Dark Sun

Under a dark and swollen sun, the world of Athas is dying — and has been dying so long that its people no longer remember the color green. This is Dungeons & Dragons at its most merciless: a desert world where water outvalues gold, where blades are chipped from bone and obsidian because the metal ran out ages ago, and where every careless act of wizardry drains the last life from the soil. There are no gods to pray to. There are only the sorcerer-kings — immortal tyrants who rule the scattered city-states from atop pyramids built of slaves. The world's spine is Troy Denning's Prism Pentad, five novels that carry Athas through open revolt: The Verdant Passage, The Crimson Legion, The Amber Enchantress, The Obsidian Oracle, and The Cerulean Storm. Around that core the shelf widens. Simon Hawke's Tribe of One trilogy tracks a hunted, exiled half-elf across the wastes; Lynn Abbey turns to the templars and traders of the city-states in her Chronicles of Athas; and the later Abyssal Plague books drag the dying world into a wider planar catastrophe. Many hands, one unforgiving climate. What sets Athas apart is the texture of its hardship. Psionic power — the Way — hums in nearly every living thing, so the mind is the one weapon slavery cannot confiscate. Survival is the plot; mercy is the rare twist. Come for sword-and-sandal brutality, stay for a world that punishes magic and rewards cunning. Newcomers should start where the story itself begins, with The Verdant Passage, and read the Pentad straight through in order — it is the load-bearing tale the rest of Athas grew up around.