The World of Athas

Though the picture I have painted so far is of a stark and rugged land, I do not mean to say that Athas is dreary or monotonous. To the contrary, it has a majestic and stark beauty. When first light casts its emerald hues over the Sea of Silt, or when sunset spreads its bloody stain over the Ringing Mountains, there is a certain feral beauty that stirs the untamed heart in all of us. It is a call to take up spear and net, to flee the city, to go and see what lurks out in the barrenness.

General Geography

The description that follows is what, over the years, I have pieced together about the geography of our world. There are many omissions, and no doubt dozens of errors, for my information is gathered from travelers, merchants, and explorers - some of whom no doubt felt that it was in their best interest to mislead me wherever possible.

Nevertheless, certain broad outlines do emerge. Athas, or at least the explored portion, consists of about one million square miles of desert. In its center, covering an area of about 120,000 square miles, is a vast, dust-filled basin that I call the Sea of Silt. Because of travel difficulties to be discussed later, the Sea of Silt remains almost entirely unexplored.

Surrounding this dry sea is a band of Tablelands, ranging from as much as 400 miles wide to as little as 50. The Tablelands consist of many types of terrain: golden dunes, stony barrens, dust sinks, white salt flats, rocky badlands, and plains of yellow-green scrub-brush.

This is where civilization - if you can call it that - still lingers. Scattered across these flatlands are tiny oases of life where a few acres of fertile land supports a grain field, sometimes even a forest. Clinging to these oases are the disorderly jumbles of buildings and people that we know as cities. Though each city reflects the personality of the king that rules it, all are precariously balanced at the edge of starvation, barely scratching enough food from their small plots of land to support their populations.

The Tablelands are encircled by the various ranges of the Ringing Mountains. These ranges all run north and south. To the east and west of the Sea of Silt, the mountains form solid walls separating the tablelands from the unknown regions beyond. To the north and south of the dusty sea, they form a series of parallel ribs. The deep valleys between the ridges lead away from central Athas like a series of long (and hazardous) corridors.

In every direction, beyond the mountains lie the Hinterlands. We have little knowledge of what abides there. Many men have set out to explore the depths of this unknown region, but I have never met one who returned. During the one journey that I undertook to view just the edge of the Hinterland, an invisible braxat carried off my companions, a tribe of halflings tried to eat me, and a silk wyrm hounded my trail for over a week. It is a wonder that I returned at all.

Athasian Culture

Although Athas is a wasteland, it is not an empty wasteland. The world is fairly crawling with humans, demihumans and humanoids. Every group has found a different way to survive in this barren and harsh environment. In general, I have found that all cultures seem to fall into one of seven basic categories. There are city dwellers, villagers, merchant caravan dynasties, herdsmen, raiders, hunter-gatherers, and hermits.The cities, surrounded by golden fields of crops, stand at sizable oases. They are bustling enclaves of humanity stinking of garbage and ringing with the supplications of beggars. Their tawny towers of fired brick rise from behind thick stone ramparts designed to lock the residents inside as well as keep strangers out. In the enter of every city, a powerful sorcerer-king lives inside a secure fortress, ruling his subjects through a sophisticated hierarchy of bureaucrats, nobles, and rapacious clergymen. Each city is a state unto itself, its king wielding absolute authority over every living thing inside its walls and crawling through its fields.

Villages are no more than clusters of mud-brick shelters erected at-minor oases in various forlorn places, such as the edge of a salt flat or in the shelter of a rocky overhang. Depending on their nature, they are ruled by officious bureaucrats, minor despots, or, occasionally, even democratic councils. At best, they are semipermanent. Sooner or later, the dragon comes calling, the oasis dries up, or a tribe of raiders sweeps out of the wastes. Within a few years of such an event, all traces of the village are buried beneath a massive sand dune or carried away by the howling wind.

The dynastic merchant houses are sophisticated trading companies with networks extending many hundreds of miles, transcending political boundaries, and spanning all social classes. Their trading posts are found on bleak peninsulas jutting into the Sea of Silt, or in box canyons located high in the Ringing Mountains. A sporadic stream of cargo runs from these outposts to the cities, carrying the goods with which the houses stock their vast bargaining emporiums. Each house may have facilities in a number of cities. Most are owned by single families and passed on from generation to generation.

Nomadic herdsmen wander the scrub plains, stony barrens, and sand dunes, pausing for a week or two wherever there is pasture enough for their flocks to graze. Their bands are usually small, consisting of five to ten extended families (50-150 individuals), for their harsh way of life will not support large populations. Most herdsman have fiercely independent spirits, governing themselves through a council of elders. Usually, a magic wielding patriarch serves as the leader of this council. Wherever something is worth stealing, there are raiding tribes. These bands of despicable cutthroats live by pillaging caravans, poaching nomad flocks, and plundering helpless villages. They are cowards who make their homes in desolate places protected by wide expanses of salt flats or great tracts of rocky badlands. Their warlords are ruthless and tough, taking and holding their positions through violence and treachery.

The primitive hunting and gathering clans have the most versatile cultures. You'll encounter them anywhere: hunting snakes in the salt flats, gathering roots in the stony barrens, even stealing eggs from nests perched high atop mountainous crags. They live in small groups of three or four immediate families, usually numbering no more than twenty individuals.

Hermits have withdrawn from a society, either by choice or through coercion. They are peculiar individuals who reside at isolated oases and scratch out a meager living, either by subsistence farming or through limited hunting. Hermits live in all parts of Athas, though you won't meet many because they avoid contact with most strangers.

Supernatural Forces

The world is full of powers beyond those that common men can master. As a rule, they are grouped into three categories clerical magic, wizardry, and psionics. Each plays an important part in the cycle of life and death on Athas.

Clerical Magic

On Athas, there are several different types of clerics. Each of them pays homage to one of the four elemental forces - air, earth, fire, or water. Of course, the latter are perhaps the most influental on our thirsty world, but all are powerful and worthy of respect.

Another group of people call themselves the druids and, at least by most accounts, are considered to be clerics. Druids are special in that they do not pay tribute to any single elemental force, but rather work to uphold the dying life force of Athas. They serve nature and the planetary equilibrium. Many people consider it a lost cause, but no druid would ever admit that.

In some cities, the sorcerer-king is glorified as if he were some sort of immortal being. In fact, many such rulers are actually able to bestow spell-casting abilities upon the templars who serve them. Are they truly on par with the elemental forces worshipped by clerics? I think not.

Wizardry

The magic of wizards is different from that of the clerical orders. it converts the energy of life into magical power that the sorcerer shapes into spells. If this is done with respect for the life forces of the world and care is taken to balance the net loss of energy with the net gain of magic, there are no adverse effects. In most cases, wizards take great care to guard the vitality of the world when casting their spells and working their enchantments.

For others, however, the long-term drain on Athas, ecology is meaningless. They care little for the life force that is lost when they spin their webs of magic. The dark souls, called Defilers, drain the power for their spells from the world around them. Plants near them whither and once fertile soil turns to sterile ash under their macabre power. Most of Athas, sorcererkings are Defilers of the highest power.

Psionics

To one extent or another, every human and demihuman on Athas has psionic powers. Most people are wild talents, with only one power that they have learned to use by trial and error. But anyone can harness their psionic powers through careful practice and study, and every city has at least one training hall dedicated to teaching "the way of the mind." Many warriors, templars, and sorcerers have attended these academies and developed powerful psionic abilities in addition to their normal talents. Psionic powers are not magic. The user focuses his effort inward rather than outward, drawing upon natural forces that infuse his own being rather than those that imbue the world around him. Thus, the widespread use of such mental abilities does not further- enhance the degradation of our battered

Athas History

What generally passes for the history of Athasis in my opinion, a jumble of folklore and propaganda. Most people are too concerned with the problems of the present to devote themselves to the lessons of the past. The few who have any interest in history are the flattering lackeys of kings undertaking the project to glorify their sovereign. The resulting chronicles are implausible fables or mutually incompatible fabrications, and never should you trust what you hear in them.

Still, we can glean something from these jaded annals. The authors of the kingly histories stumble over their own words in their efforts to flatter their monarchs, but we know from the sheer number of their chronicles that most city-states are thousands of years old. The same sorcerer-king rules over the city for spans of hundreds of years, sometimes for more than a thousand. There are even cases where the current sovereign is credited with founding the city.

As incredible as such claims sound, do not discredit them too readily. It is certain that powerful sorcerers live for centuries, and I know of no king that has died in my lifetime, or that of my father or his father.

Yet, the sorcerer-kings do die. I know of at least two deserted city-states. A monarch ruled each one, so there were once at least two more sorcerer-kings than now inhabit the world. We can only assume that the magic keeping them alive failed - or that another king killed them. In either case, the deserted cities are further evidence that Athas itself is dying. If the world were healthy, new metropolises would rise to replace those that had fallen into waste. Turning from political histories to folklore, who has not heard a bard's sonorous voice sing the marvels of the world before ours? The lyrics speak of a land of plenty, with grass on every hill and water in every draw. Fields of barley and whey stretched for miles, and there were so many sheep that the herds could not be counted. Proud forests of oak and maple covered the wild lands, and men were the masters of the beasts.

These ballads sing the praises of warriors who fought not for food or entertainment, but for honor glory, and lady love. The kings in these songs were noble warriors who fought terrible beasts and waged righteous wars in defense of their subjects. Clearly, they were men who placed the needs of their domains above their own desires and cravings.

Most Athasians regard these tales as fanciful flights, mere diversions from the toil and misery that is their life. As far as the individual songs are concerned, their attitude is no doubt correct, for every singer exaggerates the story to heighten the drama. In sum, however, there may be a kernel of truth to the ancient lyrics and ballads.

The world abounds with the ruins of these forgotten kingdoms. Who has not marveled at the archaic walls of a lost city snaking from beneath a mountainous sand dune? Who has not stopped at a rocky aerie to wonder at the aged ruins of the castle perched on the summit? Who has ever crossed an ancient stone-paved road without speculating as to where it once led?

If you have ever asked yourself even one of these questions, then you feel in your heart what I have accepted as true: Athas is a barbaric shadow of some better world. Like men, the elves, dwarves, halflings, and all the demihuman races are but brutal descendants of worthier ancestors. The dragon, the lions, and the other great beasts are horrible abominations of their noble progenitors. Even the plants, such as the blood-blossomed tamarisks, are deadly scions of the foliage that once blanketed the land. The essence of every living thing, from the highest to the lowest, has been warped in some grotesque way that makes it more vicious, more cunning, and more terrifying than its forbearers.

I have no idea what caused this atrocious transformation. Perhaps it was the law of nature, for in a savage land, only the savage will survive. Perhaps it was the influence of a sinister power, as yet unknown and unseen. Perhaps, as some say, the dragon itselfis at the heart of the matter.

If we can discover the truth, we may yet attain the glory of the ancients. Somewhere out there, buried beneath tons of sand and dust, lost in centuries of fire and blood, is an Athas that we have never known: a world of abundance and splendor, where honor is as precious as water.

In my travels I have found that Athas is a world of clashing cultures. Primitive hunters stalk their prey into a city's barley fields, and are in turn hunted down by outraged nobles. Nomadic herders clog the trading roads with their unruly flocks, slowing even the fastest merchant caravan to a crawl. To keep from being massacred in their sleep, villagers working the mines of the Ringing Mountains buy off feral halfling tribes with worthless glass baubles.

On Athas, there are as many different societies as there are groups of people. Each has found a different key to survival in this harsh world. Sometimes these different bands coexist peacefully; more often, they clash whenever they meet.

Surprisingly, all of these societies are shaped by the same four forces: barrenness, shortage of metal, psionics, and magic. If you understand how any society deals with these forces, you will understand the society itself.

Barrenness

The basic necessities of life are scarce on Athas. This means that every society must devote itself to attaining food and safeguarding its water supply.

Hunting tribes spend three-quarters of their time looking for quarry, to say nothing of killing it and preparing it to eat. At the same time, they cannot stray too far from water, for they need plenty of liquid to digest their diet of meat. When the game roams away into unknown deserts, they must often choose between starving to death or dying of thirst.

The lives of the herders are no easier. They spend their days driving their flocks of erdlus across the vast wastes in search of good grazing and ample water. When they are lucky enough to find good pasture, they wage a constant battle to protect their flightless birds, for few predators can resist the temptation of downing a two-hundred pound erdlu or stealing an egg from its clutch.

City dwellers have the most certain means of existence, but also the hardest lives. In the fields around the cities, whole legions of slaves toil to raise a few meager crops. Thousands of soldiers patrol these farms day and night, killing scavengers and raiders without pause. Even then, most cities suffer frequent famines and must resort to food wars in order to keep their populations from withering away. Given the importance of food and water on Athas, it shouldn't surprise any of us that whoever controls the food and water forms an elite class. The best stalkers, the wisest herders, or the people who own the farms and wells are always influential and politically powerful members of the community.

Metal

Metal isn't strictly necessary for any Athasian culture to survive, but it's a great benefit to those that have it. Hunters know that metal arrowheads and spearheads are sharper and more enduring than those made of stone or bone. With metal shoes, herders can protect the feet of their mounts from the rigors of the desert wastes. City dwellers use metal to fashion tools that make backbreaking farm work easier and more efficient. Metal even facilitates commerce between societies, for merchants and traders use it as a universal currency.

Unfortunately, metals are rare. In my voyages I have been lucky enough to actually see the iron mines of Tyr, something few outsiders are ever permitted to do. They are grand affairs with hundreds of slaves toiling to bring scant traces of metal to the surface. I have come to the conclusion that the ancient societies would have considered this mine too worthless to operate. In our age, however, it is a treasure grove that has provided the sorcerer-king of Tyr with wealth and power almost unmatched in the world.

The scarcity of metal retards commerce on Athas. Without an abundance of currency, we must often resort to bartera cumbersome affair when a merchant must haul both the goods he sells and those he receives in exchange over great distances.

The scarcity of resources hampers industrial and economic development as well. In Tyr, one maltreated but better-equipped slave accomplishes twice.