1st Eye on Darksun up!

[Jhaelen]

That's a mul and some giths on that cover.^^
In any case, there's no reference to tareks in my old 2e DS stuff (old box and first MC) that I'm aware of.

Hmm, actually, I've always assumed it's a Tarek, too. If it's supposed to be a mul, the race underwent quite a bit of redesign until they released the box...

Tareks are mentioned in the Prism Pentad novels. I'm not sure if they ever made it into an official supplement or Dragon article, though. They were definitely available as a player race in my 2e Dark Sun campaign (along with pretty much every other remotely humanoid-shaped beings).

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

That's a mul and some giths on that cover.^^

No. That is a Tarek. Tarek's are throughout some early DS books.

 

[Peraion Graufalke]

Hmm, actually, I've always assumed it's a Tarek, too. If it's supposed to be a mul, the race underwent quite a bit of redesign until they released the box...

Tareks are mentioned in the Prism Pentad novels.

Ah, that explains it. I've always assumed that's a mul there, and I haven't read the DS novels.

No. That is a Tarek. Tarek's are throughout some early DS books.

I stand corrected. I had never heard/read of them until yesterday.

 

[RodneyThompson]

No doubt we'll be seeing a good bit of the Sunwarped though!

Not exactly. These "Eye on Dark Sun" articles are going to be mostly self-contained so you don't have to cross-reference things as much. I just thought the idea of spots of weird defiling mutation out in the wilderness seemed very Athas-y.

It may offer a feat to help preservers keep up somewhat in damage with defilers though, if they can draw upon that energy. Maybe a Paragon Path.

Certainly that could be interesting for an individual campaign, but we won't have anything like that in the book. This article was just supposed to be some fodder for adventure and encounter creation, not an indicator of a major part of the campaign.

It feels really strange to me to have an article like this well before the setting has been released. It's hard for me to put this into context with the rest of the setting.

I wanted to start them early so that, when the books come out (a little over a month away!) there would be a couple of articles already there and waiting for people to use. The first three articles are all geared toward the low heroic tier.

And yeah, that's a tarek on the cover of the original boxed set. You can really tell when you look at the picture from the second Dark Sun Monstrous Compendium.

 

[Mort_Q]

Have they said whether they were planning on using both the Revised and/or Original Campaign Setting stuff as therir basis of the 4e version anywhere?

The Pristine Tower is from the Revised.

 

[Aegeri]

As far as I know they are setting it in a certain timeline and then stealing anything else they think makes the setting better/more interesting from elsewhere. So it's quite likely that's what they may have done.

Also for a certain "Princess" bet I believe this being fully natural terrain in Athas that has nothing to do with the feywild is proving a certain point I made.

 

[Wik]

Hm. Not entirely sure how I feel about parts of this. I know I don't like the whole "random, magical things can happen in this area" part of it, but that's easily ignored.

The sunwarped magic squares are iffy to me, in that one one hand, I don't like idea of magical terrain in Dark Sun, while on the other hand, that's a judgement that goes back to my 2e days, and isn't really tied to anything I feel super strongly about. We'll see how it goes in play.

The idea of essentieally "irradiated" areas is kind of cool, though, and one that I could get behind.

I also really like that "legend" about a city-state being swallowed up by one of these things. That, to me, is what Dark Sun is all about - vague plot hooks that can be used or ignored as the GM sees fit.

 

[Wik]

Also for a certain "Princess" bet I believe this being fully natural terrain in Athas that has nothing to do with the feywild is proving a certain point I made.

Odd that'd you'd consider magical terrain to be "Fully natural", but whatever.

And it doesn't prove anything... it's only four pages long. It also doesn't mention tieflings at all, or muls - so can we assume that those races aren't in Dark Sun?

Basically - we can't resolve your princess bet until the books come out. So hang in there, cupcake.

 

[Aegeri]

Bear in mind Wik, you were claiming that all unusual terrain or similar would be explained using the feywild and this just goes to prove that it isn't the case at all.

I am not sure what Tieflings and Muls have to do with it though (Muls are in the book).

Edit: And magical terrain can be perfectly natural for the plane its on - although in this case it's more like horribly irradiated zones that produce twisted mutants (I cannot help but approve).

 

[Mouseferatu]

Wik? Aegeri?

You do know that, unless someone has necromantically reanimated the horse, you're not earning any XP for this, right?