It’s as Grummore said. The Emissary is entirely standalone, not requiring anything other than the Dark Sun standard 3.5e rules from this site as well as the core books.
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Yes, what they said /|\ The Emissary was always intended to be an introductory adventure, introducing DMs and players to the Dead Lands. It still is.
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Hello my lovelies!
In honour of Valentine’s Day, I hope you gifted your darlings with the ripped out hearts of your enemies as is the tradition here in the Kreen Lands… 
We’re overdue an update on the Dead Lands project, so here you are:
Secrets of the Dead Lands is just finishing the last of its final checks now. We should be releasing it within the next week or so.
Faces of the Dead Lands, being over 500+ pages on its own at this point and having over 200+ separate NPCs, needs a bit more time in quality control to ensure we aren’t shipping bad stats. So we’re looking to be delivering that a few weeks after Secrets.
For The Emissary Adventure, we have received playtester feedback on the beta release (thank you to all those who participated!), and will be rolling in their suggestions for the final release which is scheduled after Faces is released.
What’s more, I can now reveal we have several other things in the pipeline for development after these are finished. Say tuned!
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Hello everyone!
It’s been a while since I gave you all an update on the Dead Lands Project. Yes, we are still working on it, and I’m here now to tell you we’ve been doing all this time.
Here’s what is currently being worked on:
Faces of the Dead Lands, that monstrous book of 200+ NPCs, is finally getting close to completion. It’s currently going through its final sanity checks to make sure all the entries are all consistently formatted, and the metastory between all of their entries reads coherently and fits with Secrets. I anticipate this will most likely be released by July at the latest.
In addition, there are two more companion books tied to this project. While these are not part of the main boxed set, they are designed with the intention of enhancing the boxed set’s contents:
Adventures in the Dead Lands makes use all this NPC and setting content to present over a dozen ready to play adventures set in the eponymous Dead Lands. Let’s give your players a reason to visit, a reason to stay, or perhaps even a reason to start their characters journey in the lands of the dead…
As of right now, the adventures have been chosen and are in development. We’re aiming to start play-testing these sometime in the autumn.
Beyond the Dead Lands: As many of you may know, for the 14+ years the Dead Lands project has been in and out of limbo, there has been another well-known netbook which has given people a reason to play in these lands. We felt this Dead Lands of Athas netbook was too good a resource to throw away, so we’ve found a way to repurpose this material into an additional sourcebook for the peripheral obsidian lands surrounding the Dead Thrones. This book is already in development, and will be called Beyond the Dead Lands. It will cover the to cover the edges of the obsidian in every direction, from the eastern maritime orcs and black silt seas of Biga-Fe-Tye and the Hiramin Highlands, to the ruined swamps of the Zagath homeland to the south, to the Graveyards of the Fairies and frozen obsidian waterfall to the west.
As of right now, this book is about 20% complete. We’ll announce a release date for this once Faces of the Dead Lands is delivered.
As always, stay tuned for more updates!
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For those familiar with old fan projects, alongside the Dead Lands of Athas netbook the material we’ve been referencing for Beyond includes Pennarin’s Illithid Project (the Hiramin Highlands), Wolfgang E. Kook’s (Sandfox) The Last Frontier (the Zethir area), and The Elemental Lords (The Burnt World of Athas - Elemental Lords) (The mountains south of Ulyan). We’ve also got methvezem on the team for The Brown Lands and take into account the unofficial Tari Timeline and Brian Sanchez’s brainstorming for the Drake’s Tail and Southern Peninsula from the archived WOTC forums thread Athas Planetary and Cosmological View, though those areas (the Tari homeland and further south) are all beyond the scope of the Dead Lands.
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All good things! Is that my Tari Timeline you’re referencing or someone else’s (I’m unaware of another) 
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It’s probably your one 
, we’re also covering a small, southern part of Anattan across the silt sea, the “embattled coast”- a bit south of the fanon Anattan Wastes/your Sundered Regions… 
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Nice 
If you need further elaboration on the ideas for either of those I’ll contribute to any discussion.
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Hello everyone!
I’m proud to say… we’ve done it! Just 19 months after the project was restarted, the Dead Lands boxed set is finished! Here are the links to every book:
-
Terrors of the Dead Lands (our Version 2 update, with more art and a new template)
We wish to thank everyone who has supported us through this, and we hope you enjoy reading and using these books as much as we have had making them.
But… we’re not quite finished with these lands yet.
Here are my updates on the two extra books. They are not a part of the boxed set, but they definitely add onto the region:
Adventures in the Dead Lands is currently in playtest for some of its adventures. You can join us on the main site if you wish to help review and provide feedback.
Beyond the Dead Lands remains in progress. Our archivist @darkinterloper found some new old fanon documents detailing Zethi which have proven to be quite helpful in defining the western regions of the Obsidian Plain, so we’re rolling that content into it.
Stay tuned for more updates!
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