Teaching the Way, the art of manipulating psionic power, is forbidden in the city of Draj. By the sorcererkings decree, the only place to learn psionics is at his own academy, called the House of the Mind. There, Tectuktitlay personally oversees the training of future masters of the Way. Though none but Tectuktitlay can know his motivations, whispers spread throughout the city-states that the sorcerer-king is cultivating a private army of psionicists to unleash upon his enemies. Other rumors claim that Tectuktitlay is building a psionic priesthood to speed his transformation into a dragon and thus challenge the Dragon of Tyr.
The schools headmaster, an elderly human named Ixtabai, oversees a staff of lesser and greater masters of the Way, as well as a handful of templars who act as the schools instructors. All the masters at the school are former students who managed to graduate to advanced ability, and each is said to possess secret techniques that only he or she is privy to. Many of the students regard Ixtabai as a figurehead, but the rest of the staff obeys his instructions with good reason: Ixtabai has planted subtle psionic traps in the minds of his students, so that if one becomes problematic the aging mentor could simply trigger the trap, rendering the subject mindless.
Neuroglyph games has posted an interesting 4e encounter featuring a couple of customized undead critters. Designed as a mid-heroic tier encounter, it makes good use of Gray-based (as opposed to your standard) undead.
I like the idea of posting explicit packaged encounters for Dark Sun, and if anybody knows of any other encounters like this, please send me an email.
By Rodney Thompson
Magic brought the world of Athas to ruin and transformed its gluttonous wielders in ways both great and terrible. The successful spellcasters among the power-mad gorged themselves on arcane lore and evolvedfirst into sorcerer-kings and then partly into dragons. Other dabblers in the arcane that succumbed to the temptation of easy power suffered more dire consequences. For these unenviable souls, defiling magic became a part of their being; far from raising them to new heights, it warped them physically and mentally into something debasedand ravenous.
It seems that Bill Slavicsek is leaving Wizards of the Coast.
Thank you, Bill, for the long years you’ve worked on this hobby we love, and particularly for your work on this blasted little world called Athas. We wish you luck in your future endeavors.
The living campaign Ashes of Athas is expanding it’s play base beyond the larger conventions. They have a signup page where you can request a copy of the adventures to run in registered play at your local gaming store, or even with your usual gaming group.
About two weeks ago, I spent some time talking with Tristan and Trampus (a.k.a. Dragonhelm) of the Dragonlance Nexus, talking about our favorite wasteland. The first of 4 (! Okay, so I spent a lot of time talking with them…) parts of the interview is up at the Dragonlance Canticle . My segment starts around 24 minutes in.
So, I finally managed to get around to getting the arena back online. It’s the same codebase that was there previously, though I’m going to be doing some work on modernizing it as time allows.
The link is back, but the DNS changes may take a day or so to propogate; if you cant’t get there yet, you will soon.
