Scrolls/wands in Dark Sun

[Another_Poet]

Quick question for those who have run the setting (in any edition). If an arcane caster uses a scroll, does it defile the area around them? Or was the defiling done when the scroll was first made?

How about wands, etc?

[Another_Poet]

Actually, doing some more digging, I think I found a nice solution from this person's PF Dark Sun site:

http://whinehurst.com/darksun/index.php?title=Magic_Items

tl;dr—Basically there are Defiling items and Preserving items. Preserving items consume charges like normal wands but they already contain the energy needed to power the spell. Defiling items are not limited by charges, but they defile in order to power the spells, and using them counts as defiling.

It doesn't mention scrolls, but I would rule them the same way, except that all scrolls are 1-use items whether Preserving or Defiling (i.e. no unlimited charges).

[Naanomi]

Magic items are also very rare in the setting, psionic equivalents much more common

[SharkForce]

in the 2e books, defiling (or preserving) came into play when creating the item, not when using it. or at least, in the original. not sure about the revised, which basically decided to screw around with everything. i can only assume the people they assigned to revise the books absolutely despised everything about the setting and set out to destroy everything that anyone liked about it. (well, okay, not quite everything. they introduced some new gladiator weapons, which was kind of a cool idea. but pretty much everything else in the revised edition was a horrible idea).

in fact, it was actually a plot point that magic items didn't defile at use, but at creation, because that was how defilers infiltrated the veiled alliance - by pretending to cast spells while actually using magic items, thus providing "proof" that they weren't defilers (or at least, it was in the original version. again, the revised version decided that you could just defile while you *memorized* spells, without ever bothering to explain how the veiled alliance at least tried to test if you were a defiler before letting you join. but again, i must restate that the revised version was an abomination, and we should all pretend that it never happened).

that said, as noted a lot of people hate arcane magic, and as an added bonus, literacy is not exactly common (and in fact is illegal for a significant portion of the population... in most cities, if you're not a noble (or probably a templar) you are not legally allowed to be literate iirc, though limited allowances are made for trading houses to handle accounting).

as a result, athasian spellbooks are often not spellbooks but rather some other method of storing information - strings of beads that alternate in shape, size, and color, patterns woven into something, etc - and i would expect athasian scrolls (or at least, anything made *recently*) to be extremely uncommon, even more so than just the general hatred of arcane magic would suggest, because they're not something you could readily disguise (again, you're not supposed to be able to read, so what are you carrying around a piece of paper for?) and many wizards might not even use or make scrolls because they literally cannot read.