GURPS Dark Sun Conversion

[NineDaysDead]

Originally Posted by Jürgen Hubert

Canonically, all arcane magic on Athas (with the exception of that "sun magic" that Sadira from the novel uses) draws energy from plants.

Nitpick, that should be "draws energy from living things" it's possible to power magic from your own life-energy, or the life-energy of other animals and people, as well as plants.

Originally Posted by Jürgen Hubert

As described, defiling has a lot of similarities with drug addiction - they get a "rush" as they drain the energy of plants. Preservers know how to defile - they know how to drain energy from plants, after all - but they have carefully trained themselves to restrain from sucking all the energy out of them. This requires a lot of focus and willpower - and once you are used to the rush of energy of defiling, it becomes harder and harder to maintain. Defilers possibly can become defilers again (there is even a sorcerer king who managed that), but this requires very long periods of being "cold turkey" before they regain the balance needed. They can't switch between defiling and preserving at will any more.

IIRC, I believe Hamanu was able to switch between the two types in "The rise and fall of a dragon king".