Supernatural forces saturate the Athasian landscape, shaping the world and its inhabitants in significant ways. In general, these forces can be categorized in one of three ways: priestly magic, wizardly magic, and psionics. Each plays an important part in the cycle of life and death on Athas.
Priestly Magic
Athas is a world without true gods. As far back as the earliest days of the Green Age, people have believed in gods, but there exists no true gods on Athas. Unlike the other worlds of the multiverse, where true gods do exist, Athas has never had any, and it never will. The spiritual conduits that allow gods (or powers, as they’re called elsewhere) to draw strength from their worshipers don’t exist on Athas. Without these spiritual conduits, divine power can’t be attained or sustained. Priestly magic on Athas comes from three sources: the elemental planes and the sorcerer-kings and the spirt's of the land.
Elemental/Paraelemental cleric
pay homage to one of the four elemental forces: earth, air, fire, or water and: magma (earth and fire), silt (water and earth), rain (air and water)and sun (fire and air). These forces are like the desert itself, neither benevolent nor malevolent. They care only that their natural forms be preserved in the material world. As long as an elemental/paraelemental cleric keeps the pact he made with his patron element, he’ll continue to receive spells to use in that element’s service. Elemental clerics have no allencompassing hierarchy, no great temples to call worshipers to, no holy books to draw knowledge and inspiration from. They tend to be loners and wanderers who travel the world in the service of the elements they revere.
Druids
Druids cast divine spells through the powers granted them by a spirit of the land. A druid develops a special relationship with the land’s spirit. As a druid travels the tablelands, she is recognized by the spirit of the land as a friend. The spirit grants the druid’s spells, while the druid protects the land and reinforces the spirit. In addition to spells, druids receive special abilities as they gain in knowledge and power.
Templars
on the other hand, receives their power from one of the sorcerer-kings. Are the sorcerer-kings gods? No, even though most of them have claimed to be. The power comes from the same place all priestly power on Athas comes from, the elemental planes. When Rajaat’s Champions combined their magic with the Dark Lens to become the sorcerer-kings, the resulting storm of energy connected them to all the elemental planes. This opened magical conduits through which elemental priest magic could be drawn from. The sorcerer-kings couldn’t use this magic themselves, but they could bestow spellcasting abilities on their most loyal servants. These priests, dedicated to a single sorcerer-king, are called templars.
Arcane Magic
The magic used by wizards is significantly different from that of the priests, both in where it comes from and how it’s used. Wizardly magic converts the energy of living things into magical power that can be shaped into spells. Generally, wizards can only tap the energy found in plants; such wizards fall into two categories: preservers and defilers.
Preservers
have a deep and abiding respect for the life forces of the world. They take great care to balance their gain of magic against the cost of life energy so as not I to create adverse effects. Preservers take only enough life energy from plants to produce a spell effect, being careful not to take so much that the neighboring plants can’t recover.
Defilers
on the other hand, care only for power, reveling in it as it courses through their bodies. They don’t care about the life forces that are lost when they weave their webs of magic. Nearby plants whither and die when a defiler draws power for his spells, and the fertile soil surrounding him turns to sterile ash. The sorcerer-kings are defilers of the highest order, and they combine wizardry with psionics. They can draw the energy for spells from not only plants, but from all living things—including animals and humans. This makes the sorcerer-kings extremely powerful and very dangerous to the world and its inhabitants. Wizardly magic is the cause of most of Athas’s problems, mostly due to the defilers and the sorcerer-kings. As such, wizards are almost universally feared and shunned. The use of wizardry in many of the city-states is a criminal offense punish able by death. In the communities beyond the walls of civilization, wizards can sometimes find homes, but more often they find suspicion, fear, and death.
Psionics
The third supernatural force prominent in the world is psionics, the power of the mind. Psionics isn’t magic. It doesn’t use power provided by an outside agent or pulled from an external source. Instead, psionics draws upon the user’s own inner resources to produce extraordinary effects. Psionics is one of the cornerstones of Athasian life and society. Most living things possess some ability to use psionics, and all have developed at least minimal defenses against it. Almost every human, demihuman, and humanoid in the world is at least a wild talent, and even plants and animals have developed psionic disciplines to help them survive the brutal wilderness. In civilized regions, psionics has become a tool for advancement and political survival.
Athasians call innate psionic ability “the Will,” though psionicists also refer to their reserve of mental strength with this term. Wild talents have the Will, but rarely can they move beyond the single ability nature has provided them. The study of psionics and the refinement of psionic ability is called “the Way.” While the Will makes the use of psionics possible, only through the Way can a person truly master the powers of his mind.
Unlike wizardly magic, psionics is an accepted part of life on Athas. Wild talents and psionicists aren’t feared. Instead, a community’s psionic members are valued as vital assets and encouraged to improve. In many ways, psionics has become the edge needed to compete and survive in this unforgiving and dangerous world
Some even believe that psionics can be used to compensate for the deterioration of Athas’s vital resources, but this has yet to be proven in any significant manner. Every city in the Tyr Region has schools devoted to the Way, and wandering teachers can even be found in the wilderness. It isn’t unusual for a priest or a wizard or a warrior to attend an Academy of the Way to develop his or her psionic abilities. Rumors of a psionic fraternity called the Order persist throughout the Tyr Region.
