New Dark Sun content

After 20 or so years, Secrets of the Deadlands has finally been released. https://athas.org/products/sotdl

Dark Sun - Quick Plot Hooks: Tareks vs. Antloids

The party stumbles across a seemingly abandoned Antloid mound with traveling the wastes.  Should they investigate  (as Antloid warrens usually contain a water source in their deepest tunnels), they find that some the tunnels beginning to collapse (about 1/3 of the tunnels will experience a cave-in if subjected to climbing, area-effect spells, etc).

A group of wandering Tareks are also exploring the Antloid warren, led by an Earth Cleric (he believes Antloids to be sacred creatures, as they live within the Earth).  The Tareks might be willing to converse or even trade, as they do not plan to claim the tunnels as their own (they are also looking for the water source and some shade to wait out the heat of the day).

The same cannot be said of small group of displaced Antloids (a Dynamis, a young Queen, two Soldiers and 8 Workers), who intend to recolonize the abandoned warren.  They arrive soon after the PC's.

Dark Sun - Quick Plot Hooks: Ssurrans vs. Zhackals

Local traders and passing caravans indicate that a large pack of Zhackals have moved into the area, preying on small groups or those foolish enough to travel alone. 

Even more troubling is the news that a small tribe of Ssurrans are now following the Zhackals, consuming the remains of those the Zhackals have feed upon.

Dark Sun - Quick Plot Hooks: Sand Vortex vs. Dhaot

The party is traveling along a silt sink or silt estuary when they encounter a young boy, wandering about the scene of a destroyed caravan.  He tells them his name is Dras (only his mother calls him Andrais), and that he wants to go home, but can't find his way.  He's quick to tell the party to avoid walking near the silt here, as there's a "tentacles and teeth" monster in the silt (it's a Sand Vortex).  

The child is of course a Dhaot, but fortunately his bones lie in the road (he hid under the wagon when the "monster" attacked, but the Inix spooked, and he got crushed under the wagon wheels).

Dras knows his home is a farm outside Nibenay.  Once there, his mother (a farm slave) insists that they all go demand that Dras be interred in the noble family's mausoleum.  She tells the party that Dras' father is the noble in charge of the farming village and that he had Dras sold off when the boy's paternity started to become undeniable.   

The nobleman vehemently denies being the boys' father, but relents when Dras' mother promises to the nobleman's wife (his wife is a shrill and proud woman - she may not love him, but she'll make his life hell if she discovers he had a bastard with a slave woman).  The family mausoleum might be haunted, at the DM's option.

Before fading away to the Grey, Dras tells the party that his caravan's pay chest got dragged into the silt along with some of the guards.  They'll just have to kill the "tentacles and teeth" monster if they want it...

Dark Sun - Quick Plot Hooks: Renegade Halfling vs. Kaisharga

Once, long ago, Dokala was a young Halfling girl living in a village in the Ringing Mountains.  When she came of age, she decided to set out and see more of the world.  No more than a few days travel from the tree line, she was captured by slavers and was eventually sold to a noble in Ur Draxa.  There, it was discovered that she was very gifted in the Will (psionics) and received training.  In time, she was a respected (though still owned) adviser to the nobleman (now a Templar of Borys - The Dragon).  He owner decided that she was indispensable and that the only to assure retention of her services was to have her raised as a Kaisharga.

After several centuries, Ur Draxa was destroyed and her creator/owner was killed, freeing Dokala at last.  She returned to the Forest Ridge to see how her tribe had fared, but found that they had been deemed Renegades and driven out of the Forest Ridge and were now barely surviving in the foothills of the Ringing Mountains.

Dokala has setup in a nearby ruin and uses her psionics and ability to create/control undead to keep the stronger predators away from her people without tipping them off to her presence.  

For their part, the Halfling tribe knows that there is a ruin nearby and that it is haunted by undead, but they have been lucky in that the undead seem to keep the fierce predators away from the tribe but never hassle them.  They would be horrified to know that an undead former member of their tribe had been protecting them for so long.

Dark Sun - Quick Plot Hooks: Cilops vs. B'rohg

A Cilops tracks a B'rohg through a region of Rocky Badlands. 

Perhaps the Cilops is simply hungry, but perhaps slavers travel alongside it, intent on capturing the B'rohg for the arenas of the City States.

Dark Sun - Quick Plot Hooks: Cha’thrang vs. Athasian Wraith

A shambling Elven corpse drives/leads a trine of especially large Cha’thrangs through the hunting grounds of tribes of Aarakocra.  The Cha’thrangs have now begun to associate the corpse with finding good prey.

The Elven corpse is animated by an Athasian Wraith, Chikelu Saro-Wiwa.  Chikelu served in the armies of Lalali-Puy (then known as Inenek, Aarakocra Scourge) durring the Cleansing Wars.  He is sickened by her disregard for the infestation of Aarakocra in the Tablelands and has continued to purge them on his own.  This scheme of using Cha’thrangs to do his dirty work is simply the latest in a long list of plots to slaughter Aarakocras.