Digging Deeper

Last week, oh wait, no... Nearly two weeks ago (oof it's been a busy week) on the last episode of "Blabbing About Dark Sun" I talked about DS1 Freedom, how much I hated it, how it influenced the first Dark Sun adventure I cobbled together, and how great that adventure was despite how little I had planned. Not long after, I dug very deep into that little area we played in, within a week my desk and desktop became littered with loose lined paper and notecards and sketches, folders upon folders within folders stuffed with more notes and ideas. And I never got to use more than a single paper with a shoddy sketch on one side and a paragraph's worth of information about NPCs and a cursed item on the other. That first post was, really, just a step to get here: an attempt to make sense of a mess of old folders and realize a drop of the potential within those smudged notes. And I hope that I can toss a couple of folders into the recycling bin by the end of it.

A Bigger Pile of Rubbish

Wider, deeper, denser, I was all-in on making the starting location and main hub for this adventure more interesting so other groups wouldn't say "screw this, let's leave!" right away (even though it did turn out well the first time). If players stayed, I'd need NPCs  to interact with and things to do besides stare at the literal pile of rubble that makes up a large percentage of the place. After all, even if life in the world of Dark Sun totally sucks for most people, especially at the exact time and place that this adventure starts, we don't follow and play the main characters of the story to see how much their life sucks every day.

I've always loved to flesh out and tweak towns and adventure locations and all of the NPCs when I get a new adventure book, adding extra "side quests" or quirky moments or giving off-the-wall items or abilities to monsters. If I'm not using premade maps, I'll spend a while planning out buildings, shops, roads and what-have-you and drawing it. I love doing that stuff, I really like making all of that myself from scratch, it might be my favorite part of D&D is creating stuff. But the stuff I make always feels like it's missing something big. Whether it's a good selection of hooks for a variety of PCs/players or believable NPCs or a serious quality map, for this adventure I scrapped countless ideas, erased and redrew a dozen rough maps for the town because it never felt "right" as a whole, it never felt finished.

Now, when I get ideas for something new it happens explosively. For this it was the same, but with a lousy twist: I got a huge amount of great ideas — the type that you know are solidly great from that feeling in your gut and in the back of your mind — right away, saw loads of potential in every tiny detail I came up with, I wrote and thought and thought and wrote for days, then the brainstorm inevitably subsided. I ran out of steam and all the potential I was seeing before had turned into a mass of unsatisfied fantasies, like a wilted, rotting garden of formerly splendid flowers and fruits. So I shoved all those ideas aside and buried them in desk drawers and bookshelves, meaning to dig them up and re-explore them in the future but feeling deep down that, like most unfinished projects of mine, that will probably never happen.

Fast forward a while to me meandering between odd jobs and eventually absorbing a lot of D&D content and having a lot of time on my hands. I started writing about D&D, getting hooked on the idea of Dark Sun, and so on and so forth. The first folder I looked at had notes about a cult and photo references of cliff dwellings and canyons and I got that feeling of "explosive creativity" again, remembering all the tiny details I had scribbled down.

It also made me realize even more how little is really needed to have a great time playing D&D. We had hardly anything to really work with yet everything went smoothly and the group had fun. It says quite a bit about playing in the theater of the mind, how much everyone's imagination and a little improvisation matters and how little a complicated plot and colorful NPCs are really needed. That said, a big part of me, and I think a lot of players, still wants to have a stockpile of things to fall back on, to dip into every now and then, to draw from whenever I draw a massive blank.

Building Nowheresville

I'll admit now that I don't actually know that much about the world of Dark Sun, especially not the metaplot, and most certainly not the geography. The only places I knew more than just the name of were a few of the streets in Tyr and a nearby slave pit, so I didn't care to put the place I created anywhere specific. "Nowheresville" — the very creatively named starting location — I imaged to be something of a trading post. Beyond it would be three "big" locations in three different directions with a couple of "small" locations between those and the central town. I figured one small area would be another town that trades with Nowheresville, somewhere there's a wasteland or savanna and maybe a crummy oasis, elsewhere is a canyon. And very far away is a big city (Tyr was the only candidate at the time) that maybe the party would get to some day or they would end up meeting someone from there, possibly the villain. Good enough. Nothing too complicated so far, but then I had to answer the question of what's in Nowheresville besides a fresh mound of dirt and rubble?

Aside on Locations
We played in the theater of the mind using very few maps and not using any miniatures for combat. I used sketches to make sure I could stay oriented and avoid turning the players or their characters and the players drew a few things but nothing huge. With that type of game, what was important to us is that there were places to go and a certain way to get there and that there were characters and things happening in those locations. The map for Nowheresville wasn't a carefully planned, concrete city made of houses and streets and all that, it was a nebulous place with places and people vaguely related to each other as far as direction goes. The shops and wells and everything weren't important because they didn't need to be important for anyone at the table. The same goes for everywhere else in the adventure.
    If I had the ability, the tools to make it happen, I would love to make high-quality maps and plaster them all over this post. It can't happen right now though, maybe some day. Until then, hopefully anyone reading this who wants more maps can get inspired to make their own.

NPCs
Obviously there would be NPCs. Before the "test run" I had made a few characters that appeared in the intro scene plus a handful of others, all of them very simple, and I didn't change a whole lot afterwards other than adding a few templates. Over time, I tore pages out of notebooks full of material initially destined for other adventures and completely different settings and games and stuffed them into other folders, including my Dark Sun ones.
(I don't use them but end up making them anyway, so here's a racial breakdown for Nowheresville: 30% human, 30% mul, 15% half-elf, 10% goliath, 10% halfling, 4% thri-kreen, 1% cyclops.)

• Big Bad Dude. I never made any details about this character, wanting to wait for when the party and story had gotten going to dig into them. The only thing I decided is they exist (shocker) and that they have a "base" in town but their home is far away from the starting location. And the note: "It could be anybody..." Spooky.
• Henchmen. Minions of Big Bad Dude; raiders, slavers, defilers, warlocks, poachers, aarakocra, mutant waspmen, gnolls, undead dray, there are tons of options for who/what could be working for them. I went with mostly raider and slaver types at the beginning, people who act like orcs from The Lord of the Rings or the more villainous seafaring, pillaging vikings or, with more direct orders from their superiors or Big Bad Dude, probably terrorists to some extent.
  One of the "breakthroughs" I had during the "creative boom" was for a cult faction of warlocks who are also archaeologists and follow highly esteemed (within the cult, that is) figures, some of whom work for Big Bad Dude because, well, of course they would.
      The distinct outfits for the raiders is yellow, tan, or brown garb with red and black accents or stripes, they ride the typical Dark Sun mounts (inix, kanks) and other creatures that pull their chariots. Luckier raiders and wealthy slavers have skiffs or barges at their disposal or even deprived basilisks (see raiders in the canyon section below).
      The distinct marks of the warlocks are bands tattooed on the wrists and ritual scarification on the chest or face for higher ranking cultists. They ride similar chariots as the raiders.
• The Elders. A druidic shaman and warlord oversee the town, its lawmaking, trading, and the protection of its people, and they deal with paying taxes (monetary and human resources) to the tyrannical ruler of the greater area who resides in the city beyond the wasteland (who may or may not be Big Bad Dude).
      During the intro scene, the shaman and warlord are the "lookouts" who predict where the burrowing creatures will breach and cause the most damage.
  • The shaman maintains preserver traditions and the group of druids in town and works closely with the potters and, of course, the gardeners and healers. During the non-inferno months (non-summer) they don't have as many constant crucial duties and use their spare time teaching youngsters and spurring on and offering odd cooperative jobs to would-be adventurers.
  • The warlord, a former commander of a legendary sand skiff crew, maintains a staff of laborers and soldiers and spends their spare time watching over the town and its people from afar. With firm pressure from the shaman, they are looking for (and looking out for) psionically gifted people, particularly one to train as their apprentice who will help them prepare for, anticipate, and eliminate psionic assassins and other threats, and to shape into their eventual successor.
• Druids. Under the leadership of the shaman they are dedicated to protecting the town, its people, and the world as a whole from magical and natural disasters as well as doing mundane but very necessary tasks, usually construction and maintenance and providing food. I've gone back and forth on what to call this group and what it is they actually do, but I like the idea that they function like a summer camp-y scout's school and that a handful (party) of them are selected each year and asked to join the warlord for some special mission, such as being taken into some part of the wasteland and taught to construct skiffs from scratch and how to sail them, or to take on an especially difficult task on the outskirts of the greater region.
      After the intro scene, several of them start assessing the damages and losses and report back to their families (if they're alive...) and the elders.
• The Hunters. One group of hunters is seen in the intro, notably the father figure and child unpacking before disaster strikes. This group, if the players weren't involved, would be the focus of the story, these would be the heroes we would follow and root for through thick and thin; when there is danger, they run towards it; when there is a long and hard road to be traveled, they happily embark on another adventure. I thought of them as a party of level 3 characters who mostly grew up here. They know the area fairly well and frequently hunt in the wasteland and savanna.
      The father tends to treat people respectably, some like siblings, others like neiphlings, and seems stern and demanding at times. When he's stressed or trying to work with someone who is lazy, unreliable, or untrustworthy he can become unintentionally intimdating. He refuses to work with those who disrespect or harm children or are slavers and will push for the rest of the townsfolk to drive them out except with the most redeeming of characters. He doesn't back down from fights, even to the death, and is not troubled by the deaths of his adversaries.
      Immediately after the intro scene, he and the other hunters will run towards the destruction, shouting a few orders out to the larger crowd.
• Beastmasters. A town mostly in the middle of nowhere certainly needs mounts and hunting companions and pack animals and so on, as well as people specializing in domesticating and training them and taking care of them and their stables. They work closely with the warlord and any of the slaughter chiefs who don't piss them off on a daily basis.
• Slaughter Chiefs. Professional trappers and butchers who trade with hunters of all kinds in the area. Collectively, they know a good deal about hunting every type of creature from personal experience — all the way from humans to cloud rays, even drakes — and while none of them have ever hunted and killed a burrower, two have had the opportunity to scavenge from one of their gargantuan carcasses.
• Merchants. Nowheresville, as mentioned above, is a trading post roughly in the middle of nowhere. It can't be a trading post without crafters and merchants to trade with.
  
  • Putter. An elderly half-elf potter and sculptor who makes red and white clay earthenware cups and dishes, pots and jugs, tiles and bricks, talismans and fetishes, also ocassionally gets commissions to make clay pot stills, wooden pipe instruments, and small clay whistles. He wears large hoop earrings nearly the size of his face, if one looks closely they can see subtle but extremely detailed animalistic scenes carved into their surface; if asked, they were his wife's who died several years ago.
        His storefront on the far side of town is somewhat barren. Only a few pieces are up for sale at a time, and there are only a few other pieces inside which are already spoken for; one piece that is always hanging above the kiln is a glossy blue charm in the shape of a disc with two breasts on the front (an arcane item meant to be used to imprison an evil spirit), but is never for sale. They spend the evenings and mornings crafting and firing their works from mid-morning through the afternoon, sleeping in the "back room" of their store.
  • Golkran the Mongrel (also known as "Golkran the Slaver" for reasons not entirely known). A very large mul gladiator-turned-merchant and local fence who works for several families and other groups in the area, frequently away on business for said parties. Their home is located in the dwellings nearest to the trade quarter and he rarely lets anyone inside to barter with. Inside it is lined with weapons from floor to ceiling: stone and iron shackles, steel hooks, jawbone glaives, bone and obsidian daggers, ropes and nets, whips, bone spikes, and one wall completely covered with stone arrow, spear, and axe heads.
  • Pic'areet. A thri-kreen gardener with a halfling servant. They deal in assorted mundane goods but specialize in their well-nurtured plants and variety of snuffed and smoked medicinal and recreational drugs. The area, located next to the stables, smells of a mixture of incense, dung, and dirt during the day, only more pleasant than the stables themselves if one isn't prone to gagging from the potent incense.
        The halfling (lvl 1 barbarian) is only called "hey" or "you" by the thri-kreen, never by a name nor title. They're tattooed from chin to ankle and are always seen gnawing on scraps of hide. Rumors in town say they are more beast than person and they spit at and bite customers from time to time; DC 13 History (INT) check to know that those are only rumors stirred up by merchants in the nearby village to dissuade customers from going elsewhere for their plant-based needs, though chewing on hide and "mystery meat" doesn't help the rumors fade.
• Farmers and Bakers. I asked if farming would be a thing this far from a river or without a major source of water for irrigation. I never settled on an answer to that question, but I wouldn't think it's impossible to believe that farms would exist what with druids and other gardeners being a major part of this society despite being in a desert world. The farmers are on the outskirts of both Nowheresville and the nameless nearby village and are mostly families with "preserver" members who are, or were at some point, students of the shaman or gardeners who moved to be away from other people or a certain lifestyle they weren't happy with.
      If there are farmers, shouldn't there be people to cook and feed others with the products the farmers grow? Well, what is it the farmers grow? Probably grains, and grains mean bread and beer, thus the rough idea for bakers (who are also brewers) was born.
  
  • One baker is a very motherly (or grandmotherly) character who is friendly to everyone in town except for the warlord, who she does not speak to nor speak of. If they meet a PC and do not see them for two days, the next time they see that PC they will be suspicious of that PC and act paranoid around them.
• Healers. Professionals who mend people physically and emotionally, with some families or the elders doing mental/psychic healing. They live in their own shared house that acts as a hospital and nursing home, and nearby is a "pleasure house" which is part of the "healer's quarter" of Nowheresville. They overlap with the druids and the gardeners, but not entirely. There could also be ritualists/spiritualists in the market and members of caravans who pass through and offer mending services, some who volunteer their time.

NPC Personality Templates
To be added to other characters, allies or enemies. They all revolve around a drive and a flaw.

• "Mira."
  Drive: To Lead. They have great ambition to lead and teach others and takes pride in using their drive to make a better home for those around them and set a good example for others to follow through their dedication, perseverance, and optimism. When it will be noticed by someone they look up to, they tend to take small risks or try to overachieve so they will be admired, but not if it puts someone else in danger.
  Fatal Flaw: Rage. When they are personally threatened or insulted, or under duress and something escalates their emotions, they tend to react by violently retaliating, verbally if not physically. They will be aggressive until they get revenge and the perceived threat is gone, focusing purely on those goals at the expense of their own well-being and that of those around them, and taking extreme risks to reach their goal. If they become angry at a family member or companion, they will punish or blame them and may become insensitive towards them.
• "Armet."
  Drive: To Support. They are very independant but thrive by supporting others emotionally and psychically, especially those who are struggling. They are humble and accept that everyone is flawed, including themselves, and patiently looking past those flaws to discover the best aspects of everyone they meet is second nature for them. When they meet someone who is struggling but will not ask for help, they come forward and offer it; with those who stubbornly or aggressively refuse help when offered, they tend to leave them alone. When they are presented with fortune or an opportunity to become part of a group or to lead, they tend to refuse.
  Fatal Flaw: Pain. When their life does not move forward and regularly change or they fail to help someone, they lose confidence in themselves and their own answers to problems they face, becoming quiet, melancholic, and unproductive, and will be crude in the ways that they try to help others. If they try and fail to help a close friend or lover with a serious problem, they will isolate themselves for a long period of time.
• "Rhoda."
  Drive: To Fulfill. They have a somewhat restless mind, always thinking ahead and always striving to achieve more in terms of wealth, security, and knowledge.
  Fatal Flaw: Fear. They will be doubtful of their own thoughts and will become vulnerable to malicious advice and misguidance. The more excess of wealth they have, the more insecure they will become and the heavier their guilt will be.

Plot
What's going on before the burrower catastrophe? Big Bad Dude must be doing big bad things, they probably have their hands and toes dipped in every vile little thing going on. Besides the probably-main-antagonist faction, who else is in the immediate area and beyond and what are they doing?

• Big Bad Plans. The henchmen above are working for higher ranking henchmen who follow Big Bad Dude and their master plan to get rid of their puny, but numerous, enemies. The master plan involves sending teams to place magical lures in cities throughout the region which lead to a dangerously polluted oasis, causing other creatures to do the dirty work and die a terrible death shortly after, giving their allies access to materials from the creatures. The creatures lured by the magical devices are, naturally, gargantuan burrowing monsters of basically whatever description you want: megapedes, huge demonic death snakes, purple worms, ankheg queen and warriors, Hellboy's Conqueror Worm; the creature I loosely described was essentially the iconic Sandworm from Dune, though I picture something between that and a Nydus Worm from StarCraft with parasites attached inside and outside, or that oozes foul blood or slime.
      In town, there is a worn stone slab where a well used to be (it collapsed, the slab is thought to just be a reminder by most but is really a puzzle door). One night just before the adventure, a raider used a cloak spell to sneak into town and open the puzzle door with a "key," they set a lure in a cave connected to the well, just beneath one of the dwelling areas. Simultaneously, lures were placed in the neighboring village and the polluted oasis (which was defiled weeks ago). Two of the smaller teams regrouped in the wastelands, waiting for the next move.

Events (or "Main Quests")
Goings-on that are connected to the main plot that the party can focus on for several sessions. The first question I asked was "how do the townsfolk react to the destruction and what does the community need immediately?" The hunters/heroes would run to help... When the opening scene was done and the dust settled (literally), I couldn't have nothing for the players to do, there would have to be something besides the obvious of going to the wreckage and lending a few much-needed helping hands (which they spent a grand total of zero seconds doing). From there, a handful of other questions followed like "what would I do in this situation," "what happens in real life when disasters occur" and so on, though the answers to many of those questions ended up becoming side quests since they didn't have that major event feeling.

• HELP! Everything is destroyed, people might be injured, things need rebuilding.
  Help the merchants: rioting in (what's left of) the streets.
  Help the beastmasters: one of beast pens was destroyed and the animals need to be rounded up; roll on a table of monsters to determine which, then 1d8 for how many escaped.
• Assist the Hunters and Druids. They intend to head out for another hunt in the savanna for food by midday, stopping by the village. A druid speaks with them briefly, then they leave to find where the burrowers are headed. If the party wishes, the druid will go with the party instead, or the three groups may all go together.
      In the savanna: chance of stampede. If they encounter the stampede (started by animals running from a burrower according to the druid) they will try to cut a straggler off from its pack (or two if the party joined).
  
  • A few hours after leaving town, they will reach a ridge near the oasis in the desert and get a distant view of a smaller burrower stretched across the surface of the sand and mound of exhumed dirt and dead, long-buried, dried up creatures, slowly dying over the next hour. Their body is being taken apart by a group of figures in yellow garb (raider henchmen), hauling pieces of flesh and containers of fluids onto a barge. One of them is sorting through junk in its gaping, humid maw.
        DC 15 Perception check to see magically cloaked raiders approaching. If the party does not go with, they'll be ambushed: 1d4 of them will fall in combat or be captured and sold to a slave tribe, the rest will return to town with bad news by the next dawn.
• Each of the "henchmen factions" can be tackled head on, taking out any of them will lead to encountering Big Bad Dude and escalate the party's and the town's situation with the remaining factions. Eliminating any of them would be no frivolous undertaking. There are the raiders and slavers, "evil" hunters (opposed to the "hero" hunters and the druids), and warlocks for the minions. Defilers who lead the minion factions have their own faction and base in a larger city and are led by Big Bad Dude.
• Do... none of that. Always a possibility, and the main reason for having all of this extra stuff to use if/when the party takes this route.
  If the party is full of totally chaotic/evil characters, their goals would likely be to add to the chaos or to complete a task assigned by Big Bad Guy during the chaos. They could toss more wrenches into the NPCs' plans, strike at specific people in town, look for certain items or metal to strengthen their forces, steal a beast or skiff to ride back to their base, and so on.

Side Quests
Events and tidbits scattered around that give the adventure a little extra flavor, small morsels that could go completely unnoticed or that could become their own short adventures. These are quirkier things that don't have much to do with the main plot and other events, if anything to do with anything, but could make new allies and enemies and gives more for a DM (read: me) to draw from. Most of these are just tiny idea "sparks" unlike the larger events.

• Beads (or "The Dead Messenger"). A woman in town is worried about a package and message (from the dwellings in the canyon) not being delivered to her. If she is told about or sees particular yellow beads or the messenger's bag, she will ask them for the beads; if the party doesn't have them, she will ask them to find the beads or she will leave to find the messenger herself (possibly getting into trouble by encountering wandering monsters). If she doesn't have the beads within two days, she will take the body to the messenger's cousin in the dwellings and keep the ashes for a ritual. Otherwise, she will bury the ashes in the canyon crypts and return to Nowheresville.
  
  • The beads, painted yellow and made of wood, 9 total: Using arcane means to identify the beads reveals that pieces of dark spirit are trapped inside each bead. If any of the beads are missing, the parts will feel as if they do not make a whole. (The spirit is an oni, if the beads are broken it will release the creature. If released in daylight, they will flee the immediate area and haunt children and pregnant women at night. If released at night, they will attack the first person they see.)
      In the canyon: Scraps of brown cloth hang from a ledge above a twisting dead tree with frizzy feathers stuck in its branches. Inspect from below: there are dry, sinewy pieces of flesh, a yellow wooden bead, and a tooth where the cliff meets the canyon floor, a lump of brown cloth can be seen on the ledge where the scrap is hanging. Inspect fully (climb): a dead human, brown waistcloth and bag are torn and half caked with dried blood along with a few smaller feathers (molting feathers), their brow is shattered and some ribs are broken, an arm is missing, all the bones have been picked clean and are mostly dry.
      The bag has three horizontal lines stitched onto the strap, it smells like non-descript stale incense, stale blood and stale bread, and is torn and stained in several places. Contents: a lightly stained but usable roll of paper (2 pieces), a bundle of incense, 8 yellow wooden beads (scattered around the ledge), 1 black crystal sliver.
      More belongings can be found a stone's throw away: a small matching bag, matching bundle of incense, scattered sun-bleached threads (red, light blue, dark brown, and yellow strands used to make fine clothing with), stone shards, and a frayed bolt of pale, slightly yellowed cloth.
• Drugs in the Desert. Many, many different forms of drugs can be seen and acquired in town and throughout the entire region. If any party members are interested, they can investigate crimes that happen as a result of drug use and trading of the more dangerous substances which the raiders, warlocks, defilers, and Big Bad Dude are involved with as well as some of the gardeners in town and the small village.
• Putter, the shaman, and the gardeners have an ongoing offer to anyone in town: haul bones from the boneyard near the butcher's area to Putter's shop, and haul pots from the store to the shaman and gardeners. The shaman and gardeners accept the pots and a token from Putter and pay with a ration of food (bread, veg, or meat) and 5 coin (salt or ceramic piece).
      If someone climbs one of the "mountains" in the bone pile: DC 17 DEX check or fall into the pile, taking 1d8 piercing damage.
• In a distant part of the wasteland there is a rocky structure that juts out of the sand. It may be ruins buried under the sand, an ancient monument, or there may be a dead or dying NPC sitting against it (possibly chained to the structure, cursed with undead and eternal suffering).
• A great beast, a walking fortress, was seen far to the southwest. Several groups are going to look closer and possibly make a great hunt and harvest its body while other groups are opposed to the killing of great beasts and wish to inspect it and begin a symbiotic relationship with the creature.
• An urgent delivery or collection needs to be made. The PCs have to travel beyond the wasteland or the canyon or to the distant city.
• The PCs are offered to join a group of warriors or raiders who are either at war with the slaver faction or turn out to be part of that faction.
• Lastly, there's this little gem: "There's an insectoid vampire shapeshifter haunting the area whose victims are metamorphosing into flesh-hungry locust abominations. They are magically resistant to obsidian and can regenerate lost/broken limbs, and have supernaturally strong psionic defenses, but are afraid of spiders and deathly afraid of dune reapers."

Accidentally West Marching

We didn't use any battle maps with grids or really any maps at all, the few that popped up were sketched by the other players, and me drawing when I needed to or if there was a disconnect. I did make a very (extremely) rough map to help me to get my bearing, so to speak. But all the locations I had in mind never got used nor expanded upon after the group picked a direction to head in. I didn't realize then, but what we had done was start a sort of West March, an abstracted, hexless crawl: they were exploring, there was abstract mapping, encountering wandering monsters and random weather. Plugging in loose to very abstract wilderness travel, navigation, and water consumption rules could really heighten the experience, but the game has enough rules to interact with already. What I really wanted that I didn't have was a richer setting for all of that exploration to happen in.

The Canyon and Tribe
When I slapped a canyon into the adventure (should I call this a campaign by now?), I didn't have a whole lot in mind as far as what it really looked like and what would be there besides maybe bird people, critters, and monsters and rocks and a dead messenger. Of course the Grand Canyon in Arizona comes to mind to a lot of folks when they hear the word "canyon," as well as the Canyonlands in Utah, maybe a hint of Moab, Utah for me too.
    It was after the adventure that I got a wallop of visions of the McElmo Canyon Ruins in southwest Colorado, the Anasazi people and their cliff dwellings in the canyon and the museum in Manitou Springs, Colorado. If you haven't heard of any of those places, Google Image Search nets some good stuff; if you haven't been to any of those places, well I haven't been to Arizona or Utah, but I can say for certain they are extraordinary places. I've been to the cliff dwellings in Manitou Springs multiple times and to Red Rocks, the Garden of the Gods, the Cave of the Winds, exploring and seeing and experiencing the landscapes, the incredible above-ground and below-ground rock formations, each one of those places offers so much to explore. Twisting those areas to fit an "alien" world (not that they need much tweaking) and adding fantastical monsters to them was such an obvious and thrilling idea. The Sahara, Algeria, the Hoggar Mountains and the Tassili n'Ajjer Nation Park were more places that I pulled parts of into this tiny piece of Dark Sun I was creating, especially the gorgeous sunsets there. Again, Google all of those places.
    Crazy how I wouldn't have thought of any of that if not for the party ditching the chaos in town and squirreling away to the place they did.

After those "ahah!" moments, all the digging and diving I had done, I wanted needed to change "Nowheresville" to look similar to what I was imagining that vivid canyon and dwellings to be or at least feel like it had evolved from the cultures from those places. Originally, all the houses in Nowheresville were wooden and pueblo shacks and apartment-like houses. The pueblo idea worked when I imagined that architecture next to the cliff dwellings and I would keep some of that, but after perusing every corner of the internet for inspiration, as you do, I found the Berber architecture of Gasr Al-Hajj in Libya and the ghorfas at Ksar Ouled Soltane in Tunisia. I loved those ghorfas, combining that architecture with that of the cliff dwellings and the pueblo houses solidified my vision of Nowheresville — now with this vision the name is tragically inadequate.

Now let's get back to the subject for this section: adventuring in the canyon.

NPCs
Early ideas of NPCs — early as in before we played and the canyons were just a scribble on a torn piece of scrap paper — and the people of the canyons were that the tribe there was named after a plant and they shared their name with that plant and incense made from its fruit. I called them the "mogo" people, something about the name struck a cord with me as did an idea that they were an ancient dwarf tribe. Much later I elaborated, dug more, all that.

"Their oldest stories (creation myths) tell of them being birthed from the berries of an ancient thorny shrub: under the sweltering sun, the red, clay-filled berries burst open when the crust of the planet broke, scattering the clay which was tortured into existence by the sun's power, forced to writhe on the floor of the great oven in a dance of agony. Those who died were given a second life as spirits of hatred (demons), those who survived found each other as the ground split beneath them and a giant garden of stone rose around them."

The mogo plant would be hard to find growing naturally in the canyon and tribe's dwellings, but could easily be found in the "godless garden" past the western mouth of the canyon where, presumably, the ancient families were driven from by demons, war with slave tribes, and drought. The "spirits of hatred" could refer to creatures resembling oni (or any demon), and ties in nicely with the bead questline.
(Racial breakdown for the canyon: 30% dwarf and mul, 15% human, 15% aarakocra, 10% goliath, 10% gnoll, 5% cyclops, 5% demon, 5% halfling, 5% tiefling.)

• Injured Gnoll. They were attacked by aarakocra and made camp in a dark cave an hour's walk into the canyon from the entrance (DC 13 Perception check to hear them breathing in the cave). They have 1d10 HP and will be raging until they take a long rest (healing to 18 HP). If the party misses or ignores them, they will take a long rest and will prepare to ambush whoever comes through next or will try to hunt a wandering monster for food.
      Equipment: backpack, weighted net, sawtooth club (modified club, can be used for bashing or slashing), knife (bone), rations (1), bandages (1, 2 used), scrap (5 coin).
• Shadowy Figure. An elf dressed in dark robes is skulking around the canyon, following the party from a longbow's reach away. They believe one of them has something to do with the disturbances in Nowheresville and possibly the burrower catastrophe. Unknowingly, they're under the influence of a cunning and manipulative psionic assassin.
      The elf has the stats of a standard spy, the assassin will not show up in this adventure but the presence of a strong psion can be felt within their mind if one attempts to contact them through the use of telepathy or other psionic manifestations. If they introduce themselves, they will start to say their name but suddenly forget it just as their mouth forms the sound, and will pass it off as not wanting to divulge such valuable information (DC 13 Insight check to suspect they are worried at not being able to recall their own name); attempting to learn their name through arcane or psionic means will yield no fruit.
• Alessa. An older woman is laying in the road in front of a house on the near side of the dwellings. She is middle-aged, wearing brick red clothes with a necklace and bracelet of dark blue beads and green beetle shells, and has three cross tattoos: one on her forehead and one on each cheekbone. On closer inspection: her face is bruised and her legs are bleeding from a series of hasty, sloppily aimed cuts and she is unconscious. If she is revived, she is mute and will need to take a full rest before being able to convey information about the attack through simple, emotional, telepathic transmissions; she will give half their food to the party if revived and insist they take it.
  
  • Dalenn. A young boy with dry tears on his dirty face is hiding inside the house (DC 11 Perception check to see, DC 17 for hostile creatures or character's wearing garb that matches the raiders'), wearing beads and shells on his ankle that match the woman's trinkets.
        Equipment: shoes (simple, worn), bracelet, blowpipe, darts (3), dart with pink petals (poisoned, when hit: DC 15 CON save or collapse unconscious, save every minute to wake up), sling.
        AC 11, HP 3. STR -2, DEX +1, CON -1, INT -1, WIS +0, CHA -1. Skills: Stealth +7.
        If the boy is seen by the party, DC 11 Persuasion (CHA) check or otherwise make peace with him to have him wave the party into the house and tell them what happened: The raiders came (he will point down the road) and knocked out one of the warriors, attacked the boy's mother and the elder, and started making demands and taking food and supplies. He remembers two of them yelling and asking where crystals are but doesn't know what they meant by it.
        If any member of the party is aggressive, he will run further into the cliff dwellings and climb up and hide; if he is intimidated or threatened in any way, he will shoot a poisoned dart.
        No matter what, if the party engages the raiders and a fight breaks out, he will shoot a poisoned dart and join in from afar.
  • Items in the house: bread (7 rations), grain (1 lb), mortar and pestle, pots of beer (3), incense, beads, rope (hemp, 10 ft), ink, bedroll (3), salt (20 coin), clothes.
• Elder. An old dwarf woman leads the tribe. She is an excellent crafter and stone-shaper and her parents and grandparents were expert shackle crafters and elemental binders.
      Notable items in her house: iron manacles, shoddy obsidian axe, keen cinnabar dagger ("Imp-Fang," DC 18 Investigation check to find, within a day she will notice if it is taken).
• Town Drunk. Druid by trade but not by heart. They obey the demands of raiders and warlocks in the area and will slowly grow opposed to the tribe, leave their work as a farmer and brewer, then start working for malevolent parties.
• Fighter. There is a tall, heavily-built goliath with a dozen tools and weapons on them, face-down in the dirt, unconscious...
• Raiders. Menacing figures dressed in dark brown, hooded shawls with matching bands tattooed on their forearms. Some of them double as slavers, all of them work alongside the warlocks. The collective cult is led by two defilers and Big Bad Dude.
      Equipment: clothes (linen, leather shoes), club (wood), whip (leather), knife (bone), smokebomb, cheese (3, wrapped in hard bread and cloth). One in the chariot has a rope (hemp, 30 ft), one has a black crystal shard.
  
  • Leader's equipment: hide armor, snake head (spellcasting focus, grants use of acid arrow when attuned to and wielded), mace (wood, stone reinforced), barbed whip, serrated knife (obsidian), flask (flashpowder, 5 uses), and a small pouch with: charcoal, sulfur rock (10 uses), curlpepper sprig (3), flint, tinder (5 paper, 1 wood), pouch (meat wrapped in hard bread), 2 cheese wrapped in hard bread, salt worth 12 coin), tiny black bag (tied on belt, full of dark bluish seeds).
        They have 3 spell slots and can cast the following spells: flare (0 slots, uses 1 flashpowder; 60 ft range, 1 min, creates a glowing red orb that provides dim light in a 20-ft radius), acid arrow (1 slot, uses 1 sulfur, requires snake head), darkness (1 slot, 2 min duration).

Note on special items:

• Mogo Berries. Fruit from a shrub native to the "godless garden" outside the canyon has a strong sweet and tart smell with a distinct fresh soil aspect. They can be eaten and taste similar to how they smell, though to some they taste more like bitter clay. (25% chance to taste bad and cause skin and eye irritation when handling the plant, berries, or incense.)
  
  • Mogo Incense. Aromatics made with fresh, properly harvested and processed berries have an almost woody and resin-y aroma with faint lemony tartness. Incense made with overripe berries or low quality materials can smell like dirty, burned meat and fired clay, though some makers intentionally make this version and add other spices (chili seeds) to enhance the charred aroma.
• Curlpepper. A dull, gangly plant that is harvested just before it flowers. The curled heads are used as a spice in some cultures but is more often ground into a coarse powder and burned to make a stimulating drug which is snuffed while still warm and smoking. Its main effects as a drug are brief and it causes drowsiness afterward. When added to tea without being burned it gives a peppery flavor and has a very subtle calming effect, even in large amounts. Eating the plant is very unpleasant as the stem, head, leaves, and flowers are coarse like sandpaper.
• Item and Spell Components. Pitch or tar, charcoal, sulfur, and flashpowder are all used for making smoke bombs and fire bombs and are used as spellcasting components.
• Incendiary Weapons. These are vessels made of wicker or clay and materials like charcoal, sulfur, flashpowder, and so on. They require an action to use and are destroyed when used, only scraps can be gathered from them afterward (1d2 coin worth of scraps per bomb).
  
  • Smoke Bomb. Tight wicker basket or clay pot filled with sugar, flashpowder, and sulfur with a hemp yarn wick. When lit, it creates a 10-ft sphere of opaque white smoke that obscures the area for 2 min. If thrown, smashed, or used in a windy area, its duration is reduced by 1 min. Very strong wind will negate the effect entirely.
  • Fire Bomb. Clay pot filled with tinder, pitch, and flashpowder with a heavy wick made of cloth and tinder. When lit and broken by throwing up to 60 ft (or by dropping, smashing, etc.), make a DC 12 DEX check: on a success it deals 2d6 fire damage to all creatures within 10 ft of the target location, on a failure it deals damage centered on the user instead (including the user).
• Glass Lens. Rare Item. Curved piece of glass used to inspect small objects or ignite tinder and other small, flammable objects in sunlight. (Randomly give to a henchmen or place inside a building, cave, etc.)
• Cinnabar. In the real world, cinnabar is a bright red mineral that contains mercury. Because of its mercury content, it is dangerously toxic. For Dark Sun, objects made with a pseudo-fantastical (is that a word?) version of cinnabar, and the mineral itself, are still extremely toxic but it can be carefully made into effective weapons in much the same way that jade is in other settings and is usually enchanted (or cursed). It is very rare to find it around the world, weapons and amulets made with it are just as rare and very unique.
      "Old tales say it is demon blood turned into crystal form. Regardless of the old tales, most believe the weapons are all cursed, warped by the dark energies of hell crossing with the destructive energies of the sun, the material itself seeks to destroy those who work it."
  
  • Cinnabar Dagger: Imp-Fang. Same as a standard dagger plus: 10 charges. When you hit a creature, the dagger loses 1 charge and the target makes a DC 15 CON save or takes 2d6 poison damage. On a critical hit, the target automatically fails the save.
• Black Crystals. These function like psicrystals. When you attune to them, they give a warm or pillowy sensation and remove negative things from the mind. Younger and older users commonly get "cravings" for the presence of the crystals, especially those who use larger crystals to stimulate the mind which helps users to focus on complex mental tasks. Particularly high quality crystals can be infused with psionic powers and will absorb qualities from their users over time which can "bleed" into the minds of others.

"What does all of this stuff cost?" Since item prices and, in my limited experience with the setting, the type and value of currencies differ wildly between Dark Sun groups and require significant testing and feedback to be useful to anyone else, I didn't give any of the "coin" values for any items. In my game, currency consists of scraps, ceramic coin, salt, and metal coin (copper, silver, gold, platinum). Unlike settings like the Forgotten Realms or Planescape, buying and selling isn't done mostly by trading items for coins, most things in Nowheresville are traded and bartered for with scraps, salt, food stuffs, or weapons. Since this post isn't about economics in Dark Sun, and the adventure and players didn't need it to be finely tuned, I'll leave that to other people (and plenty of people have designed fine Dark Sun economic systems and put it out there).

Events

• Trouble. Three raiders are threatening a group of people (7) on the far end of dwellings. One of them (of lower rank) is standing in a chariot being drawn by two beasts. They are harassing and threatening the tribe to pressure them into sending laborers and to give them black crystals.)
  
  • The beasts pulling the chariot are "deprived basilisks": large lizards with two large eyes on their head (in the usual places) and a row of pits to each side of their spine. They have the ability to paralyze creatures with their gaze (similar to standard basilisks) but these domesticated basilisks have had their eyes removed, relying entirely on their heat sense (using their heat-sensitive pits) and directions from their handlers to maneuver.
        Items in the chariot: 2 sacks of grain (10 lbs each), 2 sacks of meat (5 lbs each; 1 fresh, 1 rotten fruit and organ meet with chitin for animal feed), sack of spice (2 lbs), sack of incense (1 lb), bundle of curlpepper sprigs (20).
  • Near the beast pen and cave is another raider, dressed the same but with their shawl wrapped around as a mask and with noticeably red, dry, irritated eyes. They are stepping through muck to harvest mushrooms growing on the cave wall and around the pen. Before long they will fill a pouch with the mushrooms and return to the others, telling them they "didn't find any crystals" but will show them the loot, prompting the group to get in the chariot and leave after a few more harsh words to the tribe.
        Equipment, same as the others plus: sling, fire bombs (2), grinding stones, snuffing tray, flint, tinder (paper, 5 uses).
        If they see the party, they will start shouting and run towards their allies, and may light a fire bomb and throw it at the party (or use their sling to do so) if attacked.

Rewards
Every D&D adventure needs to have cool rewards. I try to keep it very simple for myself and use a handful of items and tables (okay, way more than a handful) from older adventure books and the 5e Dungeon Master's Guide to pull rewards from, adapting their appearance/flavor or mechanics to the game, the characters, and the setting as needed. However, any item listed with any NPC has the potential to be loot for the players to steal for themselves or win through role-playing or combat.

Random Weather

On the first adventuring day for us, the weather was completely normal: warm with light winds. At nightfall or sunrise random weather was rolled. In the canyon, wind effects are reduced by 1 level. I believe the following table for wind strength and visibility — fairly loose mechanically except for the effects on creatures in storms — was originally made with notes from DSR4 Valley of Dust and Fire (I only borrowed the book and skimmed through) combined with notes of desert weather here on Earth and weather, seasons, and the atmosphere of Mars.

STRENGTH	WEATHER	EFFECTS
None	Clear sky
Light	Light low dust, calm
Moderate	Low haze, fresh breeze
Strong	Thick low haze, driving
Storm	Sandstorm, severe	Trouble breathing, +1 Exhaustion stage, +1 illness/disease stage
Death Wind	Blinding storm, violent	Extreme difficulty breathing, +2 Exhaustion, +1 illness/disease stage

Wind Table

I also have these tables which, while I don't remember precisely how I came up with them, were no doubt inspired by the Wind Table and other weather and encounter tables from older adventures. I don't remember testing them out and I have some faded notes on how I would intend to finish them and use them. As for how the (sort of) work: 1d20 or percentile die, high rolls are good and low rolls are bad, first roll for raw weather conditions then roll for weather modifiers.

1-2 (10%)	Violent storm; no visibility, choking dust, violent wind	Roll 1d6, on 1-2 (~33%) a twister forms
3-4 (10%)	Sandstorm; low visibility, very dusty, strong wind	Roll 1d6, on 1 (~17%) a twister forms
5-6 (10%)	Dusty, moderate wind
7-12 (30%)	Clear skies, moderate wind
13-18 (30%)	Clear skies, low wind
19-20 (10%)	Cloudy skies, low wind

Raw Weather Conditions

1-2 (10%)	Blistering, very dry
3-4 (10%)	Very hot, very dry
5-8 (20%)	Hot, very dry
9-14 (30%)	Hot, dry
15-18 (20%)	Warm, somewhat dry
19-20 (10%)	Comfortably warm, somewhat dry

Weather Modifiers

1-2 (10%)	Violent storm
3-4 (10%)	Sandstorm
5-12 (40%)	Dusty, strong wind
13-18 (30%)	Clear skies, high wind
19-20 (10%)	Clear skies, low wind

Raw Summer Conditions

1-2 (10%)	Blistering, extremely dry
3-4 (10%)	Blistering, very dry
5-8 (20%)	Very hot, very dry
9-14 (30%)	Hot, very dry
15-20 (30%)	Hot, somewhat dry

Summer Modifiers

Daytime and nighttime weather temperature and additional effects would be determined by the raw condition rolled. The idea is simple: during the daytime the lowest/"worst" conditions result in extremely hot "furnace" temperatures, at night the temperature shifts to being cool to freezing for average conditions and warm to hot for the worst/hottest conditions. Additionally, cool weather could halve water requirements or rather, depending on preference and water consumption rules, hot and freezing temperatures could double or possibly triple water requirements at the most extreme end, or points of Exhaustion could be given.

I'll mention the "Gray Death" weather condition that happens when strong winds blow over the Silt Sea. The condition affects creatures within a certain range of the "epicenter" of the storm, halving movement for flying creatures up to 500 ft in the air within a mile radius of the epicenter during moderate winds, thirding movement for all creatures and all flyers within five miles during storm winds, completely halting movement and flight on the surface of the sands and above for creatures within 20 miles during a "sirocco" — violently strong winds are called a "sirocco" in DSR4 according to my notes, equivalent to "Death Wind" in my table — which last for 1d4 days before ending. This is one of those things that I would only use in an extremely simulationist-style campaign if the party was regularly traveling across large sandy seas, and I imagine it has great potential to make encounters in the area more interesting as well as supremely tedious and unfun.

An optional rule I mulled over for quite a while was reading the weather: When a character would attempt to predict incoming weather, roll 1d20 in secret and add the character's Survival or Nature (WIS) bonus (their choice). DC is based on the weather or the adventure: 11 for calm weather, up to 19-21 (or higher) for extreme or "freak" weather.

• Success: Accurate weather reading and accurate prediction.
  "It's warm and it won't get any colder until dusk. There are large, unnatural dust clouds on the horizon and wind blowing in your direction. There will be a storm by sunset, possibly sooner if the wind keeps its course."
• Partial Success: Accurate weather reading but inaccurate prediction.
  "It's warm and there are large dust clouds on the horizon but not much wind. The storm won't get much closer, let alone hit you."
• Failure: Inaccurate or false reading.
  "A warm day with no wind, some dark clouds on the horizon might bring rain later if you're lucky."

I really love the idea behind this. I remember being inspired by alternate Stealth rules I have used which involve the DM rolling in secret that tends to add some tension to escape and heist sequences and can push strategic players into playing more carefully, more considerably, and in my experience tends to make them ask more questions. For most games the alternate Stealth rules aren't favored by players, but I can see these "weather reading" rules being added to any kind of campaign in a huge range of settings (especially seafaring games and hex crawls).

How useful will all of this be, really? I'm not sure, the tables are very similar with a few minor differences. I see them as being useful for giving the game a little extra flavor. I do feel like taking the ideas and looking back through source books like DSR4 and myriad tables from other editions of Dark Sun as well as countless tables online and adding heftier mechanics to make a whole system, but that would be for another time.

*deep sigh* Finally. That's one folder's worth of information out there. More to come soon, hopefully very soon. Thanks for reading, cheers and have a great weekend.