GURPS Dark Sun Conversion

[Jürgen Hubert]

Originally Posted by Pragmatic

Oooh...

Energy Reserve as a way of "drawing power at time of 'spell preparation'"... That's... interesting.

I don't think it'd work with the Threshold Magic that I like for defiling, as there's already the Threshold limit (0 to 30+). But outside of THM systems, it might be a good way to say that there's the level at which an arcane caster can draw before starting to defile. Since it refreshes at 1 pt per 10 minutes, it can show the desperation versus determination of Dark Sun (i.e., "I've cast out all the spells I can without defiling, but I'm still being pursued; do I cast more, or let myself be killed?").

That's what I thought. Defiling should be tempting to wizards - they should constantly have to struggle between doing the right thing and the easy thing. And since this is a world without cosmic forces of Good and Evil, there is no karmic reward for sticking to preserving magic - unlike classical demonic bargains or other supernatural corrupting forces. If a preserver makes it to the end of the road and to the ascension to avangion status, it is because he truly believes that sticking to preserving is the right thing to do, and not because he fears divine judgement.

Originally Posted by Pragmatic

IIRC, the author of RAFOADK received no support from the RPG folks at WOTC. As such, the canon-ness of the book must be judged very, very, very loose.

Yes, but the book was awesome - as were the other Dark Sun novels by Lynn Abbey, which I count among the best gaming fiction I know.

Besides, Hamanu didn't switch to preserving. He couldn't. Instead, he refused to use defiling magic any more than absolutely necessary (usually using his formidable psionic powers instead), and usually drew upon his own life energies instead when he had to. He tried to draw upon the guardian spirit of Urik, but the spirit rejected him because of his draconic nature. Thus, it required Pavek to draw the spirit out.

Spoiler: At the end of the novel, in the far-future epilogue, Hamanu probably was purged of his draconic nature and thus had no more defiling powers. He probably could learn defiling anew, but this didn't strike me as likely.


Speaking of dragons and avangions... This isn't about any rules mechanics, but I have a pet theory about them and this seems as good as any place to mention it.

It is likely that Rajaat, the First Sorcerer, made draconic ascension an inherent part of defiling magic. Sure, he transformed the various Champions (which later became sorcerer-kings) into dragons directly, but later defilers seem to have stumbled across this path often enough to repeat it. So even if there are other ways of transhumanist ascension possible with defiling magic, becoming a dragon seems to be comparably "easy" for defilers of great powers because we never saw any alternatives. Of course, maybe they just stumbled across hints in old texts or by studying the sorcerer-kings. Still, if they had to experiment a lot with incomplete hints, we should surely have seen more variation with such transformations.

But if you see dragons as something deliberately designed by Rajaat and encoded into the very nature of defiling magic itself, it makes a lot of sense, especially if you take the accounts of Hamanu in the novel at more-or-less face value. Dragons are designed as the antithesis of all life - they are killing engines who destroy living things by using their magic and constantly grow powerful in the process, frequently flying into blind, destructive rampages. They are also innately very paranoid and have an extremely difficult time cooperating in any way with their peers.

Or from Rajaat's point of view, dragons - whether the Champions themselves or later defilers rising to that status - will destroy all life by their very nature and once they have destroyed everything else they will destroy each other. Which is rather useful if you want to return Athas to a blank slate before you can bring it back to the world it was in the Blue Age.

But let's remember that Rajaat didn't only create defiling magic - he also created preserving magic and introduced it to the world! So, if he encoded draconic ascension into defiling magic... has he also encoded avangion ascension into preserving magic?

Let's think about this. All published works never hint that there is any other path of ascension available to preservers. Yet there is no real precedent for avangions, apart from Oronis of Kurn (and few know about him). So why should preservers figure out how to turn into avangions independently of each other? If they do so, it must be because it represents a deeper, "universal" truth of preserving.

To figure out what might have motivated Rajaat to do this, let's look at the differences between dragons and avangions. Where dragons are solitary and paranoid, avangions cooperate with each other. Where dragons are engines of destruction, avangions cherish life and loathe taking it, instead spreading new growth wherever they go.

So here is what I think Rajaat's plan was: Once dragons have wiped out all mortal, sapient life (except the halflings that Rajaat presumably protected somehow), the only former humans alive are the last remaining dragons and the avangions. If the dragons fail to kill each other off, the avangions band together and finish the job. Then they begin to restore Athas and continue to do this job for the rest of their immortal lives - but normal humans are gone, and avangions are probably too altered to procreate. Essentially, they are nothing more than tools for the restoration of Athas to its former state, and their mentality might be too pacifistic to wage war upon Rajaat and his works. Humans and the other new races are now truly gone, and Athas becomes ready to be resettled by the halflings.