Rappan Athuk
I have this idea of adventurers going into a long and perilous dungeon, discoverings layers and layers and even more layers of dangerous lairs filled with monsters.
So I intend to GMing the Rappan Athuk campaign, a long and dangerous adventure of classic dungeon crawling. It will be set into the world of Faerūn, more precisely into the Unther region, for allowing the most backup info possible.Many hundred years ago, the forces of good allied to destroy the main temple of Orcus in the ancient city of Sekras. With their temple in ruins, the surviving high-priests of this accursed demon-god fled the city with an army of enemies on their trail-an army of heroic fighters, clerics and paladins-led by Zelkor, a powerful wizard. The exact fate of these evil priests was then unknown, for not onlydid the remnants of the followers of Orcus disappear fromm all human reckoning, but so did the army of light that followed after them disappear as well. Some said that in the eternal scales the loss of so many good men was a fair price to pay to rid the world of so much evil.
The evil cult, however, had not been destroyed. The surviving priests and their followers instead settled on a hill near the forest of Methwood, few leagues away from the town of Ssintar. There they found a vast underground complex of caverns and mazes, carving out a volcanic intrusion beneath the hill. There, the priests of Orcus found the perfect lair to contiunue their vile rituals. For many years, they carried on in secret, hidden from the light and from the knowledge of men.
Many years later, their underground delving completed, the evil priests erected a hideous mausoleum and a sunken graveyard atop the hill. It is believed that these graves are in fact the final resting place of the pursuing army of heroes that had been destroyed to a man. Soon after the mausoleum was erected the peaceful creatures of the wood began to disappear. Though many rangers and druids investigated these happenings, the cause of the creatures' disappearance was not immediatly determined. Some years later, a powerful group of adventurers, led by Bofred, a high priest of Lathander, investigated the evil happenings and found the sunken graveyard leading to a labyrinthine complex. Bofred and his companions found great hordes of evil creatures in the complex. Though some of his companions returned from the expedition, telling tales of fantastic treasure and ferocious monsters, Bofred was never seen again-lost in the catacombs beneath the cursed mausoleum.
For the last hundred years, ranks of adventurers swarmed to the newfound dungeon. Many fell prey to the bandits and the monsters in the surroundings wildnerness. Of those who survived to reach the mausoleum and the sunken graveyard, rumors suggest that most were slain by guardians of green stone before they even entered the dungeon or perished on the very first level. Those rare few who return from deeper treks speak of horrible undead and creatures that cannot be slain.
All who have explored Rappan Athuk offer this one universal piece of advice:"Don't go down the Well."
