The "Diamond Throne" setting, for the Arcana Unearthed variant d20 ruleset, includes a race of beings who had been pulled into said setting from another world. These beings, the alabast, are a humanoid yet nonhuman species, whose skin is pure white yet nonalbino, and whose native connexion with magic derives only through magical items. This got me wondering about the nature of their homeworld.
Apaliuna's sky on a midsummer noon is a deep "ocean" blue. Hanging above it is an apparently massive, dimly red-orange sun. All around is darker and ruddier than an outsider would expect of the sun's light at noon. The planet sports a moon, at the same distance at ours but larger, such that total eclipses appear at a similar frequency.
Months and years are both shorter here than they are on Earth. The world's day is about the same length.
This sun is a red-orange dwarf cooler than our sun, and Apaliuna orbits close around it. The tidal forces which the moon generates also suffice to keep the planet's core liquid and thus its magnetic field working. Thus the planet gets about as much heat as ours, but less light and a lot less ultraviolet.
The problem with planets that close to their host star, and with smaller, cooler stars in general, is that the star's flares can affect more than the local Northern Lights. All animals fear the sun when it seems brighter than usual. Those are the times of sunburns and sickness.
Life did manage to evolve on this planet, albeit in forms different from those of Earth. UV light is not prevalent and consistent enough to serve as a nutrition source, the way it helps generate vitamin D in humans. Here, UV is a killer. Accordingly Apaliunan lifeforms do not have dark "melanin" to absorb light; they have white "leuconin" to reflect it. Assuming UV protection, cell death is slower here, and so healthy Apaliunans have higher Constitution scores than that listed as a warrior average in the stats of Diamond Throne Chapter Four.
The fear of UV-flare forces most life into sheltered areas, where there is even less light than usual. Accordingly the pupils of the eyes for most animals here tend to be larger that for the Earth standard.
Most "monsters" are clearly mutated versions of domestic beasts. Their depredations are cyclical, typically following a few years after a severe bout of solar flares. The only sentient race native to Apaliuna is that which Serrans call "alabast", here called Apaliunans.
It is not recorded when nor how sentient Apaliunans colonised the deep forest. It was many millenia ago, and there are no records of that time.
The planet's geological strata bear numerous fossils of seemingly impossible diversity, between one layer and the next. Too often, patches of glassy material separate these layers. Palaeontologists consider these patches witness to literally world-ending cataclysms. Iladans consider them raw ore for their athame weapons.
More recent layers sport the ruins of former civilisations. The ruins' denizens are recognisable as relatives to Apalunian species - but not always as Apalunian sentients as they currently exist, particularly not in the earliest layers. Some of these civilisations had developed a form of writing. However, only the more monumental of these writings have outlasted the elements to the present, and most are too alien to be deciphered in any case. Campfire tales have it that some of these "Ancients" have survived underground, overseas, in [rumoured] other worlds, etc; but none of this can be verified.
The most ancient Apaliunan records are in pictographic scripts that took a similarly tortuous route to the modern age. These are the records that gave rise to the varying scripts in use as of 1 "before apocalypse (B.A.)". These secondary scripts run the gamut of cuneiform, ideographic, and hieratic. Their languages are various, but none in Gaddaic. Fortunately some of those dead languages have been preserved in priestly contexts (rather like Egyptian Coptic); and nearly all can be puzzled out with more or less difficulty.
In the forests, the people developed along classic city-state lines, rather like Earth's Maya. Each state had a hierarchy: a ruling dynasty, a clique of priests, an army of warriors, and the rest commoners. Within each state, each faction rivaled one another for power, resources, and prestige. The cities built pyramids, symbolising the power of the heavens and the structure of society. On the forest's fringes these people encountered a nonindigenous people from across the plains, speaking a language they recorded second-hand, now recognised as a predecessor for Gaddaic. The plains people would trade with the forest people, and occasionally raid them.
The forest people viewed time as cyclical. A typical commoner planted seeds, harvested crops, waited out the winter, avoided politics, and every few decades braced for the solar flares. Stories of the past were told, but as myth.
One oft-told myth of this time is about Shammaz, a particularly odious god-king who associated himself with the Sun. The real Sun naturally took offense at this and smote his kingdom. Following the rise of Gaddey Sharruk, the bards began to associate the tale of Shammaz with that city. Those variants peddled by certain holy sects incorporate a Prophet of the Sun, who calls upon the Sun's vengeance for Shammaz's arrogance.
The plains of this world are deceptively lush. But visitors will rarely see an animal. Most creatures borrow into the soil and live a nocturnal existence.
In the elder days, what Apaliunans dwelt on those plains lived as nomads and traders, or else settled rude hamlets on those scanty parts of the forest left to them. They used small hooved pack animals resembling llamas and donkeys. They did not pass down a literary tradition. Very little of their culture survived the elements for the benefit of modern study.
But then the plains people learnt to enchant strips of hide against radiation. This allowed the more civic-minded of them to settle further into the plains and away from the forest peoples. They further learnt to enchant their clothes, allowing them to move about in the day. And finally, they learnt to enchant weapons.
One such plainsman was Sharruk. He had trained in the deep desert a cadre he called the iladan. The iladan were then a type of Arcana Unearthed Mageblade that progressed to a limit of 11 levels. With this élite, he entered the service of the king of the most revered forest city. Sharruk used his iladan to usurp the throne, and swiftly conquered the surrounding cities. He then founded a vast city in the desert for his empire's capitol - Gaddey Sharruk.
The empire lasted only five generations before collapsing; from internal stresses, sandstorms, and a particularly vicious solar flare. The city of Gaddey Sharruk has never since been found.
The cities soon fell into disunion again. But Sharruk had left behind the iladan, a common language (Gaddaic), and the ideal for future attempts toward empire.
To the north of the forest and plain, a stretch of limestone badlands provides host to a vast labyrinth of caverns, natural and otherwise. This tends to be the home of savage tribes and outcasts, and of worse horrors further down. Not much else is known of the region; few respectable people will venture there.
After Gaddey Sharruk's fall, one of the last native-language forest cities, Laggash Uljis, led the forest into a renaissance and gathered up much of Sharruk's old imperium. But just when Laggash Uljis was set to rival its predecessor, a horde of barbarians swept out of the caves to the north and destroyed nearly every city in the forest, burning down much of the woods in the process.
The region between the forest and the caves remains a treeless, shelterless, and mostly lifeless wasteland. Few believe that the savages of the caves had the power to do this alone. The legends of the cave-dwellers tell that something came out of the deep places of the caverns, expelling the population.
The cave-dwellers dwell there still; but they do not venture as far into the depths as they once did, and they limit their surface adventures to the occasional raid.
About 400 B.A. in Apaliuna years, a scientist called Lugeel decided against solar-worship and sought to understand the Sun. He used the world's glassware as a light-filter and discovered the sunspot cycle. He discovered other principles of optics; and proved that this world revolved around its Sun. This city avoided the Sun's wrath when the next flares came. This city was Kellest Minos.
Kellest Minos parleyed its astronomical expertise into a new civilisation. The citizens converted their pyramids into observatories, and forced a reform upon their priesthood. Now to be a "priest" one had to pass a set of qualifying examinations on mathematics, science, and magical theory. They became civil mandarins.
It is hard to overestimate how far Kellest Minos changed the worldview of Apaliuna. Before Lugeel, many societies worshipped the Sun. Now, sensible folk accept the Sun as an sphere far greater than their world. Those theologians who retain their belief in the Sun's divine nature can propose at most that a god lives within it (usually a Trickster- or Devil-figure) or else that such a god sanctified it. Also, time is no longer seen as cyclical. The Apaliunans now know their civilisation had a Beginning, and have reason to fear an End.
After two centuries, Kellest Minos had a population of over 10,000 souls and the finest universities in the land. Its citizens exerted a level of influence not seen since the days of Sharruk, albeit not as directly. They were even beginning to wonder about other planetary systems.
But on Year Zero, such questions received an answer...
In the caverns far from the forest, Kellest Minos installed a "monastery" where iladans could carry out clandestine research. Four centuries after Lugeel's discovery of sunspots, they made a new discovery: a way to enchant blades to cut through the very fabric of reality. Unfortunately for them, among their discoveries was that dimension of the dramojh called Serran.
The dramojh did not much care about Apaliuna the world; their focus was on Terrakal. They did however care about threats to their flanks. Faced with the itch that was Kellest Minos, they scratched it.
The city of Kellest Minos erupted into a holocaust of fire and sorcery. Some reports recorded creatures like those depicted in Diamond Throne p. 19. Of the city, only a smoking crater remained. Of its people, all had disappeared except those away on business.
The surrounding cities could find nothing in the Sun to explain this, nor in the dweomers of the iladan. Kellest Minos's former provinces feared the city's traditional rival, Madint Hanoch, and banded together. They sent investigators to the crater of Kellest Minos, who found there traces of a magic never seen before: a magic capable of mass, involuntary transportation.
One such province, Kebbith Zarat, initiated further sorcerous research which its allies did not approve. Kebbith Zarat's allies discovered their schemes soon enough, and raised an outcry. This was as nothing to the outcry among Kebbith Zarat's rivals. Popular demonstrations and public condemnations rang out in every city of the forest.
One Madintese faction exploited the ill-will to fan a riot, and finally a revolution. Mobs burnt down libraries and forced their iladans and astronomers into the forest. Hundreds died in a citywide purge. The new regime subsequently simplified its city's traditional script from hieratic to cursive-alphabetic, so as better to propagate the new doctrine.
Kebbith Zarat's new sorcerors saw the rise of this movement, and moved swiftly to keep it from home. They imposed an "emergency law" and installed pliant officials throughout the city. They had learnt enough gate-magicks to summon up horrors never before seen on this planet. This killed more loyal city guard than it did rioters, but it got the point across to the rabble. The city's new masters did not expect to be loved or even supported, but to be recognised as powerful and ruthless enough that they must be obeyed. It also put Madint Hanoch on notice that an overt conquest might prove costly.
Over the ensuing centuries, the position of Madint Hanoch has mellowed somewhat. No city can afford to do without its astronomers; they are still necessary to predict the solar flares that are this world's truest enemy. In addition the Madintese have, despite themselves, won the battle of ideas against the heresy of those who seek to open further doorways to other planes; or at any rate tyrannical and xenophobic Kebbith Zarat has lost it. Madint Hanoch's script has proved most successful of all; practically every work of literature has been translated into it, even in Kebbith Zarat, with the exception of some of that town's more esoteric texts.
Where these hooks deal with the Diamond Throne, it is not that setting's intent to allow the alabast to return to Apaliuna. Fortunately for the DT setting, if not for the alabast, Apaliuna's current state renders that impossible. Any "aliens" would be slain on sight by those of Madint Hanoch and enslaved by those of Kebbith Zarat. The scions of Kellest Minos would suffer worse fates. Among the PCs' aims in the following is to ensure that the factions fail to contact the alabast of Serran.
Also, note that the dramojh are canonically dead here as in Serran. If the DM rules that dramojh colonies survived, no-one will stop the DM, but that is outside this project's scope: Diamond Throne p. 20.
From Diamond Throne: A minor treasure has been gone missing in Tharthulin. Everyone suspects a band of thieves based out of arrogant Kellest Minos. But when the PCs investigate, they find that there too items are getting lost. Even some of the local citizens have gone missing. The events follow a pattern that leads the party to suspect the thieving will next occur in the city throne-room. But when the PCs occupy that spot, a magical Gate pulls them into a Kebbith Zarat laboratory.
From Planescape or Diamond Throne: The PCs are yanked out of some well-deserved R&R. They end up in a secluded spot on the edge of Kellest Minos's crater. An apocalyptic cult has purloined just enough data from Kebbith Zarat to pluck the PCs from the Planes. If an alabast is with them, s/he is treated as a Messiah. But other factions get involved.
From Planescape: Word has reached a local potentate that there is a wondrous glassy substance to be had in a backwater Prime planet off the major trade-routes. Or, someone wants to investigate solar flares (but without interfering in the local culture, of course!) and must be guarded. Either way, disguise is necessary or the PCs will be arrested.
Local: A plane which Kebbith Zarat has hit once too often is planning a counter-strike.
Local: In the caves, the dramojh had tried to set up a colony, out of the way - but attackers violently destroyed it. The cave-dwellers say they did it with the help of Apaliunan city-dwellers and others.
Local: Miners in the hills break into the mine of a former, non-Apaliunan civilisation.
Local: Investigations into the ruined monastery. The monastery's records claim they were not the first to try breaking across dimensional frontiers. They say they had received warning from the "primitive troglodytes".
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zimriel@sbcglobal.netI see the faen and alabast as AU's answer to Tolkien / D&D elves. The faen are closer in spirit to the elves of Earth legend. That gives them the niche of sylvan elf. For Tolkien high elves, no such Earth legend existed until Tolkien created the theme of the Noldor exile. I see the elf-like, but emphatically non-fey, outsider alabast as filling this niche in Terrakal.
The "Diamond Throne" setting owes much to Stephen Donaldson's books about the Land. It seems fitting that the alabast homeworld should mirror, so to speak, Donaldson's "Mordant's Need" series. That means the world is low-magic; to such an extent that no-one casts spells natively, and that magic comes through objects only.
I assume that the term "alabast" is not their name for themselves, particularly not in a world where everyone looks like that.
This page was created 25 May 2004. Then revised 2 July and again 25 Nov the following year. 18 Dec, link to K.M.