Dark Moon

This is a world of sand and blood. Aridia is a world broiled by a blood-red sun, where the winds carry the heat of the endless desert with them. Life-giving water is a rarity, as are the rains that once brought it thousands of years ago.

And yet we endure.

Aridia is a world ruined by magic, reigned over by almighty dragon-kings and -queens with near-infinite power and armies of sworn soldiers to enforce their every whim. Yet, outside the city-states, the danger only grows. If the intense heat does not kill a traveler, the beasts of the wastes will.

And yet we survive.

There is a primal beauty to this sun-scorched world, from the blood-red sun cutting a path through a pink-tinged orange sky, to the Bulette’s Spine Ridge rising from the sands far to the north. Even the mellow heat of the Aridian night is quickly forgotten when one sees the twin moons Caeda and Tana, two points of blue dancing among the stars of the intensely dark, almost red sky.

And yet we thrive.

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Dark Moon is a game made for the Black Hack Tenth Anniversary Game Jam, started in late July 2026 (though the seeds for it were attempted at earlier game jams in 2023.) This began as "Wizards of the Coast won't do Dark Sun? Then I'll make my own Dark Sun, with blackjack! And hookers! ...You know what, forget the blackjack, and the Dark Sun! Baaaah, screw the whole thing!"

Not even a week into writing this, Dark Sun: Blood and Power and Dark Sun: Edge of Oblivion were announced for 2027. And... oof. "It was double-plus ungood" was an understatement. So this project took a new turn: Why am I writing this? "Spite, comma, mostly."

Cover image on this page by PhilGONDAS via Pixabay.