Then we're told that the Chahn and Sahl have already arrived at the pyramid and many of them have been killed in the swamp al Continuing the list of weird, life-shaped items. Moving on from weapons and armor to more general gear.

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There's plenty more but some examples are turtle-like egg-layers called baredum, Don-egoth which are small trees that produce sweet red fruits, Chuhn-egil which produce milk and vash-erat which sprout "grains" from their body which can be sheared and ground into flour. Beyond that, Thamasku has a few notable places. It features the largest Air elemental temple (and in fact, the largest temple at all) in rhul-thaun society. Despite this it still has less than 20 priests and its main function is as a resting place for windriders and their mounts. The air priests see windriding as a way of communing with the element and therefore consider all windriders "holy men" of a sort. The second largest temple is also here, a water temple located at the edge of the lake itself. Of course it also has the largest Life-shaper sanctuary, submerged underneath the lake and the entire structure is alive, its gills providing air for itself and the life-shapers who live there. In addition to Thamasku proper there's the tiny village of Sol-Fehn which is really just a remote section of Thamasku that serves as a transportation hub for those coming up from or going down below.

Even worse, to the West of the cliffs is the empire of the Thri-Kreen, a militaristic army of bug-men who are (ironically) kind of better at life-shaping than the halflings by now and are eager to sweep East to conquer new lands. The Jagged Cliffs are all that stands in their way. Organic superglue. This creature is a small tube which can secrete clear goop from what is totally not its butt. The goop is an effective organic glue that's used much like tar or similar sealants. It's organic nature also apparently makes it suitable for repairing damage to life shaped creatures, but no rules are provided for this. Apparently Sahl learned about little death while exploring Rajaat's ancient sanctuary in the swamp but was never able to reach it because of the traps and magical protections...of course if he never reached it how the hell is he supposed to know what it does or that it exists at all? Did Rajaat leave notices written in ancient halfling posted on the walls of his sanctuary detailing the function of one of his personal magic items?More cloaks! Unlike the rest of the 'cloak series, this one is not self-explanatory. Neither is it actually a rhulhisti artifact. Darkcloaks are actually an accident where a living cloak has gained psionic abilities which it uses to defend its wearer, giving them a mental AC of 5. It apparently also grants a physical AC of 5...but whether this functions like armor, more like Bracers of Protection or what exactly is unclear. It's not entirely clear on whether or not the improved protection is a psionic effect or simply a result of the cloak being very tough. A few grafts have already showed up among the rhulhisti artifacts, but these are the regular ones that can still be made. Grafts are life-shaped symbiotes designed to physically meld with other creatures supplementing or replacing their body parts. Since they can feed off nutrients from the host directly they don't need the same level of care as other life-shaped items (but do increase food and water intake by 10% per graft). Grafts can be removed, leaving only a slight rash that fades after 24 hours. Like a clingbag, but rope. Mainly it lets you just loop the rope around something and hold it in place without knots. The place is under such danger that there is no life-shaper sanctuary here. Life-shapers are flown in when needed to repair buildings (especially the city's walls, which are a unique feature among the halflings) and then flown out again once their done. Everything else must be imported. Included in the book is an intro adventure: Into The Swamp, for characters of 4-6th level. It claims that it can be used for rhul-thaun characters or for general Dark Sun PCs.

It also notes that male and female rhul-thaun are treated with absolute equality as halflings have relatively minimal physical differences between genders (beyond the obvious).

As you would expect rhul-thaun architecture has kind of a biological, Giger-esque element to it. Lots of curves and bulges rather than hard angles. There are two types of building: the first is a kind of coral-like building material called Essentially identical to climbing boots, granting its own +5% to climbing rolls. It'll also fit anyone other than half-giants. The painter: She's "very observant" and is willing to sell some info for 5 ge. Her information is pretty much useless though: she knows that Sahl had been on a trip to the swamps after some kind of relic related to Rajaat's curse (so apparently someone knew about the item already? How?). She can also show them sketches of the explorers as they left the city. This is in no way useful. The Chahn get a +1 bonus to pretty much any roll they think will help overthrow the status quo, plus the benefits of being a member of an underground group of like-minded individuals. Monstrosity: a heavily mutated creature. The table for generating a monstrosity is actually larger than the original encounter table itself.