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City-State of Tyr
Within this 96-page booklet is the most complete, detailed description of Tyr's peoples, places, and plots ever. The premier city of the DARK SUN campaign setting now lies complete for an Athasian campaign's player characters. Learn the city's history, attend a Council meeting, wander the city's business districts, and explore the mysterious Under Tyr - the ancient ruins of the forgotten city upon which Tyr was built.
96 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 1993
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May 1, 2014
I'm really not sure what's up with that picture on the cover. Surely they could have picked something a bit more evocative of Tyr itself, like Kalak's ziggurat or the arena?
And with that auspicious beginning, let me dive in. City-State of Tyr tries to be all things to all GMs, and it mostly succeeds. It's firmly set after Kalak's death in the Dark Sun metaplot, but there's a lot of description throughout the book of the way things used to be back when Kalak was in charge and tyranting all over everything, so while it's not oriented toward it, it's certainly possible to use this book as a sourcebook for Tyr before the Prism Pentad takes place. They even spend a page on Kalak's stats in the notable NPCs section, which also contains the first mention of the Green Age by name in a Dark Sun sourcebook.
The main part of the book is devoted to a survey of the various regions of the city, often with a focus on how things have changed in the wake of the revolution. For example, the arena still exists, but now it's mostly used as a trading center and the games only take place on festivals. What's more, the games are no longer to the death, instead only being played until one gladiator surrenders unless it's a game vs. animals. The senators still exist as a social class, but the actual Senate has been dissolved in favor of a Council of Advisors to the new king. Though the king isn't actually there because he's off to try to learn the secret of becoming a sorcerer king, after which he can get rid of all this "make slavery illegal" and "free workers in the mines" hippie crap in favor of the old system of brutal repression, because he only appears as a liberalizing figure due to not reading all the edicts he was signing. Also, there's a section of the city called the Warrens where most of the freed slaves live. As the name implies, it's a maze of shoddy construction, crime, and vice, where mobs fight openly in the streets, monsters might live in the ruined houses, and no one sane goes into without guards.
Yep, this is Dark Sun alright.
On the same hand, there's a note that crime has gone up a lot since the revolution that killed Kalak, which I really like. One thing revolutionaries often find is that it's much easier to overthrow a terrible government than to create a good one to replace it, and I'm glad to see that here even if it could be miscontrued as just more Dark Sun misanthropy.
There's also a list of shops and businesses throughout Tyr with a couple paragraphs for each, which should provide plenty of options for an expanded scene for PCs that want to buy anything. Standouts for me were the Tarnished Cup, a pawn shop, which doesn't sound that exciting except that its mere existence reveals a lot about the world; the Shining Sands, a laundry that uses pure white desert sand and cactus-nectar-scented water to clean clothing; the Screaming Cellar, a tavern with a dwarf banshee in its currently-unused cellar who failed to protect the wine down there from thieves; and the Hungry, Hungry Halfling, whose thri-kreen and halfling proprietors swear that the elf stew they serve is not taken from any of Tyr's inhabitants.
There's some oddities. There's a note that
There's also a bit about UnderTyr, the network of catecombs, old city buildings, and remnants of previous cities located on the same site as modern Tyr, but not much and no map. I really would have preferred a more extensive treatment, since UnderTyr is perfectly suited for dungeon-bashing, skullduggery, hidden dealings, and all the other things that PCs get up to.
The religion and magic section is also short--kind of theme here--but I do like that even though magic is technically legal, wizards who try to use it in public are still likely to be lynched. Centuries of hatred aren't going to be wiped away by changing the law, after all. And the description of elemental clerics make them sound like weird wandering fanatics with superpowers instead of what the average person would think of as a priest, which might not be what they meant to portray but is totally how I'm going to think of them now unless Earth, Air, Fire, and Water has something different. Any maybe even then.
The end of the book has encounter tables for the various areas of Tyr and a description of how the various class kits fit into a Dark Sun game, which continues the tradition of inappropriate sections appearing in random books, like how half of Veiled Alliance was actually about the society and culture of the city states. Still, I can forgive it because of this line:
There's some odd restrictions, though. Mystic wizards are disallowed because the persecution of Dark Sun wizardry means that wizards can't develop a contemplative and studious mindset...but Dark Sun is the setting with 10th level spells and advanced beings and probably a huge amount of contemplation and study because wizards need to develop a lot of their own spells due to being persecuted all the time. Also, this should have been in the boxed set and I have no idea what it's here.
Overall, it's pretty good, and while I was worried it was going to be all post-metaplot and nearly-useless to me, I was pleasantly surprised to see that's not true at all. City-State of Tyr is useful for anyone looking for background regardless of when their games are set.
And with that auspicious beginning, let me dive in. City-State of Tyr tries to be all things to all GMs, and it mostly succeeds. It's firmly set after Kalak's death in the Dark Sun metaplot, but there's a lot of description throughout the book of the way things used to be back when Kalak was in charge and tyranting all over everything, so while it's not oriented toward it, it's certainly possible to use this book as a sourcebook for Tyr before the Prism Pentad takes place. They even spend a page on Kalak's stats in the notable NPCs section, which also contains the first mention of the Green Age by name in a Dark Sun sourcebook.
The main part of the book is devoted to a survey of the various regions of the city, often with a focus on how things have changed in the wake of the revolution. For example, the arena still exists, but now it's mostly used as a trading center and the games only take place on festivals. What's more, the games are no longer to the death, instead only being played until one gladiator surrenders unless it's a game vs. animals. The senators still exist as a social class, but the actual Senate has been dissolved in favor of a Council of Advisors to the new king. Though the king isn't actually there because he's off to try to learn the secret of becoming a sorcerer king, after which he can get rid of all this "make slavery illegal" and "free workers in the mines" hippie crap in favor of the old system of brutal repression, because he only appears as a liberalizing figure due to not reading all the edicts he was signing. Also, there's a section of the city called the Warrens where most of the freed slaves live. As the name implies, it's a maze of shoddy construction, crime, and vice, where mobs fight openly in the streets, monsters might live in the ruined houses, and no one sane goes into without guards.
Yep, this is Dark Sun alright.
On the same hand, there's a note that crime has gone up a lot since the revolution that killed Kalak, which I really like. One thing revolutionaries often find is that it's much easier to overthrow a terrible government than to create a good one to replace it, and I'm glad to see that here even if it could be miscontrued as just more Dark Sun misanthropy.
There's also a list of shops and businesses throughout Tyr with a couple paragraphs for each, which should provide plenty of options for an expanded scene for PCs that want to buy anything. Standouts for me were the Tarnished Cup, a pawn shop, which doesn't sound that exciting except that its mere existence reveals a lot about the world; the Shining Sands, a laundry that uses pure white desert sand and cactus-nectar-scented water to clean clothing; the Screaming Cellar, a tavern with a dwarf banshee in its currently-unused cellar who failed to protect the wine down there from thieves; and the Hungry, Hungry Halfling, whose thri-kreen and halfling proprietors swear that the elf stew they serve is not taken from any of Tyr's inhabitants.
There's some oddities. There's a note that
Cool well water is served throughout the city at little or no cost.except that earlier, the book says that water is free in the morning but it's one bit per container after that, and if you add the merchant's mark-ups, I'd expect water to be more expensive. It's probably subsidized by the city government, but "free water!" really doesn't sound like Dark Sun to me.
There's also a bit about UnderTyr, the network of catecombs, old city buildings, and remnants of previous cities located on the same site as modern Tyr, but not much and no map. I really would have preferred a more extensive treatment, since UnderTyr is perfectly suited for dungeon-bashing, skullduggery, hidden dealings, and all the other things that PCs get up to.
The religion and magic section is also short--kind of theme here--but I do like that even though magic is technically legal, wizards who try to use it in public are still likely to be lynched. Centuries of hatred aren't going to be wiped away by changing the law, after all. And the description of elemental clerics make them sound like weird wandering fanatics with superpowers instead of what the average person would think of as a priest, which might not be what they meant to portray but is totally how I'm going to think of them now unless Earth, Air, Fire, and Water has something different. Any maybe even then.
The end of the book has encounter tables for the various areas of Tyr and a description of how the various class kits fit into a Dark Sun game, which continues the tradition of inappropriate sections appearing in random books, like how half of Veiled Alliance was actually about the society and culture of the city states. Still, I can forgive it because of this line:
The antithesis of the Dark Sun setting, a pacifist priest would make a satisfying meal for a halfling or thri-kreen.Dark Sun!
There's some odd restrictions, though. Mystic wizards are disallowed because the persecution of Dark Sun wizardry means that wizards can't develop a contemplative and studious mindset...but Dark Sun is the setting with 10th level spells and advanced beings and probably a huge amount of contemplation and study because wizards need to develop a lot of their own spells due to being persecuted all the time. Also, this should have been in the boxed set and I have no idea what it's here.
Overall, it's pretty good, and while I was worried it was going to be all post-metaplot and nearly-useless to me, I was pleasantly surprised to see that's not true at all. City-State of Tyr is useful for anyone looking for background regardless of when their games are set.
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June 28, 202216/32 of the Dark Sun reread/skim -- the halfway point!
Some of the later products in this line have a rocky reputation, but this book is pretty straight down the middle--no wild swings, just a typical city book that goes through the city to give:
* history (sometimes told through certain POVs, which is fun),
* locations (this being a fantasy city, of course there are both quarters for everything, and an undercity of ruins that can be used for dungeon-crawl style adventures),
* and characters (including stats for the dead king, which raises some questions...).
Reading this book again after so long, I think city books might be my favorite type of book, mixing as they do fantasy/historical tropes (the undercity, the gladiatorial arena--now mostly a market but occasionally for non-lethal competitions--etc.) with the questions about how a city operates. (OK, so there are wells, which are free, but guarded; the iron mine caravans are protected by different configurations of guards since iron is one of the rarest resources in the world; the templars no longer have magic, but they are still involved in the bureaucratic organization of the city; here's a laundry that uses sand to clean clothes--which seems like a great mundane place to get PCs involved in searching for a clue or hiding their own bloodstained clothes).
The fact that they include dead king Kalak's stats and roleplaying notes along with the parting words to “Make [the world, the city] your own”, raises some questions for me, because it kind of seems at odds with the whole novel plot they are telling (where, you know, Kalak is killed).
Or put another way: of all their adventures, they've had one take place in Tyr, but everything else has involved other cities and a lot of traveling in the desert, so ... what was the plan here? On one hand, Tyr is the obvious place for the PCs to be, since it's the one free city in the world, but on the other hands, it's so tied up with the novels, that the published adventures have mostly taken place elsewhere, even when they tie into the novels. It just seems a little... unplanned in a way, or rather: this is what I want from a Dark Sun product, a sprawling view of a little slice of this world, with a lot of moving parts that can easily be used in an adventure.
As further proof of how things aren't planned, or maybe how TSR's different product lines were like freight trains whose tracks kept crossing, there's several pages in this book about how different backgrounds for certain classes shouldn't be allowed. Which, like, should probably have been in the core book, but then again, maybe those class books with those backgrounds (kits) weren't printed yet, so now they have to cram this errata in somewhere.
Speaking of crammed in: I've said before that what really got my attention in the 90s about Dark Sun was the dying earth fantasy--that the world had been wrecked by magic and what would the PCs do about it? (Well, I was also really attracted to using psionics but for the sake of argument, let's just say I was into the eco-cide setup.) Then in Dragon Kings they revealed that the highest-powered magicians weren't just killing the world, but were transforming themselves into something inhuman.
But there's a whole other angle that I haven't even touched on, which is referenced--maybe for the first time--in the character write-up for the dead king:
* Is eco-cide and genocide too many topics to cover in a fantasy world? And
* Is Dark Sun more relevant these days than it was in the 90s?
Some of the later products in this line have a rocky reputation, but this book is pretty straight down the middle--no wild swings, just a typical city book that goes through the city to give:
* history (sometimes told through certain POVs, which is fun),
* locations (this being a fantasy city, of course there are both quarters for everything, and an undercity of ruins that can be used for dungeon-crawl style adventures),
* and characters (including stats for the dead king, which raises some questions...).
Reading this book again after so long, I think city books might be my favorite type of book, mixing as they do fantasy/historical tropes (the undercity, the gladiatorial arena--now mostly a market but occasionally for non-lethal competitions--etc.) with the questions about how a city operates. (OK, so there are wells, which are free, but guarded; the iron mine caravans are protected by different configurations of guards since iron is one of the rarest resources in the world; the templars no longer have magic, but they are still involved in the bureaucratic organization of the city; here's a laundry that uses sand to clean clothes--which seems like a great mundane place to get PCs involved in searching for a clue or hiding their own bloodstained clothes).
The fact that they include dead king Kalak's stats and roleplaying notes along with the parting words to “Make [the world, the city] your own”, raises some questions for me, because it kind of seems at odds with the whole novel plot they are telling (where, you know, Kalak is killed).
Or put another way: of all their adventures, they've had one take place in Tyr, but everything else has involved other cities and a lot of traveling in the desert, so ... what was the plan here? On one hand, Tyr is the obvious place for the PCs to be, since it's the one free city in the world, but on the other hands, it's so tied up with the novels, that the published adventures have mostly taken place elsewhere, even when they tie into the novels. It just seems a little... unplanned in a way, or rather: this is what I want from a Dark Sun product, a sprawling view of a little slice of this world, with a lot of moving parts that can easily be used in an adventure.
As further proof of how things aren't planned, or maybe how TSR's different product lines were like freight trains whose tracks kept crossing, there's several pages in this book about how different backgrounds for certain classes shouldn't be allowed. Which, like, should probably have been in the core book, but then again, maybe those class books with those backgrounds (kits) weren't printed yet, so now they have to cram this errata in somewhere.
Speaking of crammed in: I've said before that what really got my attention in the 90s about Dark Sun was the dying earth fantasy--that the world had been wrecked by magic and what would the PCs do about it? (Well, I was also really attracted to using psionics but for the sake of argument, let's just say I was into the eco-cide setup.) Then in Dragon Kings they revealed that the highest-powered magicians weren't just killing the world, but were transforming themselves into something inhuman.
But there's a whole other angle that I haven't even touched on, which is referenced--maybe for the first time--in the character write-up for the dead king:
He lived during a time known as the Green Age, when all Tyr was lush and fertile. He fought in the war of wars, when segments of the human races sought genocide against the nonhuman races of Athas. The wars defiled the planet, and reduced it to the barren waste it is today.So Dark Sun isn't just a world about resource abuse leading to eco-cide, it's a world formed by genocide. Which raises two questions for me:
* Is eco-cide and genocide too many topics to cover in a fantasy world? And
* Is Dark Sun more relevant these days than it was in the 90s?
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews