Games - Dark Sun

	Games - Dark Sun

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Dark Sun is a discontinued Dungeons & Dragons campaign setting set on the desert world of Athas, once a blue planet teeming with life, but which has since been stripped of its fertility by uncontrolled use of magic. It is a sun-burnt land forsaken by the gods, water, and hope. Another characteristic of Athas life is its lack of available metal, as a result, wood, obsidian and bone are used for weapons, tools and other equipment.

While the campaign is no longer supported with published rulebooks, rules for the 3.5 edition (d20) have appeared in several places. Users from created the basic rules, two monster manuals, some adventures and several other accessories. In addition, a special feature in Dragon Magazine #319 (the May 2004 issue) and a parallel feature in Dungeon Magazine #110 revived the setting for the revised Third Edition (3.5) Dungeons and Dragons game. (The rules for defiler wizards appear in Dragon #315, and additional monsters in Dungeon #111.) There were also many fan-created online resources written prior to this feature.

Dark Sun was the setting for three computer games: Dark Sun: Shattered Lands and Dark Sun: Wake of the Ravager were developed by Strategic Simulations, Inc., and Dark Sun Online: Crimson Sands was an MMORPG that was developed and hosted by the TEN Network.

Unique characteristics

Player characters in Dark Sun are markedly tougher than other campaign settings - most start at third level with attributes on a 5-20 scale as opposed to the normal 3-18 scale. Most characters also possess some degree of psionic talent, making even the lowest slave surprisingly formidable. Athasian races include half-giants, more intelligent than their counterparts in other worlds, but with a tendency to change personalities over time, muls (a dwarf-human half-breed), thri-kreen (a race of savage mantis men, formerly appearing as monsters in other settings), and Aarakocra (a race of winged bird men, also formerly monsters). Even "normal" D&D races are substantially different; for instance, most halflings are vicious cannibals, elves are desert running nomads, and dwarves are bald, with a tendency to become mentally-focused or obsessed on achieving designated goals.

Psionics is highly developed on Athas even in animal minds. Schools of the minds exist, mostly maintained by and serving the Sorcerer-Kings.

An alternate path is available for wizards in Dark Sun: Defilers. Defilers absorb magical energy from plant life around them. This makes defilers able to cast more powerful spells than their Preserver equivalents (Preservers being more or less like the typical D&D Wizard), but at the expense of killing plant life around them, and significantly sterilizing the soil those plants were in, rendering it impossible to grow new plants there for centuries. This defiling of the land is why the once healthy planet is mostly a desert. Extremely powerful defiler spells can even snuff out the life force of animals (descibed in the Dragon Kings book).

The rulers of the isolated city states are called Sorcerer-Kings and in most cases, are secretly the Dark Sun equivalent of dragons. Templars can serve and worship these Sorcerer-Kings as a source for their spells (which are actually granted by something known as as living vortex), while Clerics worship Elemental forces(Air, Fire, Water and Earth) and Druids follow powerful entities known as Spirits of the Land.

Water and the Sea of Silt

In the world of Athas, water has long since ceased to flow on the surface and can only be found in the last sea, some oases, tiny lakes and streams, as well as west of the Ringing Mountains in the Forest Ridge. Not only are the mountains nearly impassable (the name Ringing Mountains refers to the lightheaded feeling one feels from lack of oxygen when traversing them) but the Forest Ridge is the home of halflings, which in the Dark Sun world are small creatures that live in tribes in the forest and do not hesitate to capture and eat intruders to their realm. This makes the prospect of going west across the mountains a near impossibility.

In the place of an ocean, the world of Athas, due to defiling magic, has a sea composed entirely of silt. The silt is incredibly dangerous as it is not capable of supporting the weight of humanoid creatures, and the particles themselves are extremely fine and get into the lungs quite easily. A strong wind from the Silt Sea can cause people from nearby villages to have to remain indoors all day, though with a certain amount of water some people often make use of a mask-like object called a silter which is placed over the mouth and nose and kept wet in order to help the user breathe.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Dark Sun ]

Games - Dark Sun

Unique characteristics

Water and the Sea of Silt

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