Athar

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The Athar are a faction of Sigil, an organization based around a particular ideology, in the Planescape campaign setting for the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game. Also known as the "Defiers" or the "Lost," the Athar can be compared to atheists and agnostics.

1 Ideology
2 Factioneers
3 In Sigil
4 Other Factions
5 Leadership
6 After the War
7 External links

[edit] Ideology

The Athar (the best of the best) are not exactly atheists. They believe that the known gods of the cosmology are frauds. That is, the Athar maintain that the gods are merely extremely powerful mortals, and not divine at all. If anything, they simply channel true divine power from The Great Unknown to their priests. The Athar take this stance because they believe that true gods would be much greater than the ones that claim the title: gods can die, they fight just like mortals (instead of using their "divine wisdom" to settle things), and their power, while great, is limited. The "Great Unknown" is the Athar name for what they believe to be the true divine force behind everything. Athar priests, including their leader before the Faction War, have succeeded in gaining divine power through worship of the Great Unknown, further validating their beliefs in their eyes.

[edit] Factioneers

The Athar get most of their recruits from people who have lost their faith in the gods. A large number of the Athar are bitter and angry at their old gods and at the various priesthoods around the planes. There is even a lesser organization within the Athar called the Godslayers, who wish to do away with the gods by violence. Most of the Athar settle for propaganda campaigns against various clerical orders, using everything from illusion magic to skillfully-written tracts distributed about the city of Sigil. The rest of the Athar are more concerned with worship of the Great Unknown than they are with eliminating the faith of others.

[edit] In Sigil

The Athar did not have an official function in the governance of Sigil before the Faction War. They ran the Shattered Temple in the Lower Ward, which sits in the center of an area of ruin that few others willingly enter. Over a thousand years ago, it was the great temple of the god Aoskar, but the Lady of Pain destroyed it in a single moment, shattering the glass, bringing the roof down, and leaving the building a hollow shell, every worshiper of the god struck dead. For this reason the Athar took it as their base of operations, but the building is considered bad luck, like most other remenants of Aoskar's fall. Many of the Shattered Temple's public rooms were converted into scriptoriums for the mass copying of their anti-religious tracts.

[edit] Other Factions

The Athar had fairly calm relations with the other factions in Sigil. Their greatest allies, the Believers of the Source (or, "Godsmen"), seemed the least likely faction for them to get along with, on the surface. However, the Athar and Godsmen both believe in a greater power beyond even the gods. The Godsmen call it the Source, which to the Athar is just another name for the Great Unknown. Before the Faction War, the leaders of both factions were relatively close friends.

[edit] Leadership

The Athar were led by Factol Terrance, a former priest of the goddess Mishakal. Terrance was unusual among the Athar in that he never drove to attack the various temples and priesthoods in Sigil. He had not come to his apostasy through feelings of abandonment, but instead simply ceased to feel that Mishakal was a being so much more divine than any mere human. He was still willing to allow that some gods were powerful forces for good, and maybe even deserved respect, but that they did not deserve anything as serious as worship. Though he respected Mishakal and any number of other gods of good up until the day he died, he could not maintain faith in them. So he turned to the Great Unknown. Contrary to most other Athar, Terrance was perpetually at peace. He preferred to lead by example instead of rousing the populace with stirring speeches. That is not to say that he could not be convincing when he wanted to -- he was as skilled as any other when it came to arguing for the Athar philosophy. Upon turning to the Great Unknown, he retained his focus upon healing and protection.

[edit] After the War

Factol Terrance was sealed in one of the Lady of Pain's Mazes during the early Faction War. The Athar remained strictly neutral during the course of the war, but blamed the Sign of One and various priesthoods for the disappearance of their factol. After the Lady banished all factions from Sigil, the Athar retreated to the center of the Outlands, around the Spire, where the gods have no power. They are led by a new factol, Jaya Forlorn, who is of similar temperament to Terrance. A small group, led by a wizard named Hobard, has remained within Sigil to try to rebuild the faction's power base there.