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We're also told that life-shaped creatures need rest as well, resting at least as much time as they spend working and no single creature can work for more than 24 hours straight. So an engine that spends 8 hours grinding, pumping or pushing needs at least 8 hours of rest. If this is violated then they lose 1d4 hit points every 4 hours of additional work. Hey, you remember how Climbers were prominently mentioned in the first chapter? Then mentioned again in the kit for Climbers called "Climber"? Well, here we've got 7 more paragraphs about god-damn climbers! We get it!! THERE'S A LOT OF CLIMBING GOING ON! These skin grafts are the rhul-thaun equivalent of piercings or tattoos. They don't impose any kind of burden on the host's system (no increase in food and water) and are mainly used for things like showing clan affiliation or membership in a guild or organization. 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? Well, it used to. Unfortunately no one knows how to cultivate the coin-trees anymore and thus there are a shortage of halfling coins (called ghav-egoths), which are a kind of scale-like or shell-like disc. Because of the critical shortage of ghav-egoth (shortened to "ge") coinage most trade works on the barter system. They perceive little value in gems or "precious" metals like gold and silver, although they might appreciate the aesthetic value of a piece of jewelry enough to value it. The rhul-thaun in general do not mine or work with metal at all and while they do not use stone or obsidian tools they do have life-shaped products that fill the same niche.
But no, they'll just stay on top of the cliffs, keeping anyone from reaching the halflings from that side while the rhul-thaun are slowly killed by mutations from below and thri-kreen from the west.This respect for life is one of the reasons that the rhul-thaun don't have much respect for psionics or elemental magic: they consider the forces of life the most powerful things in the world and thus life-shaped technology must be the highest achievement (ignoring of course that magic and psionics are actually quite a bit stronger in most cases).
The only notable feature of Ter-Omak is that it is home to a Hatfield/Mccoy style feud between two clans.The name pretty much says it all. Trained fighting dogs that have prehensile tails and flexible claws to help climbing. Their senses are twice as keen as an ordinary halfling. But you know...I think this is the first time "dogs" have been referenced in Dark Sun, Athas is kind of notable for not having ordinary domesticated animals like horses or dogs. It's also odd that all the guardians have translated names, unlike the transports. Oddly enough although windancing is listed as a Non-weapon Proficiency, it does not appear on the Windancer's list of bonus, required or even recommended proficiencies. Outsiders are more complicated. Basically because they need to be safely introduced into rhul-thaun society, probably including learning their language, culture and even a basic understanding of what is going on. Then somehow they've got to get interested in Sahl and his secret. After this section the possibility of the PCs being non-rhul-thaun is completely ignored and everyone is assumed to be a halfling. They also have an odd hatred of halflings in general and life-shaped objects in particular. They've even developed a spell (Organic Disruption) specifically to kill the life-shaped. It's a 10 ft radius AoE which is a save-or-die to all life-shaped as well as any non-living organic matter. Non-life-shaped creatures take 2d6 damage (save for half).
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