QuoteTwelve centuries ago the cliffside city of Arden Vul was a wealthy and secretive administrative center of the Archontean Empire. Seeking the mysterious element known as arcanum, the Archonteans delved deeply underground, finding gold, legendary artifacts, and the crafts of several past civilizations. After a terrible civil war destroyed the empire, Arden Vul was lost -- yet now, a millennium later, the abandoned city remains strangely intact, unplundered. Why? The player characters may start to understand after they face Arden Vul's goblins, lizardmen, beastmen, halfling thugs, intelligent four-armed giant albino baboons, multiple cult temples (and a ziggurat), Varboka the Troll Thegn, Laocoon the Shadow Lord, Psalor-Ki the vivisectionist, Olaf the Bee-Whisperer, the Order of Planar Explorers, and the Great Tongue.