This page hosted by 
Get your own Free Home Page
In
the DSO world, I am known as a young halfling named
Welcome to Athas. It's
not a nice place to visit. And you wouldn't live here. Long. Dark Sun:
Crimson Sands is the latest in SSI's series of
AD&D computer games based on TSR's Dark Sun game
system.
DSO is available at
A Background
to Athas
The
world of Athas (the setting for Dark Sun) is a devastated and dying one.
Most of its land surface is covered by vast deserts, plains of melted obsidian,
seas of
waterless
silt, and jagged mountains. Where forest does exist it is small and deadly,
surrounded on all sides by harsh savannahs. All this burns under a huge
dark sun.
Athas
is a world destroyed by magic. Once it was a green and blossoming place,
but the First Magician discovered the secret of magic, which involved drawing
energy
from the surrounding world to create spells. He devised two types of magic,
Preserving magic, which taught restraint, and Defiling magic, which emphasised
power.
His chosen servants became Defilers, their magic killing all the plants,
and eventually even animals, about them, to fuel their spells. The First
Sorcerer sent his
champions
to slay all the other races, ostensibly to return the world to a golden
age under humanity. When the champions learnt that he intended to give
the world to
the
halflings (Once the sole race of Athas, and creators of the Pristine Tower
that destroyed their age, and Athas' sun) instead they rebelled, and became
the
ever-living
Sorcerer-Kings.
These
Sorcerer-Kings, all Defilers, set themselves as rules of the great city
states of Athas, such as Ur-Draxa, Tyr and Nibenay, while they searched
for the secret of
becoming
immortal Dragons. Meanwhile their Templars rule over a harsh society of
slaves and gladiators, hunting out rival magicians to destroy and enforcing
the will
of the
Sorcerer-Kings.
This
is the world of 'present day' Athas. The PC's live in one of the seven
great cities, passing their lives under the baleful gaze of one of the
Dragon-Kings, avoiding
the
corrupt Templar bureaucracy, and trying to survive the Harsh Land.
Features
of the Game System
Dark
Sun presents a number of major alterations to the normal AD&D concepts
and rules, a new ethic of survival, 3rd level minimums, new PC races, readily
available
Psychics, no Gods, and elemental Priests.
A new
ethic of survival
In most
AD&D games it is assumed that the characters are heroes, a cut above
the normal man, and largely concerned with unusual threats. The worlds
are generally
kindly
and pleasant, though containing threats, usually guarding the treasure
that makes the adventurers venture out of safer places.
In Athas,
in contrast, the world is deadly. The air burns, the ground is without
water, and both ancient monsters and resource starved peasants are equally
ready to
kill
you. Athas is notably a world without resources. There is little metal
or plant materials, therefore armour is made from insect shells and weapons
from bones. The
picture
of the ideal Athasian would be that of a tanned, half-naked man, well muscled,
dressed in piecemeal furs and leather, somewhere in a sun baked desert.
3rd
Level Characters
Naturally
normal people don't survive Athas easily, they stay in the relative safety
of their cities, so Dark Sun characters all start at 3rd level instead
of the normal 1st,
and
are expected to progress quickly in level. Athas is a world of particular
threat, the strong survive and the rest die quickly. It is certainly implied
that Dark Sun
players
should expect their characters to die far more often than in a normal game.
New
PC Races
Another
significant departure from normal AD&D is the quite different selection
of PC races in Dark Sun. For once TSR has moved away from its Tolkeinsh
roots
and
re-defined the archetypes. Athasian Elves are vicious, untrustworthy and
always running, halflings once ruled the world, and many PC's may well
be half-dwarf
Muls,
Aarakocra or the insectoid Thri-Kreen. Since AD&D very seldom varies
the PC races or adds new ones it is a good indication of how much this
campaign
setting
is willing to alter things to fit in with the world.
Readily
available Psychics
Another
departure from fundamental AD&D precepts is the balance of Magic and
Psychics on Athas. In normal AD&D psychic powers are all but non-existent,
and
magic dominates. On Athas magic is feared, even in the hands of the nature-loving
preservers, and Defiler magic has destroyed the world. Every PC, on the
other
hand, has at least one psychic power, and an entirely new Psionicist Class
exists for specialist Psychics.
This
principle of changed forms of power is carried on into the concept that
Athas has no Gods. On Athas the power of the individual is supreme, and
the closest it
comes
to Gods are the corrupt Dragon-Kings attempting to reach divinity. Rather
then the normal AD&D Cleric, drawing on the power of a distant God,
Athas has
Templars,
who draw magic directly from their semi-divine Sorcerer-Kings (and therefore
have the power to rule everything), and the Elemental Priests, who draw
their
power from the elemental planes, surely a fitting source of power for the
elemental and savage Athas.
visit
one of my favorite places
