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Windriders of the Jagged Cliffs
Windriders of the Jagged Cliffs details the lives of the rhul-thaun -- the descendants of the rhulisti and the keepers of ancient knowledge who practice the most unusual and arcane art under the crimson sun: the shaping of life itself. This 128-page accessory for players and Dungeon Masters alike is the first in the "Wanderer's Chronicle" series that explores new areas of Athas.
It features:
* Details of the Jagged Cliffs region, the rugged land that lies between Tyr and the Kreen Empire.
* Living tools left from Athas's dim past, including organic weapons, armor, and flying vehicles.
* Secrets of the swamp at the base of the Cliffs, and its link to all magic within the world of Athas.
* Details for creating these unique halfling characters, and rules for making and using living weapons.
* A complete adventure for existing PCs or newly created rhul-thaun characters.
It features:
* Details of the Jagged Cliffs region, the rugged land that lies between Tyr and the Kreen Empire.
* Living tools left from Athas's dim past, including organic weapons, armor, and flying vehicles.
* Secrets of the swamp at the base of the Cliffs, and its link to all magic within the world of Athas.
* Details for creating these unique halfling characters, and rules for making and using living weapons.
* A complete adventure for existing PCs or newly created rhul-thaun characters.
128 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 1995
About the author
Monte Cook
211 books124 followers
The game designer
Monte Cook started working professionally in the game industry in 1988. In the employ of Iron Crown Enterprises, he worked with the Rolemaster and Champions games as an editor, developer, and designer. In 1994, Monte came to TSR, Inc., as a game designer and wrote for the Planescape and core D&D lines. When that company was purchased by Wizards of the Coast, he moved to the Seattle area and eventually became a senior game designer. At Wizards, he wrote the 3rd Edition Dungeon Master's Guide and served as codesigner of the new edition of the Dungeons & Dragons game. In 2001, he left Wizards to start his own design studio, Malhavoc Press, with his wife Sue. Although in his career he has worked on over 100 game titles, some of his other credits include Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, The Book of Eldritch Might series, the d20 Call of Cthulhu Roleplaying Game, The Book of Vile Darkness, Monte Cook’s Arcana Evolved, Ptolus, Monte Cook's World of Darkness, and Dungeonaday.com. He was a longtime author of the Dungeoncraft column in Dungeon Magazine. In recent years, Monte has been recognized many times by game fans in the ENnies Awards, the Pen & Paper fan awards, the Nigel D. Findley Memorial Award, the Origins Awards, and more.
The author
A graduate of the 1999 Clarion West writer's workshop, Monte has published two novels, The Glass Prison and Of Aged Angels. Also, he has published the short stories "Born in Secrets" (in the magazine Amazing Stories), "The Rose Window" (in the anthology Realms of Mystery), and "A Narrowed Gaze" (in the anthology Realms of the Arcane). His stories have appeared in the Malhavoc Press anthologies Children of the Rune and The Dragons' Return, and his comic book writing can be found in the Ptolus: City by the Spire series from DBPro/Marvel. His fantasy fiction series, "Saga of the Blade," appeared in Game Trade Magazine from 2005–2006.
The geek
In his spare time, Monte runs games, plays with his dog, watches DVDs, builds vast dioramas out of LEGO building bricks, paints miniatures, and reads a lot of comics.
Monte Cook started working professionally in the game industry in 1988. In the employ of Iron Crown Enterprises, he worked with the Rolemaster and Champions games as an editor, developer, and designer. In 1994, Monte came to TSR, Inc., as a game designer and wrote for the Planescape and core D&D lines. When that company was purchased by Wizards of the Coast, he moved to the Seattle area and eventually became a senior game designer. At Wizards, he wrote the 3rd Edition Dungeon Master's Guide and served as codesigner of the new edition of the Dungeons & Dragons game. In 2001, he left Wizards to start his own design studio, Malhavoc Press, with his wife Sue. Although in his career he has worked on over 100 game titles, some of his other credits include Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, The Book of Eldritch Might series, the d20 Call of Cthulhu Roleplaying Game, The Book of Vile Darkness, Monte Cook’s Arcana Evolved, Ptolus, Monte Cook's World of Darkness, and Dungeonaday.com. He was a longtime author of the Dungeoncraft column in Dungeon Magazine. In recent years, Monte has been recognized many times by game fans in the ENnies Awards, the Pen & Paper fan awards, the Nigel D. Findley Memorial Award, the Origins Awards, and more.
The author
A graduate of the 1999 Clarion West writer's workshop, Monte has published two novels, The Glass Prison and Of Aged Angels. Also, he has published the short stories "Born in Secrets" (in the magazine Amazing Stories), "The Rose Window" (in the anthology Realms of Mystery), and "A Narrowed Gaze" (in the anthology Realms of the Arcane). His stories have appeared in the Malhavoc Press anthologies Children of the Rune and The Dragons' Return, and his comic book writing can be found in the Ptolus: City by the Spire series from DBPro/Marvel. His fantasy fiction series, "Saga of the Blade," appeared in Game Trade Magazine from 2005–2006.
The geek
In his spare time, Monte runs games, plays with his dog, watches DVDs, builds vast dioramas out of LEGO building bricks, paints miniatures, and reads a lot of comics.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 19, 2014
I'm fortunate in that I'm able to trace some of my enduring loves in sci fi and fantasy to specific sources. My love of floating continents comes from the Kingdom of Zeal in Chrono Trigger, my love of space feudalism comes from Dune, and my love of organic technology comes from Windriders of the Jagged Cliffs.
"Biotech halflings" is my capsule summary, and it sounds ludicrous, but I think it works out pretty well. As much as I don't like the way the Dark Sun metaplot progressed, I do like most of the backstory they established in City by the Silt Sea, and a survival of halfling life shapers into the modern Dark Sun era is great.
The Jagged Cliffs are to the northwest, past the Ringing Mountains and in between the Tyr Region and the Kreen Empire established in Thri-Kreen of Athas. The rhul-thaun, as the halflings who live there are called, have lived there since the end of the Blue Age in isolation. Their society has ossified, and the ancient science of life shaping is now a mystical discipline mired in ritual and mumbo jumbo, with only scattered formulae followed by rote and no understanding of the principles behind it at all. This obsession with ritual extends to all aspects of rhul-thaun society, to the extent that interaction with other halflings is primarily based on how well the rituals are performed, especially in social situations like bartering or law trials.
I love the ritualized aspect of rhul-thaun culture, because it fits the fallen grandeur aspect of Dark Sun to a tee. Once, the rhulisti literally ruled the world, and their descendants huddle in the ruins with threats on all sides, surviving only due to their isolation. As their knowledge slowly fades, they cling desparately to what remains, turning it into chants and litanies and giving it an honored place in their culture to preserve it, until all understanding is gone and only the ritual remains. It reminded me a lot of Warhammer 40K's tech priests, and the note that life shaper procedures look like magical rituals made me think of something like, "Chant the Supplication to the Machine Spirit thrice, turn toward Holy Terra and bow, recite the Litany of Praise to the God-Emperor, bow twice to the reliquary, and then press the Sacred On Button." Or how the life shapers feed prospective candidates to The Womb, in their main headquarters, and then assume that anyone who survives passing through is "accepted by the forces of life" and fit to be a shaper, even though they have no idea what The Womb is, why it was built, or what it does.
I also loved how a lot of the life shapers who are statted up are evil. Power corrupts, after all, and rhul-thaun society is completely dependent on the life shapers for food, transportation, housing, clothing, defensive capability, and basically anything that prevents them from degenerating into cannibalistic savages like their brethren in the Forest Ridge. It makes complete sense that the life shapers would degenerate into a mafia and mouth platitudes to the sanctity of life while employing assassins to kill anyone who threatens their power. If that's not Dark Sun, I don't know what is.
Further separating them from other Athasians, psionics is seen as a new aberration that the rhulisti didn't need, and so those who possess powers hide them out of shame. But there's a quote in the book that:
The statted-up life-shaped items cover a pretty wide variety, from ropes with claws on the end for easier climbing to flying gasbags called soar whales, from a "grappler" that shoots out tentacles to entangle enemies to living shell armor, from cloaks that keep the wearers cool to slugs that crawl around living houses and eat dust and dirt. The armor actually made me do a double-take, because it's alive and there's a note that all damage is equally split between wearer and armor, which means life-shaped armor is the best possible protection that exists in D&D. Until the armor dies and becomes worthless, anyway. Life-shaped items tend to be more versatile or powerful than equivalent dead items, but are counterbalanced by having hit points, being subject to illness, requiring a special nutrient solution for sustenance, and only being available on the Jagged Cliffs and usually designed only for rhul-thaun.
The book ends with an adventure, but it's an expedition to the swamp and I didn't find it that interesting. Even though it goes to one of Rajaat's experimental sites, it's built more like a dungeon with wacky traps. Like one room with colored tiles, one color of which turns people into small animals, and another of which turns them back to normal. Why did Rajaat build that when Permanency takes a point of Constitution? Beats me.
About the only thing I had a hard time with in the book was the isolation. I can understand why the rhul-thaun would want to be isolated, and why no one travels there in modern times, but I don't understand how they stayed undiscovered even in the Green Age. I mean, the Tyr Region is about the size of Arizona and we know from City by the Silt Sea that they had psionic mass transit in the Green Age. It boggles the mind that no one ever went northwest to go see what was up there.
That's a minor quibble that's mostly irrelevant in actual play, though. While Windriders of the Jagged Cliffs is a different tone than most fantasy products, I think fits really well into the weird fantasy vibe that Dark Sun has. It's still one of my favorite D&D books I own, and I'm glad I reread it.
"Biotech halflings" is my capsule summary, and it sounds ludicrous, but I think it works out pretty well. As much as I don't like the way the Dark Sun metaplot progressed, I do like most of the backstory they established in City by the Silt Sea, and a survival of halfling life shapers into the modern Dark Sun era is great.
The Jagged Cliffs are to the northwest, past the Ringing Mountains and in between the Tyr Region and the Kreen Empire established in Thri-Kreen of Athas. The rhul-thaun, as the halflings who live there are called, have lived there since the end of the Blue Age in isolation. Their society has ossified, and the ancient science of life shaping is now a mystical discipline mired in ritual and mumbo jumbo, with only scattered formulae followed by rote and no understanding of the principles behind it at all. This obsession with ritual extends to all aspects of rhul-thaun society, to the extent that interaction with other halflings is primarily based on how well the rituals are performed, especially in social situations like bartering or law trials.
I love the ritualized aspect of rhul-thaun culture, because it fits the fallen grandeur aspect of Dark Sun to a tee. Once, the rhulisti literally ruled the world, and their descendants huddle in the ruins with threats on all sides, surviving only due to their isolation. As their knowledge slowly fades, they cling desparately to what remains, turning it into chants and litanies and giving it an honored place in their culture to preserve it, until all understanding is gone and only the ritual remains. It reminded me a lot of Warhammer 40K's tech priests, and the note that life shaper procedures look like magical rituals made me think of something like, "Chant the Supplication to the Machine Spirit thrice, turn toward Holy Terra and bow, recite the Litany of Praise to the God-Emperor, bow twice to the reliquary, and then press the Sacred On Button." Or how the life shapers feed prospective candidates to The Womb, in their main headquarters, and then assume that anyone who survives passing through is "accepted by the forces of life" and fit to be a shaper, even though they have no idea what The Womb is, why it was built, or what it does.
I also loved how a lot of the life shapers who are statted up are evil. Power corrupts, after all, and rhul-thaun society is completely dependent on the life shapers for food, transportation, housing, clothing, defensive capability, and basically anything that prevents them from degenerating into cannibalistic savages like their brethren in the Forest Ridge. It makes complete sense that the life shapers would degenerate into a mafia and mouth platitudes to the sanctity of life while employing assassins to kill anyone who threatens their power. If that's not Dark Sun, I don't know what is.
Further separating them from other Athasians, psionics is seen as a new aberration that the rhulisti didn't need, and so those who possess powers hide them out of shame. But there's a quote in the book that:
Most common halflings own simple defensive and subtle abilities, though a few individuals can wield dramatic, fearsome powers....which makes me think of Paranoia. Nearly everyone has psionic powers, but society fears psionics, so everyone hides their powers from each other. And while not everyone is a mutant, there are mutants, created by the mutagenic swamp at the base of the cliffs where Rajaat first experimented with the power of magic.
The statted-up life-shaped items cover a pretty wide variety, from ropes with claws on the end for easier climbing to flying gasbags called soar whales, from a "grappler" that shoots out tentacles to entangle enemies to living shell armor, from cloaks that keep the wearers cool to slugs that crawl around living houses and eat dust and dirt. The armor actually made me do a double-take, because it's alive and there's a note that all damage is equally split between wearer and armor, which means life-shaped armor is the best possible protection that exists in D&D. Until the armor dies and becomes worthless, anyway. Life-shaped items tend to be more versatile or powerful than equivalent dead items, but are counterbalanced by having hit points, being subject to illness, requiring a special nutrient solution for sustenance, and only being available on the Jagged Cliffs and usually designed only for rhul-thaun.
The book ends with an adventure, but it's an expedition to the swamp and I didn't find it that interesting. Even though it goes to one of Rajaat's experimental sites, it's built more like a dungeon with wacky traps. Like one room with colored tiles, one color of which turns people into small animals, and another of which turns them back to normal. Why did Rajaat build that when Permanency takes a point of Constitution? Beats me.
About the only thing I had a hard time with in the book was the isolation. I can understand why the rhul-thaun would want to be isolated, and why no one travels there in modern times, but I don't understand how they stayed undiscovered even in the Green Age. I mean, the Tyr Region is about the size of Arizona and we know from City by the Silt Sea that they had psionic mass transit in the Green Age. It boggles the mind that no one ever went northwest to go see what was up there.
That's a minor quibble that's mostly irrelevant in actual play, though. While Windriders of the Jagged Cliffs is a different tone than most fantasy products, I think fits really well into the weird fantasy vibe that Dark Sun has. It's still one of my favorite D&D books I own, and I'm glad I reread it.
Read
July 21, 202229/32 and the last book of the product line from 1995, the second to last year it ran. We've just had the revised box, which updated and expanded the world -- which frankly kind of messed with the thematics that made Dark Sun interesting and also, I'm told, messed up some of the rules. Ah well.
But since there's more of the world to cover, you can bet that TSR was going to release books covering these unique and interesting areas, which partly require whole books because of how unique and isolated they are -- which raises the question of how exactly to use these books. Again: ah well.
Anyway, despite the general downward trend in my appreciation for these books -- well, wait a minute, I haven't actually created my rankings yet, so let's just say: since I don't generally like these books as much now as I did when I was a teenager, I wasn't too thrilled to reread this one, but overall, I like it fine.
As in the history laid out in The City by the Silt Sea, the world was once populated by halflings who controlled life, and when they went to far and unleashed a plague that they could only stop by changing the color of the sun and destroying a lot of the ocean, they took it hard. Many of them reshaped themselves into the other species, and the halflings that remained lost their culture and became savage tribespeople. Which while not being great history or anthropology is pretty fair sword-and-sorcery.
Except one small isolated halfling region remained and retained some of their knowledge -- or at least, retained enough to basically copy-paste from stackoverflow. That's a computer programmer joke/reality: many people "code" without really understanding computers or good engineering, but just copy-paste from the answers in stackoverflow, which is a question-and-answer website.
Anyway, that's the level of culture the halflings have: they've lost the _why_, but they remember the ritual _how_ of a situation, so most of their culture is pure ritual and also some of their most prized life-shaped machines have broken down. This sort of thing gets repeated a lot -- modern degenerates don't know the power they once had -- but it's on point for Dark Sun, so thematically it fits.
Here's where the book falls down a bit though, as a setting for adventure: the society is very caste-stratified, with each person basically finding their job and being defined by it (which isn't so unusual if you think about the fact they also literally grow life-forms to fulfill one job). But on the other side... well, what? I feel like there's supposed to be a tension here, between conservative ritualized life and a need for something else as the rituals fail, but that's not really the story here. There is a whole thing about how halflings are supposed to revere life but there's (of course) a thriving underground of assassins, but I never quite feel this tension rises to the level of a story engine.
There's also info here about how the halflings, who are dedicated to their isolation in a way -- they are curious what's out there, but also are waiting for a legendary explorer to return -- but who also see themselves as the protectors of the Tyr region against the imperial Kreen of the Crimson Savannah. But--what? Why? Why would they even think about that part of the world as something to defend? (And given their reverence for life, how do they square that with killing kreen? There could be an interesting tension there of a society in turmoil for the PCs to stumble into, but that's not an interest of the book.)
Now, each town is described nicely with some adventure hook, though some of those ideas are more head-scratching (a town run by evil psionic twins who can swap their bodies! Uh, why is that helpful rather than just, I don't know, being in constant telepathic contact?) rather than fun (an earth cult who doesn't realize their ritual is draining charges from a nearly empty wand). Unfortunately, a lot of the art in this book is aerial pictures of this cliffside towns, many of which are the same thing: a cliff ledge with a bunch of huts. They are not interesting pictures nor are they particularly helpful.
So why, if I'm finding so many problems here, do I like this book? Well, I do have to say I'm still not sure how to use this as an additional region for the PCs from the Tyr region to explore -- it seems much more possible to create new halfling native PCs and send them around. But ultimately, I really enjoy the weirdness of the life-shaping halflings who have living tools for all sorts of things: ropes with claws to help them climb, giant blimp-like airships that are really pufferfish-like animals, cooling cloaks, living weapons, a thing called The Womb that prospective life-shapers are fed into but which no one understands and sometimes ends up hurting or killing those it rejects. It's just weird and unexpected, and I'm not surprised that some people didn't like it, but it's the first book in the revised series that brings back a little bit of that feeling from the first: "what am I looking at?"
But yeah, ultimately, not sure how I'd use this. I do like that there's a “A day in the life” section, but a little disappointed that it's not some average Joe halfling's average day, but a wind-rider's first day getting to ride a giant life-shaped bee by herself. I just want to see more examples of what life is like when some of your food and clothing are extruded from a machine that one guy in the village runs but no one really understands.
(Also: I like the _idea_ of living weapons and armor, but the way it works involves tracking hitpoints for even more creatures in combat, which feels like a slog.)
But since there's more of the world to cover, you can bet that TSR was going to release books covering these unique and interesting areas, which partly require whole books because of how unique and isolated they are -- which raises the question of how exactly to use these books. Again: ah well.
Anyway, despite the general downward trend in my appreciation for these books -- well, wait a minute, I haven't actually created my rankings yet, so let's just say: since I don't generally like these books as much now as I did when I was a teenager, I wasn't too thrilled to reread this one, but overall, I like it fine.
As in the history laid out in The City by the Silt Sea, the world was once populated by halflings who controlled life, and when they went to far and unleashed a plague that they could only stop by changing the color of the sun and destroying a lot of the ocean, they took it hard. Many of them reshaped themselves into the other species, and the halflings that remained lost their culture and became savage tribespeople. Which while not being great history or anthropology is pretty fair sword-and-sorcery.
Except one small isolated halfling region remained and retained some of their knowledge -- or at least, retained enough to basically copy-paste from stackoverflow. That's a computer programmer joke/reality: many people "code" without really understanding computers or good engineering, but just copy-paste from the answers in stackoverflow, which is a question-and-answer website.
Anyway, that's the level of culture the halflings have: they've lost the _why_, but they remember the ritual _how_ of a situation, so most of their culture is pure ritual and also some of their most prized life-shaped machines have broken down. This sort of thing gets repeated a lot -- modern degenerates don't know the power they once had -- but it's on point for Dark Sun, so thematically it fits.
Here's where the book falls down a bit though, as a setting for adventure: the society is very caste-stratified, with each person basically finding their job and being defined by it (which isn't so unusual if you think about the fact they also literally grow life-forms to fulfill one job). But on the other side... well, what? I feel like there's supposed to be a tension here, between conservative ritualized life and a need for something else as the rituals fail, but that's not really the story here. There is a whole thing about how halflings are supposed to revere life but there's (of course) a thriving underground of assassins, but I never quite feel this tension rises to the level of a story engine.
There's also info here about how the halflings, who are dedicated to their isolation in a way -- they are curious what's out there, but also are waiting for a legendary explorer to return -- but who also see themselves as the protectors of the Tyr region against the imperial Kreen of the Crimson Savannah. But--what? Why? Why would they even think about that part of the world as something to defend? (And given their reverence for life, how do they square that with killing kreen? There could be an interesting tension there of a society in turmoil for the PCs to stumble into, but that's not an interest of the book.)
Now, each town is described nicely with some adventure hook, though some of those ideas are more head-scratching (a town run by evil psionic twins who can swap their bodies! Uh, why is that helpful rather than just, I don't know, being in constant telepathic contact?) rather than fun (an earth cult who doesn't realize their ritual is draining charges from a nearly empty wand). Unfortunately, a lot of the art in this book is aerial pictures of this cliffside towns, many of which are the same thing: a cliff ledge with a bunch of huts. They are not interesting pictures nor are they particularly helpful.
So why, if I'm finding so many problems here, do I like this book? Well, I do have to say I'm still not sure how to use this as an additional region for the PCs from the Tyr region to explore -- it seems much more possible to create new halfling native PCs and send them around. But ultimately, I really enjoy the weirdness of the life-shaping halflings who have living tools for all sorts of things: ropes with claws to help them climb, giant blimp-like airships that are really pufferfish-like animals, cooling cloaks, living weapons, a thing called The Womb that prospective life-shapers are fed into but which no one understands and sometimes ends up hurting or killing those it rejects. It's just weird and unexpected, and I'm not surprised that some people didn't like it, but it's the first book in the revised series that brings back a little bit of that feeling from the first: "what am I looking at?"
But yeah, ultimately, not sure how I'd use this. I do like that there's a “A day in the life” section, but a little disappointed that it's not some average Joe halfling's average day, but a wind-rider's first day getting to ride a giant life-shaped bee by herself. I just want to see more examples of what life is like when some of your food and clothing are extruded from a machine that one guy in the village runs but no one really understands.
(Also: I like the _idea_ of living weapons and armor, but the way it works involves tracking hitpoints for even more creatures in combat, which feels like a slog.)
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February 12, 2026review text for 1348
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