I ran Michael Pfaff's Dark Sun hack this evening with my younger cousins. Not knowing a lot about Dark Sun, I ignored pretty much all the setting apart from the description at the start of Michael's hack. Despite my worries that the game might fly over their D&D-driven teenage minds, they actually got into it quite a bit.
The characters were, in no particular order:
Anton the human Elementalist, with his cult of dirt-scratchers on the edge of a largeish town run by the templar Calvar. Anton is trying to bring life back to the soil, and in the process provides about half the food for Calvar's Crag.
Marta the giant Warrior, Anton's muscle.
Azru the elven Defiler, disguised as a blow-in wanderer working on Anton's Patch. He's far older than his appearance suggests - he drains the blood and lifeforce of innocents to extend his lifespan far beyond even that of an elf.
The game starts with Anton's followers simultaneously in want:savagery and surplus: violence, so I set them raiding the outskirts of Calvar's Crag, looting and pillaging the ramshackle stone huts in anger at Calvar's control of the crag's only water supply. We then establish Azru's thirst for blood, and he takes advantage of the chaos by stalking and slaying an elderly halfkin woman, slicing her throat with his dirk and consuming her blood. Meanwhile,Anton calms the cultists with a sermon from Marta's shoulders, calling them back to his farming patch, on the edge of the Thunder Wastes.
In the morning, they feel the sting of the previous night's violence. Calvar's brutes show up, demanding blood for blood, and claiming that the cult had defilers amongst them. With surprising speed, Anton gives up the wanderering elf as blood payment to Calvar. Azru, sensing that this situation is worth separating from, weaves a shadow spell to escape. He rolls a 7-9 and ends up escaping, but revealing to the whole cult and to Calvar's brutes that he is a defiling sorcerer.
In the Thunder Wastes, Azru somehow finds water and sustenance. While wandering, his acute hearing picks up the sound of elven battle horns - the Thunderstorm clan, swarming for a raid on the Crag. He senses opportunity and danger, and turns back west.
Meanwhile, the situation at Calvar's Crag degenerates. The cult doesn't have enough water to grow its new (opium) crops, and Anton ends up marching into town with a righteous spirit at his back. Marta goes aggro on the guards at Calvar's Temple, who gingerly let them into the temple. Calvar, a strangely thin and weedy man, isn't happy to be interrupted while spending quality time with one of his women. He tells Anton he won't get the water unless he turns over control of the Patch to the Sorcerer-Queen or her duly appointed representative.
Things get charged, fast, with Marta facing down against Calvar's legion and Azru showing up mid-standoff to rob Calvar's temple. Azru's appearance and subsequent disappearance keeps the standoff from breaking out into an all-out brawl, letting Anton and Marta retreat to their compound.
They decide, on the spot, to seek out a devil's bargain with Azru: if Azru helps them take down Calvar, they'll let him feast on the life force of Calvar and his enforces. The mysterious elven defiler agrees, and they return to the Patch to gather strength.
They return, in fact, to a rapidly cooling dead body with a bone dirk embedded in its chest. One of the cultists (Grigori) has been slain by another (Karkan) over the matter of a woman. Karkan has fled into the desert, and Grigori's brother is about to stride into the wastes and hunt him down. Anton persuades him to wait, and opens his psyche to the dragon to try and find Karkan's whereabouts.
All he gets from the dragon is vague images of elves which they interpret to mean that Karkan is somehow in league with the Thunderstorm elves. The idea that he's simply been killed and eaten by them never crosses their mind, and they decide to set off into the desert to hunt Karkan down.
In the desert night, they find little evidence of Karkan but plenty of evidence of landsharks, which swarm and attack the party. Azru takes 3 harm, leaving him dangerously weakened, while Marta easily dispatches the rest of the landsharks with her enormous metal sword.
They return quickly to Anton's Patch, which is now, unfortunately, being menaced by Calvar's legion...