DARK SUN
& SPELLJAMMER
DARK SUN
& SPELLJAMMER
PRIMARY : DARK SUN
Type J ~ Spherical ~ Fire Body
To any poor explorer who actually managed to penetrate the crystal shell, the dark sun would be an immediate deterrent on entry. It dominates the view from any location in Athaspace, and cannot be eclipsed completely without drawing very close to the dark side of a planet. Bloated and flaming, cracked and rimmed with fire, it is dark and dying. Solar flares and efreeti leap miles from the surface, only to return back to the charred-molten rock.
The heat of the dark sun is so intense that it incinerates any creature to approach within 1000 miles of its surface, unless they are native to the Plane of Fire. Even fire and sun drakes, red dragons and iron golems are destroyed.
The fire creatures on the Dark Sun are nearly as diverse as those of the Inner Planes, and the culture that has evolved is even stranger. The massive burning crusts of Dark Sun’s surface are like continents, and the fire creatures treat them as such. In certain ways they tend to parody prime worlds while staying on Dark Sun, as if it a prime-material theme park for fire elementals. They have tea parties, gladiatoral matches, and taverns, and even boast city-states comprised entirely of elemental Fire.
Like all large concentrations of one element, the Dark Sun is a likely place for elemental gates. The large number of efreeti and fire elementals is definitely suggestive of a large gateway to the Elemental Plane of Fire. Athasians refer to the Paraelemental Plane of Smoke as the Plane of Sun, and in this crystal sphere the Smoke plane has indeed evolved into a realm that does seem a tribute to the Dark Sun. Both the thri-kreen and the humanoid cultures in this sphere use the Dark Sun as a potent source of power. Not only has it been used to power clerical spells, but it has also been harnessed for effects that defy the classification of magic or psionics, such as psionic enchantment, and the transformations of Borys and Sadira at the Pristine Tower. Perhaps one day a preserver or defiler will harness it for the purposes of spelljamming. Perhaps the thri-kreen already have...