HISTORY OF
ATHASPACE
HISTORY OF
ATHASPACE
In the beginning, there were only halflings. These halflings called themselves Rhulisti, and they ruled the multi-verse.
The Rhulisi were masters of life, and they shaped everything from organic substance. Their tools, their homes, even their vehicles were living creatures. They built living cities in a hundred crystal spheres, and travelled the far boundaries of wildspace in giant living craft. The Rhulisti loved the worlds they visited, and they helped them grow and evolve.
The Rhulisti loved one crystal sphere more than any other. It was their home sphere, where they had colonised several worlds, including a blue planet of endless ocean that would one day be known as Athas.
But the Rhulisti were not the only intelligent creatures in Athaspace. Thri-kreen had evolved on the planet of Thok, and achieved a sufficient level of technology to begin spelljamming. This made the Rhulisti nervous, as they had long viewed themselves as the primary species in a universe of animals. When thri-kreen landed on Athas the Rhulisti were not happy, but they did not provoke confrontation.
The Rhulisti and thri-kreen lived peacefully in separated societies for thousands of years. Great organic cities rose from Athas' oceans, as they did on a million other Rhulisti worlds, while the thri-kreen lived on the islands. This bliss could not last forever. The Rhulisti made a mistake somewhere, and a Brown Tide swept across Athas. The ocean was consumed, and the cities were destroyed. The thri-kreen adapted readily, preferring their new environment to the ocean world. But the Rhulisti were uncomfortable in a world so devoid of life.
The existence of Rhul-O partly explains the coolness of the Rhulisti after the blunder that ended Athas’ Blue Age. When they created the Brown Tide the most frightened Rhulisti simply returned to Rhul-O, their homeworld at the far reach of Athaspace. Those with more social conscience stayed behind to heal Athas. In their great wisdom they decided that the Rebirth was the perfect way to accomplish this.
The ‘Bible’ of Rhul-O, known as the Rhulomnicron, says the Rhulisti of Athas used the power of the Dark Sun to end the Brown Tide before it destroyed all life on the planet. It suggests that they amplified the Sun’s power through Blackjag and into the Dark Lens, which focused the energy and baked the Brown Tide into solid land. This seems unlikely (if Blackjag was created for this purpose, wouldn’t it be on the other side of Athas?), but the Rhul-Os believe it is so. Then they used the excess energy to power their own transformations, becoming the various different Rebirth races (humans, elves, dwarves, giants, halflings, etc.). From that point forth, they were never to return to Rhul-O.
Millenia passed, and the thri-kreen moved into wildspace and beyond the crystal shell. The alien syllix race had forged an empire that stretched throughout the Known Spheres, and the thri-kreen were proud to inherit this domain. For nearly a thousand years, the entire multiverse was ruled by the thri-kreen and zik-chil. The Rhulisti kept quiet at this time, discarding the other Spheres to fate, but they protected Athaspace, fighting wars to save Athas, Blackjag, and even Ket-tahn. The people of Ffara-klet were wiped out in a massive slaughter around this time.
The Rhulisti could not destroy the kreen empire completely. Although their technology was great, it was derived from the essence of their homeworlds. They could not drive the thri-kreen from Athaspace without destroying their precious planets in the process.
Rajaat had no such hesitation. The First Sorcerer was consolidating his power by this time. In the sphere of Athaspace, where gods could not walk and traditional magic was useless, he was much more powerful than any planar 'god'. Rajaat was life; he was the laws of reality. He had no qualm with the thri-kreen of Athas, but he would stand no 'inter-galactic empire' camping on his doorstep.
The Thri-Kreen Empire of the Known Spheres ended more abruptly than it began. Rajaat launched a double-pronged attack. He sent a legion of spelljammers to destroy their armies. Rajaat could not power the vessels with life, for he needed crews to pilot them. Instead, he designed them to draw on the sun (alternate legends say he created one mighty self-powered vessel from the Dark Sun’s magic, and that it became known as the Spelljammer). They destroyed the Thri-Kreen Legion of Athaspace in a heartbeat, and at the same time Rajaat’s second surprise struck the thri-kreen homeworld of Thok: his deadliest inventions, the clockwork horrors, burst up from the earth. They found a dead world. The energy required by Rajaat’s fleet had already bloated the Dark Sun to a level that made life on Thok impossible.
Rajaat cared little for the other Spheres, but the rise of the illithid resulted in the fall of the rest of the Thri-Kreen Empire of the Known Spheres. Furthermore, news of the battle in Athaspace began to circulate, and other worlds heard of the power of Athas' sole god Rajaat. Mainstream spelljammer travel in Athaspace began about this time (3 millenia before Kalak’s fall). Spelljamming was new to the Known Spheres, and Athas lay far from the beaten path, but many adventurers searched for Rajaat’s power. And so they discovered defiling magic.
It seems Athasian sorcery works on most heavily-travelled worlds (Realmspace, Greyspace, even Fifth Age Dragonlance - figure out the mechanics for that!). Defilers were the most frequent spelljammers, making Athasians extremely unpopular with fellows like Elminster, the Circle of Eight, the Conclave of High Sorcery, and even the Lady of Pain in Sigil. Occasionally divine intervention was required to protect the better ‘known worlds’ from what was quickly being labelled as the ‘Pandora’s Box of the Multi-Verse’. No power, no mage, not even Elminster was willing to travel into Rajaat’s domain to find an end to the menace.
By this time Rajaat had been imprisoned, but this was hardly common knowledge, and the sorcerer-kings were no better anyway. The Rhul-Os and Khet-tahns had ceased spelljamming completely. They seemed to be frozen in the lights of change like frightened skullbunnies. But their technology was still improving year-by-year, and they continued to watch the multi-verse. The Rhul-O records do not suggest that the Rhulisti were assuming a submissive stance during the period. It says little on the matter at all, but general Rhulisti belief is that they watched silently only because they were loathe to disturb the multi-verse with the power of their superior wisdom.
The next threat to Athaspace was the beholder nations. These came as a suprise to the Rhul-Os, who had apparently battled the creatures thousands of years previously. Wars raged across the twin Rhulisti planets. Many Rhulisti died, and many more eye tyrants decorated the organic streets with their guts. The beholders cared little for war with other species (they prefer to war with themselves), but they seemed to find great value in the worlds of the Rhulisti.
All at once the beholder attacks ceased. In fact, all spelljamming activity ceased. The crystal sphere of Athaspace had been sealed, closing the Athasians, the Thri-Kreen, and the Rhulisti off from the Known Spheres once and for all.
The Rhulisti were as puzzled as the rest of the multi-verse as to the sealing. The truth was simple. The sorcerer-kings, under the command of Borys, had embarked on a mighty journey to the edge of the sphere, using one of Rajaat's recovered sun-vessels. With them, they took thousands of living slaves. These slaves powered what was perhaps the greatest psionic enchantment of all time: the Closing of Athaspace.
Its effect was total. No magical or psionic power could penetrate the crystal shell, nor could any god or artifact. Two theories exist as to why the sorcerer-kings did this: they wanted to keep the beholders and other warring races from Athaspace, or they wanted to keep the inhabitants of Athaspace in Athaspace. The latter idea is chilling in the extreme.
(It is possible that another psionic enchantment, cast by an avangion, might have the power to unweave the sorcerer-king's Shell Lock spell.)
The Rhulisti did not care. They had vowed not to interfere with other worlds after the creation of Athas' Brown Tide, and now they were safe from other worlds as well. But they were becoming concerned with Athas. The defilers, and the Dragon Kings, were the antithesis of everything the Rhulisti stood for. They would not stand for the destruction of one of their oldest and most beloved worlds by these monstrous creatures.
The Rhulisti watched, and they waited for a sign...
The sign of Rajaat.