Under the Crimson Sun Options

[fistandantilus4....]

The wastelands of Athas have suffered for thousands of years under the tyrannical rule of the Sorcerer-Kings. Great and anciet city-states dot the landscape, the last refuge of humanity in the shattered remnants of a once great world. Struggling to survive in the shadows off the scant generosity of merciless immortals ruling the cities, the people of Athas fight for life everyday beneath the unforgiving sun.

For ages the city-states have endured, held together by the indomitable will of the Sorcerer-Kings and their templars. The only constant in the trackless wastes is the Kings and their cities, their iron rule squeezing blood from the stones that are the city-states, forcing survival. So things have continued since the beginning of recorded history.

Until now.

In ancient Tyr, some say the oldest of the city-states, change has come. King Kalak, the Tyrant of Tyr, has been assassinated. In his place sits a new king, Tithian, formerly of the templars, sits now in the Golden Tower, with the support of the senate and the nobility. In an unprecedented change, the slaves of Tyr were freed by the king's first decree, making Tyr the only free city on the face of Athas. The people, saved from the murderous will of Kalal, who nearly destroyed all life in the city in a powerful magical ritual, have embraced their new king with open arms. His templars roam the streets, enforcing the laws of the King without their prayers, but with the support of the people. The arena, once a spectacle of blood and death, has been converted to the first truly free market. All men are free in Tyr, they now say. All may make their own destiny.

But all is not well in the city. Over the past two years, the growing pains have nearly torn the city apart. Since the day of Tithian's assent, the city stands on the brink of anarchy. Powerful gangs roam the streets, no longer fearing the prayer-powered spells of the King's Templars. Factions within the rulership of the city threaten to undermine it. Nobles, seeking their once vaunted grandeur, work their fields with a new type of slavery; indentured servitude. Some templars seek a new path to power to replace what they have lost, and in the shadows, some dark things once held in check by the King's terrible rule are now loosed.

Without the slave labor to work Tyr's fabled iron mines, the cities econmy has flaundered. People starve in the street, and the once right city now has to scrape it's own coffers just to keep guards on the streets. Men and women who were once slaves struggle to find their way among the freemen, as often as not becoming beggars, and eventually criminals. A city once hungry for freedom has found a new hunger. Survival, although once certain, but at a terrible cost, is now in question.

Amid this strife, great urik in the north began to rumble. Without fresh iron from Tyr's mines, Urik's own economy, based upon it's obsidian mining, is threatened. Hamanu, Sorcerer-King of Urik, issues a demand of the new King Tithian; Re-open your mines, or I shall do it for you. Tithian bristles at the foreign king's demand, but without full control of the senate or the city, he is powerless to meet the demands in any means. Urik goes to war.

With their very lives threathened by the military power of urik, the city galvanizes, if not completely uniting. The Crimson Legion is called to arms, Tyr's leaders bringing together their forces through sheer will and even guile, working against many of the interests that threaten to destroy the city from within. The armies meet on the open sands, Tyr beginning the war with a surprising and decisive victory. But as the war goes on, the city struggles now under the fear of utter destruction.

Almost beneath notice, unseen and unknown by all, a secret power gathers it's self in the shadows. Birthed beneath great Urik, the fabled Avangion is born. With the power to one day threaten the rule of the sorcerer-kings themselves, this new hope, possibly the last hope of Athas, makes its first subtle moves against the ancient rulers. But it is not the tales of Kings and Dragons that have changed the world in Tyr. It is the acts of man.

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