Athas

Overview

Athas is an arid and bleak desert-world, a wasteland with a handful of scorched cities clinging precariously to a few scattered oases. It is a brutal and savage land, beset by political strife and monstrous abominations, where life is grim and short. The crimson sun scorches the land from the first hints of dawn until the last twinkling of dusk, appearing in the olive-tinged sky like a fiery puddle of blood. Athas is a land of unending earthquakes, scouring sand squalls, and swift, violent rainstorms that deliver lightning and death from the sky. Water is more precious than gold in this resource-depleted world, and metals of all sort are in short supply. Except for heat and sun, blood and dust, few things can be found in abundance.
The world's savage and primal landscape is the result of long centuries of ecological and magical abuse. The world is dying: it breathes its last gasps as water turns to silt, grasslands become sandy wastes, and jungles decay into stony barrens. Still, life finds ways to endure even in these hellish conditions.
Much of Athas is a desert: sun-scorched and wind-scoured, parched and endless. As the sun climbs relentlessly to its zenith, so does the temperature: 100°F (38°C) by mid-morning, 110°F (43°C) at noon, 130°F (54°C) — perhaps even 150ºF (66°C) — before the sizzling day gives way to night. The wind doesn’t help matters either. As hot as a forge’s breath, it blows up sandstorms that last for as long as a month or more. Even gentle breezes feel like open flames, carrying throat-searing and nose-clogging dust.
In most regions, the greatest danger is the lack of water. Much of Athas sees rain but once a year, while a few locations experience storms no more than once a decade. Even with the advent of the deadly Tyr-storms, actual rainfall has increased only slightly across the land. Nights are as brutal as days. Low humidity allows the day’s heat to escape into the clear sky, plunging the temperature to 40°F (4°C) or less. In higher elevations, the temperature can plummet to zero (-18°C). The light of Ral and Guthay, the twin moons, provide no warmth as they shine over the darkened land.
Still, the deserts and sandy wastes eventually give way to other types of terrain in some locations. A few lush forests, for example, cling to the earth with a desperate desire to survive. Jagged mountains rise into the sweltering sky, dividing one barren landscape from another. To the east, the ever-present and seemingly endless Sea of Silt fills the horizon. To the south, vast plains of blackest obsidian form a desert of chipped stone. To the north and west, great cliffs overlook grasslands that stretch off as far as the eye can see.
On the shores of the vast, dust-filled basin known as the Sea of Silt lies the most densely populated region on Athas, known as the Tablelands. The Tablelands consist of a band of habitable land 250 miles (402 kilometers) long and ranges as much as 400 miles (644 kilometers) wide to as little as 50 miles (80 kilometers). It consists of many types of terrain, including golden dunes, stony barrens, dust sinks, white salt flats, rocky badlands, and plains of yellow-green scrub brush. Scattered across the flatlands are tiny oases of life where a few acres of fertile land supports a grain field, sometimes even a forest.
In the center lies the Tyr Region, where the majority of the population lives in the city-states of Tyr, Urik, Raam, Draj, Nibenay, Gulg, and Balic. The remainder lives in remote villages built around oases and wells or wander about in nomadic tribes searching for what they need to survive. The Tyr Region is bordered by the Sea of Silt on the east, the Hinterlands to the west, and the Endless Sand Dunes to the south.

Inhabitants

Although Athas is home to a surprising variety of intelligent races, not all of them have made a lasting or prominent impact on the civilized lands of the Tyr Region and its surrounding environs. The most prominent races may superficially resemble similar people from other worlds, but they have been molded by their environment and their lives on Athas. Other races are unique to this world and are the result of the world's long history of conflict. The most prominent and most populous races on Athas include aarakocra, dwarves, elves, half-elves, half-giants, halflings, humans, muls (half-dwarves), pterrans, and thri-kreen.

Satellites

Athas has two moons, named Ral and Guthay.

• Ral, also known as Urgati or the Red Moon, is the first moon of Athas.
• Guthay, also known as Hangati, is the second moon of Athas. According to elven myth, Guthay is the original homeworld of the silk wyrms (giant armoured flying serpents).

Planet Bound

As far as is known, the current inhabitants of Athas have little knowledge of spelljamming, although it is possible that some closely guarded library maintained by one of the sorcerer-kings conceals some ancient tome that details the basic concepts of wildspace.

Crystal Sphere: Athasspace
Type: Planet
Shape Class: Spherical
Type Class: Earth body
Satellites: Ral, Guthay
Satellite of: The Crimson Sun
Year Length: 375 days
Population Summary: Humans, elves, dwarves, halflings, half-elves, half-giants, mul, thri-kreen, aarakocra, pterrans, numerous other creatures.
Celestial Technology Classification: II

Type

Planet

Ruling/Owning Rank

Sorcerer-King