then bombard the planet with them?
the resulting dust clouds thrown up in to the atmosphere would block the sun and plunge the whole planet into an ice age that would take hundreds of years to clear.

This would then at least give you time to work on other methods to cleanse the planet of defilers (which are anathema to druids), it might be useful to aim the meteors/ice comets at major locations/arcane fortresses, you could "take off and nuke the site from orbit, just to be sure"

[toapat]

Could you create large icebergs, fimbulwinter created ice blocks in space and then bombard the planet with them?
the resulting dust clouds thrown up in to the atmosphere would block the sun and plunge the whole planet into an ice age that would take hundreds of years to clear.

This would then at least give you time to work on other methods to cleanse the planet of defilers (which are anathema to druids), it might be useful to aim the meteors/ice comets at major locations/arcane fortresses, you could "take off and nuke the site from orbit, just to be sure"

Ideally that would use a metamagic that causes Fimbulwinter to snow iron shavings instead of snow. the shear mountain of iron would be significantly more dangerous, what with a single casting producing ~16000 cubic miles of iron. Crashing that into Athas would solve both the Dead Core and Defiler problems

[Phelix-Mu]

Could you create large icebergs, fimbulwinter created ice blocks in space and then bombard the planet with them?
the resulting dust clouds thrown up in to the atmosphere would block the sun and plunge the whole planet into an ice age that would take hundreds of years to clear.

This would then at least give you time to work on other methods to cleanse the planet of defilers (which are anathema to druids), it might be useful to aim the meteors/ice comets at major locations/arcane fortresses, you could "take off and nuke the site from orbit, just to be sure"

8wGremlin, I like the cut of your jib.:smallsmile:

[toapat]

we could form a co-planet easily with say, wall of iron, hitting it with a scroll of Nailed to the Sky to start as a platform.

the better part is that the spell doesnt describe the orbital mechanics of the spell. So we could put it on an extremely eccentric orbit that will colide with athas in a couple of decades, and prep the Iron snowball for impact over the period of time so that we deal with all problems simultaineously.

[Coidzor]

we could form a co-planet easily with say, wall of iron, hitting it with a scroll of Nailed to the Sky to start as a platform.

the better part is that the spell doesnt describe the orbital mechanics of the spell. So we could put it on an extremely eccentric orbit that will colide with athas in a couple of decades, and prep the Iron snowball for impact over the period of time so that we deal with all problems simultaineously.

Is the iron just there for mass/foundation or are you somehow planning to get it to hit hard enough that the iron manages to make it all the way through to the core without causing some kind of shattering of Athas?

Because hitting Athas hard enough to implant a new metal core seems... problematic in the extreme, so if that's possible I'd really like the how of it explained. :smallconfused:

[toapat]

Is the iron just there for mass/foundation or are you somehow planning to get it to hit hard enough that the iron manages to make it all the way through to the core without causing some kind of shattering of Athas?

Because hitting Athas hard enough to implant a new metal core seems... problematic in the extreme, so if that's possible I'd really like the how of it explained. :smallconfused:

Assuming we have one of Tippy's Wish Traps, We just use those to fabricate repeating autononomous Wall of Iron traps, while the druid does his Fimbulwinter thing.

The idea for the orbital period difference is that when we cast Nailed to the Sky, we make the orbital plane exactly 1 day longer then athas and have the metal plate begin orbit exactly one day equivalent later in orbit. We should be impacting slowly and that will still form a fresh, Invar core, considering that the current model for how the moon formed involved an impact at 4km/s. Which would give a period of about a half year to create the current planetary core. We also want an inclination from date of inntial impact of 45 degrees

We might want to add some stone though to the snowball, just in case of moon


The real question is, Doesnt hitting Athas with a planet violate the intent of the challenge? We arent really terraforming Athas then, just the corpse of it and a jr planet


Assuming we want to use a protoplanet, then id say the time spent on Fimbulwinter casting goes from 7.2 years of casting to 18 years, because of the loss of so much water from planetary heating during the impact.

How much iron can aa single wishtrap make in that time, if all it is doing is making traps that just cast wall of iron constantly.

[Gildedragon]

I've been doing some math on transforming the core of the planet back into magma.
So as far as I can figure, and my figures have gone all wonky having to use the X feet cubes of spell areas to the miles and spheres of the planet, but if I did my math right: 24-7 casting of Chained WarSpelled PAO for glass-iron/nickel would do the job... in 38 years
We would need the capacity to cast a technically level 12 spell (lowered by any number of metamagic reducers) at CL20 all day long... and something that can move through solid glass and withstand the heat of the thing

The numbers for the outer core are more daunting, as it is bigger and liquid... and the thing we actually care about as it is the magfield generator

I wonder if it wouldn't be best to disintegrate the whole thing and just open a ton of gates into the paraelemental plane of magma.
Or precipitate a massive breach?

[toapat]

I think the plan for Nailed to the Sky'd Wall of Iron into a steel + Ice ball is better, We get 300+ years of safety and fulfill all Planetary needs with only 3 spell, 8 metamagic rods, and a wishtrap. then our druid stuffs Artificerbuddy in a Portable hole or Bag of Holding, Wildshapes into a fire elemental, flys into the core of the sun, uses 2 wish spells to fix the star, and then hops into the plane of fire and gates home.

It only took 18 years of his life though.

[Gildedragon]

I think the plan for Nailed to the Sky'd Wall of Iron into a steel + Ice ball is better, We get 300+ years of safety and fulfill all Planetary needs with only 3 spell, 8 metamagic rods, and a wishtrap. then our druid stuffs Artificerbuddy in a Portable hole or Bag of Holding, Wildshapes into a fire elemental, flys into the core of the sun, uses 2 wish spells to fix the star, and then hops into the plane of fire and gates home.

It only took 18 years of his life though.

Wouldn't it be quicker, rather than flying all the way out there, to hop into the ethereal or shadow, and then planeshift to the core. 5-500 miles off the solar core is nothin'

[toapat]

Wouldn't it be quicker, rather than flying all the way out there, to hop into the ethereal or shadow, and then planeshift to the core. 5-500 miles off the solar core is nothin'

We dont have access to planar travel. The only gates we can use are pre-existing ones, Namely the Worldserpent and the sun. The Worldserpent wont let us back in either.

So we gotta go the long way into the star's core to get to the Planar breach.

Edit: We may want to go upto 32 years of casting FImbulwinter, and have the glacier lead the impact with athas. This would probably be even better for fixing the world

[Gildedragon]

We dont have access to planar travel. The only gates we can use are pre-existing ones, Namely the Worldserpent and the sun. The Worldserpent wont let us back in either.

So we gotta go the long way into the star's core to get to the Planar breach.

Edit: We may want to go upto 32 years of casting FImbulwinter, and have the glacier lead the impact with athas. This would probably be even better for fixing the world

Question though, why are you heading to the Sun. Wish works just as well at a distance, no?

[Coidzor]

The real question is, Doesnt hitting Athas with a planet violate the intent of the challenge? We arent really terraforming Athas then, just the corpse of it and a jr planet

Assuming we want to use a protoplanet, then id say the time spent on Fimbulwinter casting goes from 7.2 years of casting to 18 years, because of the loss of so much water from planetary heating during the impact.

How much iron can aa single wishtrap make in that time, if all it is doing is making traps that just cast wall of iron constantly.

Probably? Once we're at that point we could just move whatever species we wanted to preserve onto the new planet as an ark, even if we had to smother them all in quintessence to keep them from eating one another.

18 years is 157,785 hours *60 minutes*10 rounds = 94,670,000 rounds. I'm assuming that time starts with the first casting of Wall of Iron by a trap rather than with the first trap being created by the Wish Trap.

Summation of 94,670,000 or (94,670,000*(94,670,001))/2 will give us the number of castings of Wall of Iron(4.4812045e+15), assuming 1 single trap is created each round. Assuming a CL 20 on the trap just because, that gives us 20 5 foot squares worth of 5 inch thick iron per casting, so... 5'by5'by5" or 60"by60"by5" or 18000 cubic inches or 10.4167 cubic feet. Density of Iron is ~491 pounds per cubic foot. 491*10.4167 = pounds of iron created per casting = 5114.5997 pounds of iron.

((94670000*94,670,001)/2) * 5114.5997 = 4.4812045e+15*5114.5997 = weight of iron after 18 years. So that's 2.2919567e+19 pounds of iron at the end of the 18 years.

Since 94670000*5115 = 484,237,050,000 pounds from the first trap...

My understanding is that Earth's inner core has a volume of 9.51×10^8km³ or 3.36×10^19 cubic feet due to its diameter of 1220 kilometers.

I believe 3.36×10^19 = 33,600,000,000,000,000,000. But that times 491. Gets us ~1.64976e+22 pounds of iron at the core(not really, since temperature & pressure, but...) Round that to 3 significant figures 1.65*10^22 or 16,500,000,000,000,000,000,000 pounds.

2.2919567e+19/1.64976e+22 = 0.00138926674

So that's a little over 1 thousandth of what you'd need to match the *inner* core of Earth. Though you can probably get away with creating a smaller inner core to start with compared to the outer core, since our core is slowly getting bigger by having the outer core solidify around the inner core and the important part is the inner core spinning off-kilter from the rest of the planet?

So we'd need around a thousand wish traps if we're going to have 'em pumping away Wall of Iron traps, I believe. And that's just roughly ballparking it.

[toapat]

Question though, why are you heading to the Sun. Wish works just as well at a distance, no?

while nailed to the sky would be cast on the surface of the star, the Wish scrolls are cast at the core because we want the absolute minimum drift on the breach's Plane of fire side, and at the snowball we would have an 8 minute delay between blinking the sun blue again and seeing it turn blue. and we dont know what the movement speed/round on that breach's other side is.

Possibly when we leave we also call Ragorra to the point of impact, so that we also kill an elder evil

[Coidzor]

I've been doing some math on transforming the core of the planet back into magma.
So as far as I can figure, and my figures have gone all wonky having to use the X feet cubes of spell areas to the miles and spheres of the planet, but if I did my math right: 24-7 casting of Chained WarSpelled PAO for glass-iron/nickel would do the job... in 38 years
We would need the capacity to cast a technically level 12 spell (lowered by any number of metamagic reducers) at CL20 all day long... and something that can move through solid glass and withstand the heat of the thing

The numbers for the outer core are more daunting, as it is bigger and liquid... and the thing we actually care about as it is the magfield generator

I wonder if it wouldn't be best to disintegrate the whole thing and just open a ton of gates into the paraelemental plane of magma.
Or precipitate a massive breach?

Some form of Earth Glide, maybe? And if you can withstand the temperature of the sun to fly into it and through it, you can withstand the core's temperature, since they're supposed to be about the same, IIRC. So if we have a method for one we've got the method for both, so that's good, I think.

I think we need both as it's the solid core not being part of the liquid core that helps create that spin, since if all of the core was solid right up to the mantle then it'd be locked with the rest of the planet and have a weak/non-existent magnetic field like Mars, IIRC.

You'd need some way of making sure you got the right kind of molten substance if you want to replace the core though. If you're willing to replace the entire mantle as well you just might be able to precipitate the formation of a new core as the more dense iron & such collects in the center. Maybe? :smallconfused: IANAAPOGS.

[Phelix-Mu]

Alright, I really do like the tenor of the current discussion, but I do think we have moved a bit afield of the original thrust of the challenge. If Athas is basically just a source of stone for a new planet that will be combined with colliding thingummies, then that is kind of a totally different thing than making Athas habitable, in my mind.

Granted, we would have instituted a significant enough cataclysm to solve pretty much all the problems.

So, with that all in mind, why don't we continue the challenge with a little less planet-shattering, and a few other things:

1.) Wow, can we really solve the sun thing with two wishes? Then how is that even still a problem? I don't like this major problem actually being extremely trivial; it makes the challenge rather more trivial. So, instead lets assume a less flimsy sun that can't be fixed by two castings of a rather obvious 9th level spell. After all, apparently expanding the sun involved a huge effort, and Athas sun may very well be something entirely different than the standard one; I don't know if we have any good fluff indicating it either way.

2.) Wish traps? That really defeats the purpose of using a druid to do this, as a commoner with the right wish trap setup could do pretty much everything the druid could do, plus do it with a side order of chicken. Let's try something sans wish trap.

Alright, so the current issues that we have are
- The sun is too hot/the planet is too close to the sun.
- The core of the planet is glass (though it may be possible to terraform the planet without fixing this, unclear).
- Lack of water outside of spamming enough climate change to probably exterminate all life.
- Assuming the annihilation of indigenous life, a way to seed enough life to replace it in a manageable and swift fashion.

My current solution using brown mold could conceivably create a cold habitat within 30 or so feet of the surface, below which elevation could support the existence of liquid water (though some of it might freeze) and cold-tolerant plants and animals. This is an interesting approach, because it allows the creation of biomes without major planetary engineering.

I need a way to make the brown mold more resistant to cold damage, and tougher in general. Patches can be arbitrarily large, which helps deal with the economy of using hardness-increasing spells on the brown mold.

NOTE: You can't have a scroll of nailed to the sky, from what I recall of epic spells. I'm sure there is a way around this, but it bears mentioning.

[toapat]

Some form of Earth Glide, maybe? And if you can withstand the temperature of the sun to fly into it and through it, you can withstand the core's temperature, since they're supposed to be about the same, IIRC. So if we have a method for one we've got the method for both, so that's good, I think.

I think we need both as it's the solid core not being part of the liquid core that helps create that spin, since if all of the core was solid right up to the mantle then it'd be locked with the rest of the planet and have a weak/non-existent magnetic field like Mars, IIRC.

You'd need some way of making sure you got the right kind of molten substance if you want to replace the core though. If you're willing to replace the entire mantle as well you just might be able to precipitate the formation of a new core as the more dense iron & such collects in the center. Maybe? :smallconfused: IANAAPOGS.

well, we know that barring the core Athas is compositionally like earth, so replacing the core is the only problem. Nailed to the Sky fixes said problem.


*Snip*

So we only need 3 traps per day for a year, and on the final day of casting fimbulwinter, we have a 4th use of the wish trap that says the command word to all other traps in 1 year.

Do remember though that 18 years of casting Widened Extended Intensified Fimbulwinter 5/day is not the 21.6 it would take to generate the intended volume of ice.

At the end of it all, the wish trap is then used to create a Widened Extended Maximized Fimbulwinter trap which autocasts 1/96 weeks while we will be getting a bit of accumulation, it would keep our massive lance of ice from ablating into space. Alternatively its time is only 4 days and we only have widen.

[Coidzor]

Alright, so the current issues that we have are
- The sun is too hot/the planet is too close to the sun.
- The core of the planet is glass (though it may be possible to terraform the planet without fixing this, unclear).
- Lack of water outside of spamming enough climate change to probably exterminate all life.
- Assuming the annihilation of indigenous life, a way to seed enough life to replace it in a manageable and swift fashion.

Part of that may be solved by adding enough water to the atmosphere and getting more plant life, potentially. Though the idea of creating a sun shield is amusing. IIRC the area around the Last Sea is still pretty nice, so either this is a habitable zone thing or something that'll get taken care of by the terraforming itself.

Should be able to. It was turned into glass either during the Blue Age or the Green Age. And the Green Age ended primarily because of Defiling, IIRC, though it was helped along by the change to the sun wrought by Rajaat & his lens malarkey. Rather than the core being turned into glass precipitating the end of the Green Age.

Well, it depends upon where you add the water and at what rate water is actually being lost, if any, at this point. If you don't care about the Silt Sea, for instance, unless it's higher in elevation than the Tablelands, turning it back into a body of water is unlikely to cause anything catastrophic for creatures that aren't inside/adapted to that silt environment.

That's the kicker, if nothing is alive on Athas anymore, then without some way of getting intimate enough knowledge of the Athasian creatures one wants to bring back, even PAO something into them probably won't work out too well, and so one would be limited to repopulating Athas with creatures familiar to a Druid from elsewhere in the Great Wheel.

[toapat]

Alright, I really do like the tenor of the current discussion, but I do think we have moved a bit afield of the original thrust of the challenge. If Athas is basically just a source of stone for a new planet that will be combined with colliding thingummies, then that is kind of a totally different thing than making Athas habitable, in my mind.

Granted, we would have instituted a significant enough cataclysm to solve pretty much all the problems.

So, with that all in mind, why don't we continue the challenge with a little less planet-shattering, and a few other things:

1.) Wow, can we really solve the sun thing with two wishes? Then how is that even still a problem? I don't like this major problem actually being extremely trivial; it makes the challenge rather more trivial. So, instead lets assume a less flimsy sun that can't be fixed by two castings of a rather obvious 9th level spell. After all, apparently expanding the sun involved a huge effort, and Athas sun may very well be something entirely different than the standard one; I don't know if we have any good fluff indicating it either way.

2.) Wish traps? That really defeats the purpose of using a druid to do this, as a commoner with the right wish trap setup could do pretty much everything the druid could do, plus do it with a side order of chicken. Let's try something sans wish trap.

Alright, so the current issues that we have are
- The sun is too hot/the planet is too close to the sun.
- The core of the planet is glass (though it may be possible to terraform the planet without fixing this, unclear).
- Lack of water outside of spamming enough climate change to probably exterminate all life.
- Assuming the annihilation of indigenous life, a way to seed enough life to replace it in a manageable and swift fashion.

My current solution using brown mold could conceivably create a cold habitat within 30 or so feet of the surface, below which elevation could support the existence of liquid water (though some of it might freeze) and cold-tolerant plants and animals. This is an interesting approach, because it allows the creation of biomes without major planetary engineering.

I need a way to make the brown mold more resistant to cold damage, and tougher in general. Patches can be arbitrarily large, which helps deal with the economy of using hardness-increasing spells on the brown mold.

NOTE: You can't have a scroll of nailed to the sky, from what I recall of epic spells. I'm sure there is a way around this, but it bears mentioning.

1: This is assuming Spelljammer style stars. If we assume 4th ed style, then we are completely ****ed without DR1 for Breath of Life and a way to kill the sun completely.

Ironically, Widened Extended Intensified Fimbulwinter is the best way to re-fuel the star assuming Real World physics. Granted we basically need that wish trap to get a sufficient number of castings to start shrinking the star while the rest are dedicated to planetary hydration. Even with only 400ish tons per casting being hydrogen. The problem is we are talking a quarter of a million castings. With continuous casting thats 5 years.

Alternatively, 20-40 castings of Greater Dispel magic will fix the sun.

2: Wish traps are the only solution a druid has to the final problem. Atmospheric reconsitution, Planetary Hydration, The star can all be fixed within a point. there are ways to kill off the entire world population. We have spells to revitalize the soil. The core needs to be replaced with compressed and superheated Invar. The only way we can get that is wall of iron. The problem is Every part of the planetary healthcare we do is irrelevant as long as the core isnt magnetic. The atmosphere will be stripped away, oceans will subliminate.

[Coidzor]

1: This is assuming Spelljammer style stars. If we assume 4th ed style, then we are completely ****ed without DR1 for Breath of Life and a way to kill the sun completely.

Ironically, Widened Extended Intensified Fimbulwinter is the best way to re-fuel the star assuming Real World physics. Granted we basically need that wish trap to get a sufficient number of castings to start shrinking the star while the rest are dedicated to planetary hydration. Even with only 400ish tons per casting being hydrogen. The problem is we are talking a quarter of a million castings. With continuous casting thats 5 years.

Alternatively, 20-40 castings of Greater Dispel magic will fix the sun.

What are 4E style suns? :smallconfused:

Why would adding more Hydrogen and Oxygen to the star cause it to shrink? Adding enough Hydrogen fuel would cause it to turn into another star type from a starting Red Giant? Is that even what Athas has as a sun right now?

How and why would Greater Dispel magic do that?

[Gildedragon]

1.) Wow, can we really solve the sun thing with two wishes? Then how is that even still a problem? I don't like this major problem actually being extremely trivial; it makes the challenge rather more trivial. So, instead lets assume a less flimsy sun that can't be fixed by two castings of a rather obvious 9th level spell. After all, apparently expanding the sun involved a huge effort, and Athas sun may very well be something entirely different than the standard one; I don't know if we have any good fluff indicating it either way.
Yeah this sounds suspect. I'd rather expect one would have to both compress the sun and replenish its hydrogen source. Both fall into the "Wish may quite very well get twisted into something ironic" if done by wish



- The sun is too hot/the planet is too close to the sun.

Adding water ought regulate that in the long term. Fixing the sun would help too, but that is tricksy.



- The core of the planet is glass (though it may be possible to terraform the planet without fixing this, unclear).


Yeah. I don't know enough about how planets work to know how important a core is (other than keeping the psionics inducing rays out)
Feel it ought be something that should be done (at least for bonus points) but the numbers are so big...



- Lack of water outside of spamming enough climate change to probably exterminate all life.

I actually got a solution. We need shapesand-y constructs for this (constructs that can hide good and proper, and who can cast a couple spells) the first spell is [war] create oasis CL20++. Bam! large terraformed area, the golem will not move from where he has been set.
second and third spells: Conservation and Backlash, both [war]-ed up to cover the entirety of the oasis. Figuring out a way to boost the DCs of both of these up the wazoo would be great. Probably add Irresistible spell metamagic to them too: make it impossible to draw power from the land (irresistible conservation) and just trying deals 5d6+5 from irresistible backlash (maybe maximize?). The former needs to be recast every 20 days or so, and the latter as often as it gets triggered
the last spell it ought cast is probably eschewed materials [war] rejuvenations...
We need about 1.5 billion of these to just cover the dry land...



I need a way to make the brown mold more resistant to cold damage, and tougher in general. Patches can be arbitrarily large, which helps deal with the economy of using hardness-increasing spells on the brown mold.

well you could awaken the mold, give it a means to cast spells, have it take levels in the elemental savant PRC and thus gain immunity to cold. Or 8 levels in Binder and have it bind acerak.



NOTE: You can't have a scroll of nailed to the sky, from what I recall of epic spells. I'm sure there is a way around this, but it bears mentioning.

You can make it recordable, but it is a 1 time thing.

edit: also the slamming a new core into the planet feels kinda... sketch. I don't see how that wouldn't pretty much break the planet.

[toapat]

What are 4E style suns? :smallconfused:

Why would adding more Hydrogen and Oxygen to the star cause it to shrink? Adding enough Hydrogen fuel would cause it to turn into another star type from a starting Red Giant? Is that even what Athas has as a sun right now?

How and why would Greater Dispel magic do that?

4th Ed Stars and black holes are living beings, they hate the tiny people living on planets and want to destroy them all. If dead they would stay dead, which is why we would need the Salient divine ability breath of life to bring them back both against their will and without level loss. We also could bring it back with said ability as a blue giant instead of a red supergiant


Assuming its a red giant and was originally a blue giant, the increase in hydrogen fuel would increase the magnetic field, crushing it back together.

Maybe we could have Artificerbuddy make a trap of prestidigitation to filter out the oxygen ash.


Because magic made it a red giant in the first place



Yeah this sounds suspect. I'd rather expect one would have to both compress the sun and replenish its hydrogen source. Both fall into the "Wish may quite very well get twisted into something ironic" if done by wish


Adding water ought regulate that in the long term. Fixing the sun would help too, but that is tricksy.



Yeah. I don't know enough about how planets work to know how important a core is (other than keeping the psionics inducing rays out)
Feel it ought be something that should be done (at least for bonus points) but the numbers are so big...


I actually got a solution. We need shapesand-y constructs for this (constructs that can hide good and proper, and who can cast a couple spells) the first spell is [war] create oasis CL20++. Bam! large terraformed area, the golem will not move from where he has been set.
second and third spells: Conservation and Backlash, both [war]-ed up to cover the entirety of the oasis. Figuring out a way to boost the DCs of both of these up the wazoo would be great. Probably add Irresistible spell metamagic to them too: make it impossible to draw power from the land (irresistible conservation) and just trying deals 5d6+5 from irresistible backlash (maybe maximize?). The former needs to be recast every 20 days or so, and the latter as often as it gets triggered
the last spell it ought cast is probably eschewed materials [war] rejuvenations...
We need about 1.5 billion of these to just cover the dry land...


well you could awaken the mold, give it a means to cast spells, have it take levels in the elemental savant PRC and thus gain immunity to cold. Or 8 levels in Binder and have it bind acerak.



You can make it recordable, but it is a 1 time thing.

edit: also the slamming a new core into the planet feels kinda... sketch. I don't see how that wouldn't pretty much break the planet.

1: Thats the default nature of stars in 2nd ed. They are planar breaches to the plane of fire. if we assume that fixing it is quite litterally just 2 wish spells. The fact is this either makes it too easy, impossible, or tedious, depending on specific needs.

2: The Magnetosphere of Earth is the reason life could survive, without a strong magnetic field the atmosphere will erode away, killing everything.

3: You keep referencing these metamagics and spells without reference. The fact of the matter is This isnt a solution anyway. sterilized soil is the least problem of the 6 problems of arthas, and is itself a sub-problem of the much more necessary complete genocide of arcane casters on the planet.

4: the mold is a useful source of biomass for solving the soil problem but also creates its own problem that is much worse then my Fimbulwinter problem.

5: Yes, it kills the planet. I felt it violated the spirit of the challenge, if not the word of the challenge.

[malonkey1]

I had a thought...Why not have somebody research a spell to change the destination of an existing portal, and cast it on the sun, changing it from the Elemental Plane of Fire to the Quasi-Elemental Plane of Radiance (Fire/Positive Energy mix)? Not sure if it'd be high-level, or even Epic, but I think it could work. The sun would possible not be as hot, and it would constantly bring in a stream of Positive energy.

[toapat]

I had a thought...Why not have somebody research a spell to change the destination of an existing portal, and cast it on the sun, changing it from the Elemental Plane of Fire to the Quasi-Elemental Plane of Radiance (Fire/Positive Energy mix)? Not sure if it'd be high-level, or even Epic, but I think it could work. The sun would possible not be as hot, and it would constantly bring in a stream of Positive energy.

because doing that would force the entire local universe to experience the effects of being pushed through an infinite number of Prismatic walls.

[Coidzor]

because doing that would force the entire local universe to experience the effects of being pushed through an infinite number of Prismatic walls.

Because of the negative space wedgie that would ensue?

[malonkey1]

because doing that would force the entire local universe to experience the effects of being pushed through an infinite number of Prismatic walls.

By that same argument, the world of Athas should be constantly ablaze because Plane of Fire.

[AuraTwilight]

Er...since when was the sun of Athas just a big portal to the Plane of Fire?

[Coidzor]

Er...since when was the sun of Athas just a big portal to the Plane of Fire?

Somewhere it apparently says that suns in D&D have portals to the plane of fire in their centers? Though where it says that, I can't recall it being mentioned, exactly? :smallconfused:

[malonkey1]

Somewhere it apparently says that suns in D&D have portals to the plane of fire in their centers? Though where it says that, I can't recall it being mentioned, exactly? :smallconfused:

It was stated in Spelljammer, I believe, and then never explicitly refuted elsewhere later, and is thus usually grandfathered into canon.

[toapat]

By that same argument, the world of Athas should be constantly ablaze because Plane of Fire.

Isnt it already?


It was stated in Spelljammer, I believe, and then never explicitly refuted elsewhere later, and is thus usually grandfathered into canon.

its from spelljammer.

In 4th however celestial bodies are more akin to elder evils though

[malonkey1]

Isnt it already?

Let me restate. By your logic, ALL planets in the Spelljammer meta-setting would be ablaze because Plane of Fire.

[Coidzor]

Let me restate. By your logic, ALL planets in the Spelljammer meta-setting would be ablaze because Plane of Fire.

And literally rather than figuratively as is Athas's case.

Though I don't recall anything about the Plane of Radiance causing prismatic death as an environmental effect. Sorta makes sense with light, though.

[toapat]

Let me restate. By your logic, ALL planets in the Spelljammer meta-setting would be ablaze because Plane of Fire.

fire doesnt move at relativistic speeds though

[Lexible]

To be fair, nothing in the spell suggests that the mud is wet. Dry mud is a perfectly adequate result of the spell.

Nothing except the definition of mud: noun. 1 soft, sticky matter resulting from the mixing of earth and water.

[malonkey1]

fire doesnt move at relativistic speeds though

Well, the issue here, I think, is determining the intensity of the energy that's coming at Athas. If you could create a small-scale portal in order to dial in the diameter of the portal and where into the plane the portal needs to reach, then it's a simple process (provided you have a few ranks in Knowledge[Engineering] and a gaggle of optimized Experts, and maybe a Psion or two, to assist on the check) to mathematically calculate the parameter to which you need to adjust the larger portal to safely restore positive energy levels on Athas without excessively irradiating it.

[Hazrond]

To be fair, nothing in the spell suggests that the mud is wet. Dry mud is a perfectly adequate result of the spell.

Dry mud is dirt... it wouldnt be mud without water

[Eldan]

Clearly, the way is to create a second counter-sun that is connected to the plane of water and radiates rain.

[toapat]

Clearly, the way is to create a second counter-sun that is connected to the plane of water and radiates rain.

was stated we cant access the plane of water.

[Hazrond]

was stated we cant access the plane of water.

Really? :smallconfused: all i read was that Create Water and Decanter of Endless Water didnt work

[Phelix-Mu]

I am now considering a mythal that allows awaken sand and transmute rock to sand. Awaken the whole of the planet, ask it to move a couple million miles further from the sun via diplomancy, and then follow it up with enough nurturing seeds and biome creation (maybe via brown mold plan) to create a more "normal" ecosystem. THe problems with magic remain, but this would satisfy terraforming considerations.

[malonkey1]

I am now considering a mythal that allows awaken sand and transmute rock to sand. Awaken the whole of the planet, ask it to move a couple million miles further from the sun via diplomancy, and then follow it up with enough nurturing seeds and biome creation (maybe via brown mold plan) to create a more "normal" ecosystem. THe problems with magic remain, but this would satisfy terraforming considerations.

A few issues with that plan:


Mythals are a magic native to Abeir-Toril, not Athas. Whether it would transfer is...debatable.
How would the planet move? It's not got any form of propulsion, nor anything to push against.
The issue with Athas is not purely climatological. The problem is a shortage of life energy, which still needs to be compensated for.


Let's see. What do we do about defilers and the like?


Slay all arcane casters and erase all knowledge of arcane magic (via epic spell for practicality's sake). If possible, rewrite all biology on Athas to be unable to use arcane magic of any kind, again needing an Epic Spell. This prevents anybody from draining away life force with arcane magic.
Fix the world with the method of your choice. I'm still partial to modifying the sun, or introducing a secondary Positive Energy Plane sun, to restore the flow of Positive Energy.
Put a massive dimensional lock type epic spell around the crystal sphere that surrounds Athas, preventing all planar travel (excluding the sun/portal), so nothing can come in via portals and plane shifts and muck up all your hard work. If you really must have interplanar access, then attach some sort of exception clause, perhaps you need a specific password or key from the person who put in the effect.
Create a huge defensive sphere around the crystal sphere containing Athas (probably layers of wall of force, prismatic wall, wall of dispel magic, and wall of iron, adding in any other "wall of" spells, to taste, in a geodesic structure.)
Now that that's all done, enjoy the Divine Ranks you receive from the grateful locals.

In all, that's at least 3 epic spells, not accounting for how you fix the planet itself.

[AnonymousPepper]

A minor point, but Wall of X doesn't actually create the material, it just pulls it from somewhere else, right?

So if you were using Wall of Iron to create a planetary core, you would need there to be a planetary core's worth of iron in the crust and mantle. And Athas is iron-poor.

[malonkey1]

A minor point, but Wall of X doesn't actually create the material, it just pulls it from somewhere else, right?

So if you were using Wall of Iron to create a planetary core, you would need there to be a planetary core's worth of iron in the crust and mantle. And Athas is iron-poor.

Well, Wall of Iron's description specifically says "You cause a flat, vertical iron wall to spring into being." Springing into being implies that it comes from nowhere. Especially since its Conjuration (creation)

[toapat]

Slay all arcane casters and erase all knowledge of arcane magic (via epic spell for practicality's sake). If possible, rewrite all biology on Athas to be unable to use arcane magic of any kind, again needing an Epic Spell. This prevents anybody from draining away life force with arcane magic.
Fix the world with the method of your choice. I'm still partial to modifying the sun, or introducing a secondary Positive Energy Plane sun, to restore the flow of Positive Energy.
Put a massive dimensional lock type epic spell around the crystal sphere that surrounds Athas, preventing all planar travel (excluding the sun/portal), so nothing can come in via portals and plane shifts and muck up all your hard work. If you really must have interplanar access, then attach some sort of exception clause, perhaps you need a specific password or key from the person who put in the effect.
Create a huge defensive sphere around the crystal sphere containing Athas (probably layers of wall of force, prismatic wall, wall of dispel magic, and wall of iron, adding in any other "wall of" spells, to taste, in a geodesic structure.)
Now that that's all done, enjoy the Divine Ranks you receive from the grateful locals.

In all, that's at least 3 epic spells, not accounting for how you fix the planet itself.

1: Fimbulwinter

2: You cant modify the sun, And you dont want to imagine the atrocities that making a possitive energy sun would cause. As i said earlier, we have 4 options: Divine Ranks, Wish x2, a method of mass hydrogen creation, or absolutely nothing, depending on which rules we use for stars.

3: Athas is already dimensionally locked.

4: unnecessary

5: Divine ranks cant be obtained through worship in Athas.

[malonkey1]

1: Fimbulwinter

2: You cant modify the sun, And you dont want to imagine the atrocities that making a possitive energy sun would cause. As i said earlier, we have 4 options: Divine Ranks, Wish x2, a method of mass hydrogen creation, or absolutely nothing, depending on which rules we use for stars.

3: Athas is already dimensionally locked.

4: unnecessary

5: Divine ranks cant be obtained through worship in Athas.


I want to kill the arcanists. Not everybody. :smalltongue: Man, that sounds weird out of context.
Okay, this hinges on how you assume the sun works, of course. Assuming Spelljammer cosmology, it's a portal. An epic level spell, by design, breaks rules. They do the impossible. And I wasn't saying a positive energy sun, necessarily, more like a dwarf star-equivalent, just temporarily until Athas is back on its feet.
Yeah, I forgot that.
Not, really. Assuming, again, Spelljammer rules, the sphere containing Athas would still be vulnerable to incoming Spelljammers, and the arcane casters they may carry.
This last one was facetious.

[Phelix-Mu]

Well, my brown mold plan is actually pretty useful, outside of how easy it is to kill it. If we go by a fluff interpretation of the mold, it turns heat into cold, reproducing in the process. It's growth is biomatter; provided we pick plants that can survive a bit of cold, it should be easy to create a biome that can survive alongside the brown mold while feeding off the biomatter that the dying brown mold created.

Seemingly, it may even be possible to use nurturing seeds on bits of brown mold, rendering the mold resistant to some of the mundane threats that might stop the plan before it really got rolling.

So, the plan:

1.) Brown mold, assisted if necessary by nurturing seeds.

2.) Hot sun raising an area high enough in the Sandstorm environmental hazards to deal fire damage. Pretty sure this works somewhere on Athas. Fallback plan: source of perpetual fire #368.

3.) Brown mold near heat source. Brown mold grows, spreads everywhere there is heat (add heat where necessary).

4.) Brown mold sheds cold within a small radius.

5.) Grow cold-tolerant plants everywhere within that radius. Bring in animals to feed on said plants.

And as to arcanists and defilers, feed them to the now-sentient planet. That is if mythals work. The mythal can work if you make it in Faerun, by the way (allowed, as we are given a week to prep before going to Athas). Once you make it, if it's mobile (the rules support this), then I see no reason it can't move to Athas (as I believe several of the novels at least support various mythals being weave-independent to some extent) and I don't seem to recall anything in the description of the seed saying it's location was restricted to on-planet only.

Of course, if we are using mythals to do this, the whole thing is trivial, so if the same can be done with some sensible iteration of spellclocks or self-resetting magical traps, that is also fine.

The good thing about the brown mold plan is that it is so low-cost that it can basically be a low-intervention first approach, followed up by more aggressive measures that are more costly if the brown mold doesn't work out.

[ArqArturo]

Eff it, Uttercold Fimbulwinter, and start anew.

[toapat]

I want to kill the arcanists. Not everybody. :smalltongue: Man, that sounds weird out of context.
Okay, this hinges on how you assume the sun works, of course. Assuming Spelljammer cosmology, it's a portal. An epic level spell, by design, breaks rules. They do the impossible. And I wasn't saying a positive energy sun, necessarily, more like a dwarf star-equivalent, just temporarily until Athas is back on its feet.
Yeah, I forgot that.
Not, really. Assuming, again, Spelljammer rules, the sphere containing Athas would still be vulnerable to incoming Spelljammers, and the arcane casters they may carry.
This last one was facetious.


1: Precision takes too much effort

2: While we know epic magic can influence a solar rift, we dont have any of the information needed to place the issue more accurately.

4: You need the spelljammer itself to get to Athas, nothing else has the range to get to its crystal sphere.

5: no, its a fact, the reason you want people worshiping you in DnD is because Worship adds up into a divine rank. We also know Divine Ranks cant be acquired in Athas because then the 5 sorcerer-kings would have divine ranks and not just Wizard + Psion + Dragon levels.

[malonkey1]

1: Precision takes too much effort

2: While we know epic magic can influence a solar rift, we dont have any of the information needed to place the issue more accurately.

4: You need the spelljammer itself to get to Athas, nothing else has the range to get to its crystal sphere.

5: no, its a fact, the reason you want people worshiping you in DnD is because Worship adds up into a divine rank. We also know Divine Ranks cant be acquired in Athas because then the 5 sorcerer-kings would have divine ranks and not just Wizard + Psion + Dragon levels.

I think you're misunderstanding some of what I'm saying. I meant to say that:

2: This is true. That's why we set our epic-level hero and his gaggle of optimized Experts to doing the necessary calculations and making the necessary discoveries to figure it out. I'd say, with a dedicated and sufficiently optimized team of researchers, we could conceivably understand solar rifts in about, say, ten years? Maybe more if we can get into contact with somebody in another celestial sphere to cast contact other plane and get some info from the source. Or chuck a fire-immune diplomancer who speaks Ignan in to talk information out of the native fire-planers.
4: Without the shielding, the crystal sphere would be vulnerable. The point of the shielding is to keep out Spelljammers.
5: I think you don't know what "facetious" means. It meant I was kidding.

[Coidzor]

Isn't there already the equivalent of a "You've reached the point of no return" sign warning people from trying to enter Athas's Crystal Sphere? And then the actual difficulty of surviving entering the crystal sphere itself. Seems too little reward for an awful lot of work. Could probably just make a smaller Dyson sphere anyway with less effort. Or a Ring World to move select elements of the Athasian ecosystem to before killing erryone and errything.

[malonkey1]

Isn't there already the equivalent of a "You've reached the point of no return" sign warning people from trying to enter Athas's Crystal Sphere? And then the actual difficulty of surviving entering the crystal sphere itself. Seems too little reward for an awful lot of work. Could probably just make a smaller Dyson sphere anyway with less effort. Or a Ring World to move select elements of the Athasian ecosystem to before killing erryone and errything.

...Yeah. I'd go with a ringworld, then the artificial gravity is easier. Or, we could use Teleport Through Time (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/pg/20030409b) and prevent the whole destruction in the first place.

[toapat]

4: Without the shielding, the crystal sphere would be vulnerable. The point of the shielding is to keep out Spelljammers.

The Spelljammer, that Moon sized manta ray/Death Star/Battlestar which has an infinite city inside it and quite litterally would be able to get there regardless of your epic magic

[malonkey1]

The Spelljammer, that Moon sized manta ray/Death Star/Battlestar which has an infinite city inside it and quite litterally would be able to get there regardless of your epic magic

Yes, but we can't have everything. We may as well try to keep out the smaller ones, and just hope the Spelljammer doesn't ed up dumping any arcanists. Alternately, what if we generated a spherical shell of antimagic field about the outside of the sphere, and have some phlogiston-faring nasties guarding the sphere, ready to chow down on the disabled spelljammer ships. Ideally, we figure out how to get an Emerald Legion (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?101587-D-amp-D-3-5-The-Emerald-Legion-Mass-Producing-Ikea-Tarrasques) to survive and fly through the phlogiston. The idea here is to make it not necessarily impenetrable, but so difficult to get through that nobody bothers. Like a cactus's spines, only the spines disable your technology, are made of steel, rainbows and magic, and are covered in lethal supertrolls that are immune to nearly all forms of attack (save, perhaps, for point-blank annihilation (http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Old_Man_Henderson#The_Tanker_Truck_Incident).)

[Yora]

Importing seeds would likely be the easiest course of action, especially since Nurturing Seeds will make them hardier than just about anything else you could do, and Plant Growth would force them into adulthood in one or two castings, making the growing seasons short indeed.

Introducing lots of foreign species into an already highly fragile ecosystem? That doesn't sound very wise to me. :smallbiggrin:

I think any attempts to work with water and plants really only do a small amount of reducing the symptoms, but the main source of the whole problem is life force being drained from the world. Any attempt to repair the planet would first require to end difiling magic. Otherwise you just add stuff that just dies again after a short time.
Simply adding water would be the worst thing to do. Instead of a planet full of sand, you get a planet full of mud. Might fix the dehydration problem, but otherwise things could be even worse.

To quote Mr. Sokka Watertribe, how about "the new plan is the old plan"? Didn't the current problems start when the Sorcerer Kings figured out that Rajaat would get rid of them as well when they killed everyone else for him? Rajaat did have a plan to do something with the planet, so why not let him have another shot at it?
Fighting and destroying all of the sorcerer kings would be very hard, so it might be easier to free Rajaat and let him do it himself. Instead of going after the sorcerer kings, it would probably easier to disrupt the human sacrifices that the Dragon collects every year to maintain what they did to Rajaat. So the best thing to do is what the Forerunners did to the Flood: Kill enough humans so the sacrifice can no longer take place. Bam, problem solved!

And then we wait and see if freeing Rajaat did do any good.

[toapat]

Yes, but we can't have everything. We may as well try to keep out the smaller ones, and just hope the Spelljammer doesn't ed up dumping any arcanists. Alternately, what if we generated a spherical shell of antimagic field about the outside of the sphere, and have some phlogiston-faring nasties guarding the sphere, ready to chow down on the disabled spelljammer ships. Ideally, we figure out how to get an Emerald Legion (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?101587-D-amp-D-3-5-The-Emerald-Legion-Mass-Producing-Ikea-Tarrasques) to survive and fly through the phlogiston. The idea here is to make it not necessarily impenetrable, but so difficult to get through that nobody bothers. Like a cactus's spines, only the spines disable your technology, are made of steel, rainbows and magic, and are covered in lethal supertrolls that are immune to nearly all forms of attack (save, perhaps, for point-blank annihilation (http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Old_Man_Henderson#The_Tanker_Truck_Incident).)

no, thats the point, Athas is so far away and so dangerous to get into the sphere of that the only spelljammer we risk seeing we cant deal with anyway because its The Spelljammer.

The Emerald Legion is an entirely different problem from spelljamming and more akin to a very slow Relativistic Kill Vehicle.


Introducing lots of foreign species into an already highly fragile ecosystem? That doesn't sound very wise to me. :smallbiggrin:

I think any attempts to work with water and plants really only do a small amount of reducing the symptoms, but the main source of the whole problem is life force being drained from the world. Any attempt to repair the planet would first require to end difiling magic. Otherwise you just add stuff that just dies again after a short time.
Simply adding water would be the worst thing to do. Instead of a planet full of sand, you get a planet full of mud. Might fix the dehydration problem, but otherwise things could be even worse.

To quote Mr. Sokka Watertribe, how about "the new plan is the old plan"? Didn't the current problems start when the Sorcerer Kings figured out that Rajaat would get rid of them as well when they killed everyone else for him? Rajaat did have a plan to do something with the planet, so why not let him have another shot at it?
Fighting and destroying all of the sorcerer kings would be very hard, so it might be easier to free Rajaat and let him do it himself. Instead of going after the sorcerer kings, it would probably easier to disrupt the human sacrifices that the Dragon collects every year to maintain what they did to Rajaat. So the best thing to do is what the Forerunners did to the Flood: Kill enough humans so the sacrifice can no longer take place. Bam, problem solved!

And then we wait and see if freeing Rajaat did do any good.

thats why the currently most successful plan involves killing the entire planet with a delivery of oceans worth of ice and a fresh ferrous core

[Coidzor]

Well, the idea of making an ark/world/moon/ringworld to maintain the biodiversity one wants to actually preserve of Athas rather than just remaking it entirely in the image of Faerun seems to have some merit. And it would potentially allow for creating and maintaining an order of Druids to watch over the crystal sphere to prevent recurrences of Defiling and control for the addition of Arcane casters from outside the setting.

[Darkweave31]

Proclaim, "I don't want to live on this plane(t) anymore!"

Create a spellclock of genesis.

Start over on your new, ever-expanding demiplane called New Athas.

Invite friends, enjoy chips, play D&D

/joke

[Leviting]

If the planet is "dead" would it not be a valid target for true resurrection? Or are planets constructs, and thus reparable?

[toapat]

If the planet is "dead" would it not be a valid target for true resurrection? Or are planets constructs, and thus reparable?

Planets are Outsider (Earth, Water, Air, Fire, Augmented). They are alive but have no soul to use True Res on, assuming they are actually alive (standard) like in 4th

[Leviting]

Planets are Outsider (Earth, Water, Air, Fire, Augmented). They are alive but have no soul to use True Res on, assuming they are actually alive (standard) like in 4th

"This spell can also resurrect elementals or outsiders" (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/trueResurrection.htm)

If planets are always considered living, no matter what, just start stabbing. It's going to take a lot to make you miss.

[toapat]

"This spell can also resurrect elementals or outsiders" (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/trueResurrection.htm)

If planets are always considered living, no matter what, just start stabbing. It's going to take a lot to make you miss.

The planet has been dead for centuries, way outside True-Res range besides the fact it doesnt count as a creature in the rules

[unseenmage]

Y'know Playground, I'm just glad none of us were as willing as Supes to listen to the reasoning of the Bat (http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/originals/30/e1/8b/30e18b8aa9c653cdddbd1d73450480fc.jpg). Keep on keeping on. I love this thread.

[malonkey1]

Y'know Playground, I'm just glad none of us were as willing as Supes to listen to the reasoning of the Bat (http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/originals/30/e1/8b/30e18b8aa9c653cdddbd1d73450480fc.jpg). Keep on keeping on. I love this thread.

Batman didn't have access to epic-level magic and an army of followers.

Alright...How about simply creating an Epic Spell that transforms negative energy into positive energy (and, I suppose, undead into their Deathless equivalents), and then have a few necromancers go nuts?

Time reversal spell, prevent the Lifeshapers from Effing things up in the first place?

Enormous Bag of Holding filled with Quintessence, pile all the people, animals and other life forms in, carry them to an uninhabited planet in another crystal sphere, and say "Here ya go! Don't **** it up this time."?

Research and cast Origin of Species: Xerneas, allow the legendary Pokemon to work its magic?

Use Metamagic Shenanigans to super-Widen Vigor, Plant Growth, and any other useful spells?

Create a Positive-energy-dominant demiplane, with two planet-sized portals (one to go in, one to go out) in the path of the Athasian orbit, allowing Athas to skim through it once a year, restoring some Positive energy each year?

[Rubik]

To prevent future despoiling, become a spell-to-power erudite and show all the arcanists just how insanely powerful and flexible you are. Then convince them to rebuild to become StP erudites, instead. They'd be psionic, and thus unable to despoil, and they wouldn't need to anyway, because they'd be much more powerful than they were before, especially knowing all of their spells natively.

[toapat]

Create a Positive-energy-dominant demiplane, with two planet-sized portals (one to go in, one to go out) in the path of the Athasian orbit, allowing Athas to skim through it once a year, restoring some Positive energy each year?

Pure positive energy is Miracle Gro: Instant Cthulu

it wont fix anything wrong with athas but the shear amount of **** going wrong would be amusing to watch

[malonkey1]

To prevent future despoiling, become a spell-to-power erudite and show all the arcanists just how insanely powerful and flexible you are. Then convince them to rebuild to become StP erudites, instead. They'd be psionic, and thus unable to despoil, and they wouldn't need to anyway, because they'd be much more powerful than they were before, especially knowing all of their spells natively.

Those that refused become forcibly de-bended de-magicked via an Epic Spell.

[Coidzor]

How does the whole "out of lifeforce" thing work, anyway? Having that better defined would probably help refine efforts to do something about it.

I know defiler ash sticks around nigh-forever without druidic intervention. (Unless sometimes preservers can do something about it as well?) And the defiler ash won't support life and resists mundane composting and detritovores and the like. So why doesn't clearing up the ash and re-seeding the area with life work in and of itself? Or, even, reseeding areas with life that haven't been defiled in the first place and no defilers would be going to due to being too remote? Is it just because restoring life to an area attracts defilers like locusts and they'll destroy it again unless fended off by nature-types?

[Phelix-Mu]

EDIT: This ended up way more textwall than intended. You have been warned; incoming ramble.

I like some of the answers involving epic spells, and I think this is definitely a problem the caliber of which is approaching that threshold.

That being said, though, is spellclock/magical trap cheese really not enough to break this problem wide open? I mean, with sufficient pre-transit WBL breakage, the sample druid can probably pull off almost any trick a wizard can.

I think a fair bit of the problem at this point is that the canon on Athas is more than a bit disjointed and not all of us are exactly well-versed in it. I myself know pretty much only some 2e stuff that was made more generic for the other racial books and a bit about templars and elemental clerics. Never read the novels, and have only barely dipped my toes in the post-3e mechanics for defiling and such.

Defiling was a feat introduced in a Dragon Magz, IIRC, but I don't recall if Athas.org used the same thing (and the stuff that Athas.org has produced is just as official and substantially better-thought out than the tidbits that appeared in Dragon).

I believe the 2e fluff was that defiling didn't just harm the biosphere by reducing stuff to ash/dust, but that it harmed the nature of life energy and magic in Athas by rendering that energy into destructive/high-energy stuff that was out-of-sync with the natural order. Hence the azure storms or whatever they were; giant magic storms that pretty much incinerated anything they came across and otherwise heralded the doom of all life (since they even jeopardized powerful spellcasters). Or maybe I am just totally misremembering that bit.

The flavor here is about overweening pride and the results of a world were magic-users (and the lifeshapers, which were a lot like a specialized branch of magic-ish) had seriously overstepped their own limits and broken things that shouldn't even be messed with in the first place. The post-apocalyptic feel was intentional, as they wanted to emulate a world in decline, as the few and mighty duked it out over an increasingly small slice of pie. Thus, they really went for broke in explaining just why Athas was terminally ill and why all the preservers and dragon kings couldn't really do much about it. Cause if they could, the setting doesn't make any sense any more (or perhaps is bizarrely way too realistic).

@Coidzor: I do like the artificial moon/ring world idea. It has merit, and you could solve a number of problems by having an off-planet site for doing stuff (though the range at which Athas' nature mucks stuff up is in doubt, which jeopardizes that convenience). My best idea yet for defilers is to basically just kill everyone; the reason why they emerge is because it is profitable to do so (even if terminally short-sighted), so until defiling doesn't work or there are no more of them, it's unlikely that no more of them will crop up. With epic shenanigans, we could just mindwipe every one of them or something, but since it was a feat in 3e, it's not even clear that you need to learn it from another defiler.

And as to preserving the natural state of Athas, while that has some merit, the natural state of Athas is that Athas is gradually imploding on an ecosystem-level. So there isn't really a "natural state." A druid would probably be concerned with establishing some sense of sustainability in the way things work on Athas, in order that some kind of natural balance/give-and-take between creation and destruction can take hold. If this takes transplanting life from another world, that seems reasonable (especially since it will probably be trivial to then wipe out said normal life if things go wrong).

A more interesting approach, as opposed to pushing Athas' ecosystem back toward a more normative state in comparison with the other worlds, would be to create a world with new forms of beings that were not reliant on a normal function of magic or life-cycles in order to establish their own equilibrium with the environment. Sadly, I don't know if this is possible outside of Origin of Species and similar stuff, which once again introduces the "we fixed it with an epic spell" self-evident thing (which is that there is an epic spell/series of epic spells to render every challenge such as this all but trivial). I am put in mind of Jack_Simth's epic spell to animate a planet, which theoretically would allow a planet to move further from the sun. Sadly, it hinges on hyperbolic numbers of solars to mitigate the series of spells needed to reach the end spell, and solars wouldn't be accessible from Athas (and I'm sure that plan, awesome though it may be, wouldn't work in this instance for a whole other number of reasons).

Oh. And if epic spells can't fix it on Athas, the RAW on epic powers is pretty much just as borked, and those would almost certainly work on Athas. So maybe what we really need here is one of Tippy's PaO'd warforged psion 20s and enough fodder to get him to 21st, hehe.

Actually that might work. Sadly, earning xp is pretty non-TO. Poo.

[Gildedragon]

You know, rather than kill all arcanists, and if dealing with epic magic, one could just make the planet non-defilable (there is a pre epic spell that can cover a fairly large area) and hurt those that try to defile (another pre epic spell for that). An epic spell ought be able to fuse those two and make it planetwide
Impeding all arcane magic is not needed.

[toapat]

You know, rather than kill all arcanists, and if dealing with epic magic, one could just make the planet non-defilable (there is a pre epic spell that can cover a fairly large area) and hurt those that try to defile (another pre epic spell for that). An epic spell ought be able to fuse those two and make it planetwide
Impeding all arcane magic is not needed.

Genocide is defined in the rules

Removing defiling is not.

[Coidzor]

Genocide is defined in the rules

Removing defiling is not.

You're gonna have to actually be a bit more specific there. There's spells that fix defiler ash, last I checked, and, as mentioned, there's spells that prevent defiling from occurring in a certain area.

There's spells that mindrape people into forgetting that they're defilers. There's spells and powers that can be used to remove or change feats.

Heck, I'm sure there's a way to make a defiler DCS/Psychic Ref away their defiler feats, qualify for Exalted feats, and then take Exalted feats and lose all of their feats forever due to falling.