You’ve heard the rumors.
Whispers of a dead world. Of psionics and dragons. Of sand-blasted ruins and bone-crusted glory.
Dark Sun—the old gold. The killer setting. The one you missed by two decades.
I didn’t. I lived it in AD&D 2nd Edition. Now I’m bringing it back with the jagged edges of D&D 5E 2024—rewired for survival, story, and suffering.
This is not your high-magic, tavern-hopping fantasy. This is Athas. Where wizards ruin the world, clerics worship the elements, and psionics leak from your soul like blood in the dust.
Title: Blood in the Sand, Steel in the Sun
System: D&D 5E 2024 (w/ gritty variant rests, brutal scarcity, homebrew options)
Modules: Freedom → Road to Urik → Merchant House of Amketch → Arcane Shadows → Dragon’s Crown
Level Range: 1–16
Start Date: Soon™
Platforms:
Discord – Downtime RP, lore drops, in-character screams
D&D Beyond – For when you’re not dead yet
Talespire (you’ll need to own it) – Tactical hellscapes rendered in 3D
Heroforge (optional) – I’ll build your mini unless you want your own
Forget longswords. This isn’t Faerûn.
Hurl your chatkcha—razor-sharp insectoid boomerangs used by thri-kreen
Trap enemies with cahulaks—a weighted chain of pain and panic
Smash skulls with the trikal—a three-bladed polearm made to end conversations
Your sword? Bone. Your shield? Chitin. Your armor? Hope.
Play something sun-scorched and strange:
🕊️ Tribal Aarakocra: sandgliders from the high peaks
🪨 Stoic Dwarves: oath-bound to causes that kill them
🐉 Draconic Dray: cursed remnants of dragonborn glory
🏜️ Desert Elves: nomads, thieves, uncatchable
👤 Half-Elves: hated by everyone, especially themselves
🗿 Half-Giants: walking contradictions, swinging clubs the size of you
🍖 Cannibal Halflings: jungle-born, bone-gnawing and proud
🧱 Survivalist Humans: average until they aren’t
🩸 Sterile Muls: half-dwarf gladiator perfection, bred to break
🦴 Pterrans: forgotten reptilian philosophers
🐜 Thri-Kreen: mantisfolk with psionic hearts
🌫️ Ukoven (Genasi reskin): elemental-marked, touched by the burning world
No artificers. No steampunk. No gods to grant you mercy.
Barbarians rage against the sun and the void
Clerics serve Earth, Fire, Wind, and Water—not deities
Druids suffer as nature weeps with every step
Fighters hold back the desert tooth by tooth
Monks channel psionics instead of ki
Rangers are apex predators in a world of prey
Rogues rule the trade houses and slit throats with contracts
Warlocks are Templars—sworn to a Sorcerer-King patron who owns their power
Wizards… are the reason the world is dying
Choose: Preserve the world, or Defile it to cast spells with devastating force
Sorcerers? Only one archetype exists: Aberrant Mind, reskinned as a Mindbender, a psionic ticking timebomb
🧠 And everyone—EVERYONE—has a wild talent psionic.
It’s the black sun’s gift. Or its curse. Or both.
You’ll make a backup character from day one. Yes, you’ll likely need it.
You’ll track water, ration food, and fight over sleep.
Your Long Rest does not give you all your HP back.
Every spell has weight. Every rest is a gamble. Create Food and Water is a godsend.
Misuse Destroy Water and you’re not just dead. You’re despised.
Factions matter. Sandworms matter. Exhaustion really matters.
You like your fantasy sun-scorched, not sugar-coated
You want moral dilemmas with murderhorns attached
You love scheming, roleplay, and survival horror
You’ve always wanted to play in Dark Sun, but never got the chance
You like character arcs with consequences—actual consequences
You’re here for blood, beauty, and meaning in a hopeless world
Custom-tailored campaign path across five remastered AD&D modules
Lore zines, faction secrets, sandbox freedom, and handcrafted chaos
Discord downtime RP and threads that twist into your soul
Digital support across all tools
Deadly NPCs with goals and grudges
Emotional arcs. Political knives. Starving gladiators dreaming of godhood.
Mic + Cam
Free accounts on Discord & D&D Beyond
Talespire (paid) – worth every bloodstained ceramic piece
Curiosity, patience, and a touch of madness
Willingness to care about your doomed, sun-bleached, psion-scarred PC
Guts. Grit. Gallons of water.
This is the campaign your cautious DM warned you about.
It’s mean. It’s weird. It’s glorious. And if you die? The sand will remember.
DM me to claim your seat in the slave pits.
Welcome to Athas, hero. Now fight like your water depends on it.
I finished out the last Dragonlance campaign and started the Waterdeep Blues campaign with Emmett as the DM. There were some of the best and most memorable fights I’ve ever played as a character! And the roleplay is never boring or lackluster. His attention to detail and encouragement of the creativity of the players surpasses all. You can tell that he prepares so much for the games and that allows us as the players to think of almost anything we want to do and actually do it! As Emmett has said before “tell me what you want to do and we can figure out how to make it happen”. Even when the group derailed the campaign (all in good fun), Emmett went with it with a good sense of humor. Overall, I can’t recommend him enough!
Emmett is an awesome GM! He is able to tailor the adventure to the players and is always responsive. He spends an amazing amount of time crafting an adventure and his master of GMing is unsurpassed in my experience.
Highly recommend Emmett as a DM, he’s very good at going beyond the source material to make the sessions submersive, using musical cues, descriptive cut-scenes and expanded encounters.
46 sessions played
I cannot recommend Emmet enough. If you want engaging, fun and exciting role playing, Emmet is your DM.
33 sessions played
one of the best campaigns I ever played, dramatic and intricate storytelling mastered to a T
3 sessions played
Emmett is amazing! His custom maps for campaigns are top-notch. His storytelling is enjoyable. He is patient and his campaigns are engaging.
57 sessions played
I finished out the last Dragonlance campaign and started the Waterdeep Blues campaign with Emmett as the DM. There were some of the best and most memorable fights I've ever played as a character! And the roleplay is never boring or lackluster. His attention to detail and encouragement of the creativity of the players surpasses all. You can tell that he prepares so much for the games and that allows us as the players to think of almost anything we want to do and actually do it! As Emmett has said before "tell me what you want to do and we can figure out how to make it happen". Even when the group derailed the campaign (all in good fun), Emmett went with it with a good sense of humor. Overall, I can't recommend him enough!
1 session played
Emmett is an awesome GM! He is able to tailor the adventure to the players and is always responsive. He spends an amazing amount of time crafting an adventure and his master of GMing is unsurpassed in my experience.
59 sessions played
Highly recommend Emmett as a DM, he's very good at going beyond the source material to make the sessions submersive, using musical cues, descriptive cut-scenes and expanded encounters.
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