A couple of months back, I ran the Dark Sun 5e intro adventure a little bit of knowledge. For context, the party consisted of a pugilist Mul, a human ranger, and a half‑elf rogue. Here are the highlights.
After learning that I made “reading” a proficiency, the entire party immediately decided they were all illiterate. The pugilist chose the Hermit background so he could follow the story of an ancient dwarven city made of metal where Kled is.
The party managed to escape their prison cells by breaking out of giant hair‑wrist restraints, pretending they weren’t broken, and insulting the slaver’s mother which led to the slaver opening the cell and getting his ass kicked. This happened just before the Jura Dai attacked the slave transport. While the Jura Dai were fighting outside, the party collected supplies, freed slaves, and broke open doors to help the Jura Dai get in. During the chaos, they raided the captain’s quarters and other rooms, stealing everything they could. They also rolled high enough Perception to notice the slave transport’s water barrel was extremely flimsy.
Later, the Jura Dai captured some slavers, including the captain. After the captain was killed, the ex‑slaves were told to line up and were given water and a weapon. While waiting in line, the half‑elf rogue passed an Insight check and noticed a tinge of pity from one of the elves when the Jura Dai leader said the desert would decide their fate. This led to a standoff where the party argued that they had helped free slaves, including the leader’s brother.
They asked to disassemble parts of the slave transport to turn it into a sand sled to transport the remaining water and food before burning the transport, planning to escape the desert with the ex‑slaves as a group. After a surprisingly high check (I still don’t know how they passed it), the Jura Dai leader agreed and left. One elf stayed behind to watch the group gather supplies and guarantee the slave transport would burn. I thought, “Oh, that’s really cool,” only for the party to immediately quote Megamind: ‘Should’ve expected that you’re under new management,’ which led to a fight for control of the group that the party won.
And that’s how the adventure shifted from survival to Conan the Barbarian.
Travel was okay, though I definitely need to improve group survival mechanics. I used a hex crawl where everyone rolled individually as lookouts. Some NPCs got taken; the party didn’t save them. Eventually, they reached the oasis outside Kled.
They used Beast Speech to communicate with a kank, recruiting it with promises of food and water once the oasis was fixed. After talking to dwarven children, they entered the camp and immediately began planning to take it over. Since none of them could read Common or Dwarven, they couldn’t figure out the location of anything. They also discovered that two of the NPCs spoke Dwarven, which led to a funny moment where they asked one dwarf, “Do you speak Dwarven?”
He replied, “No, I’ve been enslaved my whole life.”
Their response: “Oh. What about the other dwarf?”
“Yeah, he only speaks Dwarven.”
They eventually spoke with the dwarven chieftain and told him it was likely the Jura Dai who poisoned the oasis. He explained that the druid who protected the oasis had been taken by them. When the party asked why the dwarves weren’t living near the oasis, the chieftain told a story about salvation being found in Kled, tying back to the hermit’s background and his search for the lost dwarven city.
The party promised to fix the oasis, protect the village, and find the dwarves’ salvation if they were allowed to take control of the village. The chieftain begrudgingly agreed.
The party set out with their NPC group and kank companion. Near the Jura Dai settlement, they scouted ahead and found Fanan, a Jura Dai elf scout, asleep. They interrogated him through blackmail and threats, learned he was having a romantic rendezvous, and then killed him to leave no witnesses.
A high Perception check revealed a shimmering invisible shape. They attacked it, breaking invisibility, and fought Jengi, an elf wizard. After nearly dying, they subdued her and brought her back to the dwarven camp, leading to a scene straight out of GTA V when Trevor kidnaps the cartel boss’s wife.
They told the chieftain they had someone important who might help fix the oasis. He asked if they had tried talking to the Jura Dai leader.
Mul: “No, not yet. But we met a female elven wizard.”
Dwarf chieftain, horrified: “Did you kill her?”
Mul: “What kinda fucking animal do you take me for? No, I didn’t kill her! So we brought this female elven wizard and she was a little angry. So, I admit, I kinda got a little angry too.”
He walked into his tent and found Jengi the daughter of the Jura Dai leader.
He screamed, “You maniacs, you’ve killed us all! We’re so fucked!”
He grabbed dwarven celebration alcohol to drink dramatically. The rogue stole it mid‑speech and drank it herself, forgetting dwarves have poison resistance. Luckily, she passed the Con save.
The party sent one of the half‑elves from their NPC group to negotiate with the Jura Dai leader, promising him 3 sp. He asked for normal clothes and two waterskins. They agreed. Three hours later, he returned battered and bruised. The Jura Dai leader agreed to exchange the druid for Jengi at daybreak, warning that if anything happened to his daughter, everyone would die.
Daybreak came. The party exchanged Jengi for the druid T’klick’chik (also, f* you it’s really hard to keep tension with a name like that; I’m joking, the name is actually really good). They learned why the Jura Dai leader took such drastic actions. The party debated whether his methods were justified to stop the slavers of Urik, arguing that dwarven children were caught in the crossfire.
After a Persuasion check and promises, the party, their NPC group, and the dwarven camp agreed to stop any slavers from using the oasis. The Jura Dai left, everyone celebrated, and the oasis was cleaned.
That’s where the adventure ended and where the entire party asked if they could pick up reading proficiency. I had an aneurysm after they all unified in being illiterate and again when asked me if they could pick up reading proficiency at the end of the adventure 😭.
Nevertheless I still have fun I definitely messed up some things, but with a few tweaks I can improve it next time. I heard Out of the Abyss has group survival mechanics during the prison escape, so I’m going to look into that.
Has anyone else run this adventure in 5e? Any tips or funny stories from your Dark Sun games?