Rappan Athuk: Player Introduction

Rappan Athuk Background

Rappan Athuk, the Dungeon of Graves, has long been a mystery. The legendary dungeon is rumored to have unbelievable treasures from the remnants of a lost holy army that descended into its depths many hundreds of years ago in pursuit of demon-worshipping cultists. No one truly knows what occurred in the depths of Rappan Athuk.

The Archbishop and Archdeacon of Usharia have direct you and your companions to investigate the dungeon and find out the ultimate fate of Zelkor, the wizard who led the lost Army of Light all those hundreds of years ago. Recent rumors allegedly from adventurers who have entered Rappan Athuk suggest that Zelkor met his end there. The Archbishop has tasked some of you to investigate to see if any evidence could be used to canonize Zelkor as a saint for his deeds. The Archdeacon has tasked others of you to find out the truth (and perhaps hide it) so the Church can be protected from political fallout if Zelkor met a darker fate as is now whispered in the same breath as the other rumors.

You must each individually choose which of these two is your primary patron. Those who work for the Archbishop are tied to the clergy or holy orders of the Church and usually idealistic in their faith. The Archdeacon acts as both a Church and political figure, meaning your character can come from a more unsavory or checkered past if they are one of the Archdeaon’s agents. Even a good organization sometimes needs people with special talents to do dirty work so it can carry on its work.

A Dungeon of Graves

Rappan Athuk is a megadungeon created over decades by authors who came up playing Old School, deadly D&D. The encounters are often not balanced for you to win in a straight fight. Some magic may not function as you expect or work at all in certain areas. Some traps may be impossible to escape or do massive amounts of damage. This is to push towards creative play, and to embrace a freer style of gameplay with your character. 

Your starting character will probably die in this game. Your follow up character may as well, along with the character after that. For character creation you will make a primary character and three backups to ensure that you can continue to play if you have several deadly mishaps in one session. All of these characters will use the Church as their patron. They could be connected to one another as lackeys, protégés, or followers, or complete strangers with a blank slate each time. If your character dies, it is your responsibility to create enough replacements to bring you back up to four total during the time between sessions. Additionally, it will be your responsibility to coordinate a time with the GM to input/create your character in our VTT outside session too. We will use XP leveling in this game. When your character dies their replacement will begin play at the same level, but with 0 XP accrued towards the next level (I.e. if your level 2 character with 800 XP dies the replacement character will also be level 2, but will only have 300 XP (the threshold amount for leveling up to 2)). To avoid stoppages in play we will level up at the end of our sessions rather than when the level up threshold is reached. Be sure to level up your backup characters too so they are ready to replace your primary at a moment’s notice).

High stakes play can be extremely fun if we reframe our thoughts about a character dying to remember that the game does not end when this happens. We just have another story to tell. You can’t lose at D&D. You only lose when you choose to stop having fun or inhibit others fun. So create characters you are excited to play and use this opportunity to try every type of character that you want. If you don’t like them there’s plenty of opportunities to make a permanent switch…

A Wide Open Frontier

Rappan Athuk embraces a sandbox style of play, where although players may have quests given by a patron or other NPCs they are free in how they choose to explore and pursue those quests. In this adventure with veryrare exceptions you will get to choose your own path. Exploration, experimentation, and creativity are the way to survive. The game will be restricted to the region around Rappan Athuk, but there are dozens of unique locations to explore and dungeon levels to delve into.

Character Options 

Please see my overall guidelines on character options, along with my specific ones for Rappan Athuk.