Tracy and Laura Hickman of TSR fame first broke into the gaming world by starting their own company called Daystar West Productions. They were located in Salt Lake City, Utah. Harold Johnson,who was a managing designer for TSR who interviewed Tracy for a job at TSR, says Tracy showed him a small number of high quality adventures at an interview in Lake Geneva. So impressed were the bigs at TSR they decided to purchase the already completed adventures which the Hickmans used to finance their move to Wisconsin.

Daystar West published two items that are widely regarded and rarely seen by the collectible community called Pharaoh and Rahasia. Both of these were later purchased by TSR, revised and re-released. Another two are not as common and have never been seen by us. We have been able to confirm that they existed in a prepublished form. They are called Vampyr and Eye of the Dragon. Vampyr was certainly the inspiration for Hickman's Ravenloft module that turned into large series within the 2nd edition era. The other arguably served as a platform for Hickman's inspiration toward the Dragonlance series.
As you can see, this small outfit has had quite an impact on the role playing community at large. One can thank TSR for vaunting these titles but the true creative genius behind these scenarios belongs to the Hickman's.

For additional (and repetitive) information and stat pages on Pharaoh and Rahasia, visit the TSR Gems department page for Daystar West. Look there for an page of correspondence with Tracy Hickman by The Scribe.

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