Dark Sun
Dark Sun is a discontinued Dungeons & Dragons campaign setting based on the harsh world of Athas, which was once a life-teeming ocean blue planet, but which has since been stripped of its fertility by uncontrolled use of defiling magic, although a small offshot of magicians called preservers tends to maintain life and ultimately restore the primeval lushness. It is a sun-burnt land forsaken by the gods, water, and hope. Another characteristic of Athas life is its lack of any serious mountain chains and therefore scarcity of metal and stone. Wood, obsidian and bone are used for weapons, tools and structure building.
While the campaign is no longer supported with published rulebooks, 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. There have also been fan-created online resources written prior to this feature.
Unique characteristics
Player characters in Dark Sun are markedly tougher than other campaign settings - most start at third level with attributes on a 4-24 scale as opposed to the normal 3-18 scale. Most characters also posses some degree of psionic talent, making even the lowest slave surprisingly formidible. Athasian races include half-giants, more intelligent than their counterparts in other worlds, muls, the unique dwarf-human breed, thri-kreen, a race of savage mantis men, and Aarakocra, a race of winged bird men. Even "normal" D&D races are substantially different - for instance, most halflings are vicious cannibals!
Psionics is highly developed on Athas even in animal minds, and almost every individual is born with a "wild talent" or two. Schools of the minds exist, mostly maintained by and serving the dragon kings.
An alternate path is available for wizards in Dark Sun: Defilers. Defilers absorb magical energy from life around them. This allows defilers to become more powerful more quickly (defilers have lower experience point requirement for each level than wizards), but at the expense of killing plantlife around them. This defiling of the land is why the once healthy planet is mostly a desert.
The rulers of the isolated city states are God-Kings and in many cases, dragons. Clerics can worship these God-Kings as a source of their spells.
Playable races
- Aarakocra
- Dwarf
- Elf
- Half-Elf
- Half-Giant
- Halfling
- Human
- Mul
- Pterran
- Thri-Kreen
Interesting personages
Athas is ruled by several dragon kings, former champions of Rajaat, the first defiler of Athas, who was obsessed with racial purity and ordered the extermination of all non-human Athasian races. Some of his champions failed in their tasks and some rebelled, slaying their master and working in concert to raise themselves to highest levels of power resulting in the transformation into a dragon.
External links
- The Burnt World of Athas (http://www.athas.org/) - Officially recognized by Wizards of the Coast as the home of the Dark Sun setting, now updated to 3rd edition rules.
Dark Sun is also a gothic music club in Athens, Greece (Peristeri). It is well-known among the gothic subculture of Athens and it is notable because of its unusual decoration.