The Ledger of Death

Nov 10 2009

For one glorious summer (2002? I think?) I ran Rappan Athuk: the Dungeon of Graves for a bunch of my gaming buddies up in Oakland. I had moved down to Los Angeles and it was sort of a "last gasp", and I invited everyone to come to the table with their most game-breaking character concepts - at least three of them - to run them through the grist of what is arguably the world's deadliest dungeon.

I was going through some gaming stuff and came across the back of the module where I had written down all the glorious deaths that had occurred, and in the interests of archiving and entertaining, I now present them to you, with a slight warning of minor spoilers:

  • Gorgak, a half-orc barbarian - killed by a mimic while sitting on a toilet.
  • Illya Singh, a half-orc cleric of Nerull - killed by Turd Ferguson when he was drunk on dwarven wine.
  • Turd Ferguson, an octogenarian elven mage (or the elven equivalent) - Squashed by an ogre named Ambro.
  • Brooshlink Doober, a gnomish barbarian king - sliced in twain by Saracek the death knight whilst trying to retrieve his crown.
  • Finron Galthis, an elven conjurer and grandson of Turd Ferguson - ripped and rended and chewed apart by a large troll.
  • Bigby the ex-mage, trapped in a spell as a flaming axe-wielding barbian - Got his brain eaten by an illithid in Me'nak's tomb.
  • Minister Killjoy, high priest (and halfling buggerer) of Wee-Jas - rended to pieces by a river troll.
  • Bloop, a beer mephit familiar - disintegrated by a well-placed eye-ray from Gundar the Beholder.
  • Slough of the Despond, a Hextorian pain-master - Failed a fort-save and died from a banshee's scream.
  • Skaggy Rumples, fervent servant and disturbingly happy disciple of his own berserking longsword (called Dr. Theopolis) - same as above.
  • Oakwood, a surprisingly standard halfling rogue/assassin - Ate the mushroom of youth and is now -8 years old.
  • Micah, some sort of dwarven earth half-elemental rock thing - killed by a banshee, then brought back to undeath by a ring of wishes.
  • Durgiss the Grim, a 10th level fighter/weapon master - cohort of the Pig Marm, killed by Geelzabigth the Glabrezu in the lower temple of Orcus.
  • Onyx, the dwarven earth half-elemental rock thing version 2.0 - Killed by fellow party member Blacktooth while being dominated by Mhao the vampire.

Aaaaahhh... memories.