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The northern wall of Bard’s Gate looks out over a vast river valley
disappearing into purple hills in the hazy distance. The mighty gates fixed in that wall
rarely open anymore. On the few occasions when the
north gates do open to allow entrance to the occasional
merchant caravan or especially daring traveler,
they reveal a wide road, paved with great stone flags
forming a smooth and level traveling surface striking
due north for the hills. However, closer inspection
reveals signs of a lack of maintenance, and after a few
miles the road deteriorates into little more than a
wide dirt track, overgrown with weeds and with only
the occasional paving stone visible in the hard soil. It
obviously sees little travel and even less care.

Few from Bard’s Gate ever gaze out upon that hazy
vista or care to think about what lies beyond those
distant highlands. Fewer still are brave or foolish
enough to make a journey in that direction. Bard’s
Gate relies on its commerce from other roads in other
directions and pays no mind to the north, for to the
north, beyond the distant purple hills and across many
leagues, lies the reminder of one of the most tragic
moments in the history of the civilized kingdoms. To
those who even care to remember, the north gate
leads only to bad memories or mournful legend. To
the rest it leads to where only madmen would dare to
go — the ruined city of Tsar and the great Desolation
that surrounds it.

Tsar, the great temple-city to the Demon Prince of
the Undead, stood for centuries as a bastion of evil
and hate. Foul beings of all kinds flocked to its mighty
walls and found succor and purpose within. At Tsar’s
center stood the great Citadel of Orcus, the black
heart of the Demon Prince’s worship on earth.
Countless evils were perpetuated in those corrupt
precincts, and equally countless wicked plots were
hatched and carried out therein.

Finally the goodly kingdoms could stand the presence
of this festering boil in their midst no longer. The
churches of Thyr and Muir led a delegation of good
and neutral faiths to Graeltor, the last overking. Only
with the backing of the nations’ secular armies would
the holy churches be able to erase such a blight. In his
last major pronouncement before the overthrow and
fracturing of the kingdoms into the independent
nations they are today, Overking Graeltor called for a
mighty crusade to tear down the walls of Tsar and forever
end the presence of Orcus worship in the world.

This crusader army, raised from all nations and
almost every non-evil faith, became known as the
Army of Light and marched for Tsar. In command of
this army Graeltor placed his most trusted advisor, the
archmage Zelkor. Supported by innumerable knight
commanders, wizards, church patriarchs and scores of
renowned heroes, Zelkor quickly advanced his army
from its staging ground at Bard’s Gate, through Tsar’s
outermost defensive positions and into the great plain
that surrounded the evil temple-city itself. After many
quick initial victories, however, the Army of Light
suddenly found itself facing seemingly endless legions
of every sort of vile warrior-race and fell outsider
imaginable. Horrible beings had been called up from
all over the multiverse, and they lined the battlements
and fields before their citadel — one of the
greatest fortresses ever erected in that time. The
beginnings of doubt seeped into the ranks of the
Army of Light.

However, hope was not lost as the heavens opened
up and flight upon flight of angels and celestial beings
descended from on high to swell the ranks of the
Army of Light. With grim determination in both
camps, battle was joined on the plain before the gates
of Tsar. The war raged for over a year, the Army of
Light advancing to the very foot of the walls and then
being pushed back by a new surge of demonic power.
The Grand Cornu, Orcus’s single highest-ranking
priest on the mortal planes, led his initiates to throw
every vile attack they could in defense of their foul
city. Rains of horrific fire and acid fell from the skies
or belched from fissures in the ground; great constructs
crushed their foes before them; terrible clouds
of poisonous gas choked entire regiments; and heretofore
unknown plagues swept through the troops causing
thousands of horrible deaths among the Army of
Light. Nevertheless, the forces of good persevered and
fought on.

Finally, though the forces of good appeared no closer
to victory, the fates seemed to smile on the Army of
Light. Unexpectedly, the evil stronghold fell. In a single
night the entire city virtually emptied of defenders
as they all were magically transported to a point several
miles outside the city’s walls, complete with baggage
train and mounts for many. The magical expenditure
necessary to complete this miraculous maneuver
cost the Grand Cornu his very life in sacrifice to
Orcus, but the legions of the demon prince had broken
free from the Army of Light’s cordon. They
immediately fled before the stunned Army of Light,
heading south.

Zelkor and his fellow commanders were immediately
suspicious of this sudden retreat but could not afford
to allow the combined followers of Orcus — still concentrated
in one place — to escape and spread their
insidious evil again. A cursory sweep of the city by
scouts proved that the withdrawal was no ruse, so
Zelkor left one of his most powerful heroes, the paladin
Lord Bishu, with a company of knights to secure
the citadel and hold it until the Army of Light could
return and properly destroy it. Then, still with a small
seed of doubt in his mind, Zelkor ordered the Army of
Light in pursuit of the fleeing legions.

The tale of that long pursuit is an epic in itself.
Finally the Army of Light cornered the forces of darkness
in a forest near a rugged coastline. In anticipation
of a great victory, the forest was prematurely named
the Forest of Hope. The name proved to be a cruel
irony, for in this forest the followers of Orcus had for
many years been preparing a great trap in case of just
such a circumstance. Both armies disappeared into the
forest. Neither ever emerged. The Army of Light was
lost to a man.

The shock of losing so many heroes, nobles, and
powerful leaders reverberated throughout the kingdoms.
The overking was dethroned in the unrest that
followed. Minor wars erupted in the land as new factions
swept in to fill sudden voids of leadership. When
all was done, a semblance of peace was restored, and
the maps were redrawn to reflect new allegiances and
borders much closer to those of today. Some said the
loss of so many was worth it for the eradication of the
foul cult of Orcus. Others said the war itself had been
a scheme concocted by the demon prince all along to
destroy his most powerful enemies and sow hate and
dissension throughout the civilized nations. Years
later when a terrible graveyard and thriving dungeon
complex devoted to Orcus was discovered in the
Forest of Hope, popular opinion agreed with the latter
theory. It seemed Orcus had not been eradicated after
all — merely relocated, and once again his insidious
evil began to spread throughout the lands.

For the past century some attention has been
turned to delving into the so-called Dungeon of
Graves and rooting out the evil now entrenched
there. That complex is detailed in the Necromancer
Games adventure series Rappan Athuk -- The
Dungeon of Graves. However, what remained of the
Tsar was a vast ruin, including many miles of surrounding
wasteland, poisoned and scarred by the battling
armies. It was all but forgotten — a bad memory,
an eyesore, and a wilderness home for strange and
fearsome beasts. The knights of Lord Bishu, left
behind at Tsar, were likewise forgotten as they, too,
were never heard from again. In the wake of the great
tragedy at the Forest of Hope, no one was left alive
who knew to check into the ruins themselves. The
people of the civilized nations went on with their
lives with, perhaps, a little less hope and optimism
than before. Tsar was forgotten, and the land around
it shunned and remembered only as the Desolation.

While the rest of the world looked southwards for
the future, some few remembered the distant exotic
markets of the far north. Those brave or foolish
enough to try reopened the trade road that passed
through the Desolation to once again reach the rich
northern lands. Those that survived such treks and
were able to trade the rare items they brought back
made fortunes, but most who attempted the dangerous
passage died — lost to the hazards of the Desolation.
Eventually a small settlement of cutthroats and the
worst kind of profiteering entrepreneurs sprang up on
the southern fringe of the Desolation. This ramshackle
cluster of dwellings, known simply as the
Camp, serves as a staging ground for travelers to hire
mercenary guards or fast mounts for the perilous run
through the Desolation. Likewise it serves as a point
of relative safety for those few managing to make it
through from the north with or without goods in tow,
often with denizens of the Desolation in hot pursuit.
There is little to this unruly, fringe settlement, and
many would-be adventurers meet their fates on its
dirty streets without ever the journey out to the
Desolation. Regardless, it manages to just barely eke
out an existence by serving as a stopping point for
those few travelers who dare to make the run.

These days, no one but miscreants and fortuneseekers
pay much attention to the Camp and then
only so they can pass through the Desolation as quickly
and safely as possible. The temple-city’s ruins are
universally avoided and little thought of. Why would
anyone wish to go to almost certain death? What
could still exist in the unknown holes and broken
towers of Orcus’s greatest earthly bastion? What could
lie undisturbed, awaiting some possibly preordained
time to awaken in the ruins of slumbering Tsar?

1. The Desolation is a largely ignored
and unexplored wasteland where two massive armies
virtually smashed themselves to pieces. Those who
have braved its depths have hurriedly passed through
studiously ignoring the battleground around them and
the ruined city it surrounds. Surely something of value
remains to be gleaned from such a cataclysmic conflict
of old. In this instance, once a PC has gained
enough power to attempt it, he can be among the few
to have ever investigated the great unknown that is the
Desolation. Most have deemed it too dangerous or
devoid of anything of value, but there are always legends
of some great knight who fell on the battlefield
clutching a powerful sword that was never recovered, or
some powerful wizard whose mighty staff disappeared in
the melee and must still be lying where it fell. Perhaps
the PC simply wants to be the first to have successfully
braved the farthest corners of the Desolation and
lived to tell of it. Characters of a less lawful bent might be
interested in the rumors of burial mounds where noble
warriors were interred with portions of their riches.

2. Characters of this level have many
connections gained over their careers. One of these, a
merchant-lord and sometime-patron of the PC's expeditions,
has his eye on the lucrative trade of the distant
north. There are fortunes to be made but the risks and
expense are too great to make caravans through the
Desolation worthwhile. However, if a party of proven
adventurers could tame the area and open a safe trade
route, a monopoly on the new route could be established
and a fortune made by all. Maybe he wants someone
to clear the monsters out of the Desolation altogether,
or perhaps he only wants a safe route to be
found that can easily be controlled and kept secret.
Either way such an endeavor has never been successfully
accomplished, but if the right person could be persuaded
to undertake the task…

3. Rewards come in many forms to successful adventurers, not always
just heaps of gold and magic items. For the successful completion of
a recent mission, a king has bestowed a noble title and
land grant to a member of the party. The land
just so happens to be in the Desolation. The PC must
come to the Desolation to not only bring order to the
Camp but also tame the wilds of the Desolation in
order to establish his fiefdom. A variation on this
theme is that a newly ennobled baron has just received
such a grant and needs to hire one or more adventurers to
reclaim his lands for him. Perhaps minor titles and land
grants await the heroes if they are successful.

4. If a character is of a more naturalist
demeanor (druid, ranger, barbarian, etc.) she
could come to the Desolation in order to erase the centuries-
old blight from the lands. Common wisdom says
that surely some source of evil taint remains to keep the
land corrupted, so if such a taint were discovered and
removed the forces of Nature could begin their process
of rehabilitating the accursed ground.

5. A cleric of Muir has somehow
located in the temple archives a set of orders issued by
Zelkor during the Battle of Tsar that detail the assignment
of the paladin lord Bishu and his company to
hold the city of Tsar and await relief from the Army of
Light. Lord Bishu, a follower of Muir, was always
thought lost in the Dungeon of Graves like the rest of
the Army of Light. The fact that he never returned, as
well as the possibility that he or some of his command
may have survived for a time in Tsar, holding to their
duty, has ignited the church hierarchy. What did Bishu
accomplish during his time in the city? Do his bones,
surely now sacred relics of the church, still rest there
awaiting repatriation? Could he or any of his knights
somehow by the grace of the gods have survived all the
intervening span of years and man their posts still
awaiting relief? The church cannot afford to send any
of its own on a possibly foolhardy mission with only a
small hope of success, but adventurers are often known to undertake such assignments.

6. Zelkor was not the only one suspicious
of the disciples’ sudden withdrawal from the city
after the Battle of Tsar. The record of that event is well known
and has been pondered by many since that day.
Was it a plot to trap and destroy the Army of Light at
Rappan Athuk? If so why not reoccupy Tsar, a vast and
defensible temple-city along a lucrative trade route,
instead of settling for a dingy hole in the ground in
some far flung forest? Could the entire withdrawal and
debacle in the Forest of Hope have been a ruse within
a ruse to draw attention away from seemingly abandoned
Tsar for some other, altogether unguessed reason?
Questions such as these and more have been on
the minds of the patriarchs of the temples of Thyr and
Muir for some time. Now they wish to send in a small
group to infiltrate the unplumbed ruins and discover
what sinister secrets may have been kept so well for so
long. This plan may resonate quite well with adventurers of a noble or holy mindset.