Many hundreds of years ago, the forces of good allied to destroy the main Temple of Orcus

in the ancient city of Tsar.  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 only did the remnants of the followers of

Orcus disappear from all human reckoning, but so did the army of light that followed after

them.  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 Hope, a sylvan woodland near the Coast Road.

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 continue 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 and 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 the last man.  Soon after the mausoleum was erected the peaceful creatures of the wood

began to vanish.  Though many rangers and druids investigated these happenings, the cause

of the creatures' disappearance was not immediately determined.  Some years later, a

powerful group of adventurers, lead by Bofred, a high priest of Heironeous, investigated

the evil happenings and found the sunken graveyard leading to a labyrinthine underground

complex.  Bofred and his companions found great hordes of evil creatures in the caverns

beneath the graveyard.  Though some of his companions returned from their expedition

telling tales of fantastic treasure and ferocious  monsters, Bofried himself was never seen

again - presumed lost in the catacombs beneath the cursed mausoleum.

For the last one hundred years, ranks of adventurers swarmed to the new found dungeon.  Many

fell prey to the bandits and monsters in the surrounding wilderness.  Of those adventurers

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 that they

perished on the very first floor.  Those rare few who return from deeper treks speak of

horrible undead and of creatures that cannot be slain.  All who have explored Rappan Athuk

offer this one universal piece of advice: "Don't go down the well."