I've always wanted to do a Dark Sun campaign after reading some of the original campaign material years ago. This year I decided to jump in. I recreated the map with some changes - adding two cities and doing the geography a little different (the maps from the original and revised settings are a bit different).
The campaign began with Maleek a half giant Gladiator, Ulnan Al-Hattin a half-elf Druid w/ camel Aziz, and Xandu Fireclaw a Pterran psion.
They saved their benefactor in a dark ally in the city of Balic while there for a gladiator tournament. The benefactor then sponsored their entry into a special tournament and hired them to take a crystal stone that allowed crops to grow at record speeds from Balic to Odjit. Along the way they ran into giants, and other bad guys as Odjit received the new stone. Odjit, a small city that is the only free city in the region after a slave revolt killing the evil king Akenaten Nakeb. The party spent time in Balic with the city's leader and ran several quests making the city stronger and better defendable.
Their benefactor had them run several missions trying to thwart the bad guy, the Prince of Scars, including breaking into the city of Gulg and kidnapping a powerful psionic young boy who "would be used by the Oba (queen of Gulg) for evil purposes), uncovering dark artifacts from an evil Defiler (wizard who scorches the earth to do magic). The party, now joined by Cariad an half elf Air Cleric, started a war between Gulg and Nibenay and mounted an unconventional attack on the nearby city Nahtahn with a small group.
Then the kicker... while in Nahtahn they discover the entire time the benefactor is Akenaten Nakeb and that the Prince of Scars is the good guy. Whoops! They weren't happy but were blown away as they realized how everything they did was right in line with making Odjit several times stronger and the free labor trying to build a vision was much more effective labor than slaves. The city of Odjit was retaken by a small army and some dark magic using the crops from the stone as the source of power. The city of Odjit is now powerful and threatens the entire region with Nahtahn weakened and Nibenay and Gulg in shambles in the middle of a major war.
As they decide what to do next - and it's looking like trying to mediate or stop the war between Gulg and Nibenay will be their first task - I'll go ahead and post in this thread, complete with screen shots.
Here's an example of a Defiler in action in the forest of Gulg as they attempted to escape:
(My avatar is the Akenaten Nakeb's portrait)
