Plant/Animal growth: 50% chance to work but otherwise functionally doubles the object's size. Although it notes that this generally doesn't improve it (although I guess you could make weapons bigger).

There is a minor "cult of personality" around the promise made by the High Lord Rhan Thes-onel, who left the Cliffs, promising to return some day to give his people a new purpose. Of course, most accept that he's long dead by now but some insist he might return in the form of a spirit or some other mystical sign. The Sun reports Hadley’s reaction to the Kemps using their hit Gold last month for a cheesy TV advert for the washing powder Bold. It saw Gold’s lyrics changed to “Bold”: Finally, the last important element of rhul-thaun philosophy is respect for life. Although they'll eat meat, shape living things for tools and homes they still see themselves as caretakers of life rather than masters. They believe that life should never be ended without purpose and so things like hunting for pleasure or using animals for entertainment such as pit-fights would be abhorrent to them. Even killing "vermin" like insects or rats are done only if absolutely necessary and special "life-taking" rituals must be performed before and after killing a living thing. Not being a part of either the current era where metal is scarce or the Green Age when it was plentiful halflings do not use metal coins or ceramic bits. Instead their money literally grows on trees!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. Of course then things went to shit. The halflings were trying to work on a way to make the sea a better source of food to expand their civilization further, but accidentally created a brown algae which killed natural and life-shaped organisms in the water (i.e. pretty much everything). The ancient life shapers were apparently completely unable to stop this and the only solution they could come up with was the Pristine Tower (heloooo metaplot). The Pristine Tower is a huge...thing. It's presumably life-shaped but its abilities and function doesn't really jive with lifeshaping in any sensible way. Cliff Fighting: Cliff Fighting is a skill exclusive to the rhul-thaun due to their vertically oriented lifestyle. It removes any penalties for fighting while climbing and gives you a +1 to hit and +2 to damage against any opponents who are also climbing, on a ledge, etc. This was touched on in the last Fatal and Friends entry for Dark Sun but for those who don't know (and just to torment those who do know all over again), the Revised edition of Dark Sun came with a whole new and much longer history of the planet. This is also where we're given our first glimpse into how life-shapers shape-life. The process largely involves a substance called "pith" which is carefully mixed with other raw, primordial ingredients according to ritual traditions which usually take 3-10 weeks (or longer for bigger organisms).

One of the smallest ledge-villages, only housing 1000 people. That's about all that's worth knowing. Then we're told that apparently Clans are a fading notion anyway and most people care more about the community and city they live in than the clan they belong to. Despite this, the book will continue to harp on about Clan structure and leadership for quite a while. Ray of Enfeeblement: can weaken life-shaped weapons and armor. weapons suffer -2 to hit and -1/die to damage, armor suffers a 2 point AC penalty. It even notes that life-shapers have threatened clan leaders with the possibility that they possess a virus that would kill all life-shaped creations. Of course this is false, and ridiculous, considering that no one would have more to lose from that act than the life-shapers themselves.So what exactly is it Gil-ogres and his cronies want? More paperwork? They can already pretty much make any demands they wish and its clear that this has been the status quo for centuries if not millennia. The only thing they aren't involved in is the day to day problems of running a city or clan and why would they want to bother with that? A big deal is made of all the scheming and planning going on for gil-ogres bid for power but its not really clear what more the life-shapers could do to dominate halfling society. Do they just want bigger hats? So, want to hear about awesome heroes fighting psionic sand-sharks and chopping evil sorcerers in half with jawbone axes while wearing armor made from a giant bug's face? No? Finally, we get a bit of commentary on how weird the halfling cities look to outsiders, tiny scale, organic styles of architecture and a tendency to think vertically rather than horizontally. Here's a vertical map, showing the relative elevation of the different cities (horizontally they're often quite far apart).