D&D: ‘Radiant Citadel’s “The Buried Dynasty” Adventure is a New Kind of Dungeon Crawl
We’re a month away from picking up our copies of Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel, and playing through new adventure, “The Buried Dynasty”.
Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel hits shelves in a game store near you in just a few weeks. Not only will we be gaining a new location in the Citadel itself, but this book will give us thirteen brand new adventures for players levels one through fourteen. Exclusively written by POC writers, these adventures give us a chance to look at mythology, monsters, and cultures that we don’t get a chance to think about as much as the standard European-centric D&D core. And it is going to add so much depth to the lore or our favorite tabletop roleplaying game.
Today we’re taking a look at Felice Kuan’s “The Buried Dynasty”.
The Buried Dynasty
The Buried Dynasty takes place in one of the three East Asian inspired locations created for Radiant Citadel. Felice Kuan talks about the benefits of working closely with the other writers on this project. And one of these benefits was the ability to collaborate and create connections between their different locations. In this case, the three created a shared mythology of three sibling dragons who found three different but interconnected civilizations. She clarifies that the three places are unique from each other, but they have a shared history and mythology.
With that backstory in place, your thirteenth level players are in an ancient capital city. the people here pride themselves on the age of their home and as new dynasties rise they rebuild and update the capital, but are sure to always be on this ancient and almost sacred ground.
Of course, this means that beneath the current buildings there is old architecture, old treasure, old tunnels, and forgotten history. The current government asks your party to join an expedition to explore a newly discovered and very treacherous piece of old city. They think there will be something helpful or useful there. But what you’ll find instead is a history that maybe should have stayed buried.
This is a classic dungeon crawl with the twist of a high-stakes game. The Buried Dynasty is designed to make players to feel like they’re part of something really grand and weighty. There’s a magnitude of the history, things around them, and the stakes for the people hiring them. And what they find could have effects on the stability of the entire civilization.
Felice Kuan also said that writing this project with the support of the Radiant Citadel‘s other writers gave her the ability to be less safe when writing about her own culture. She said that in previous projects she’s felt a great pressure to only write about the good things and not paint her own heritage in a negative light ever. But sometimes there are bad things, bad people and nastiness. Writing an adventure like this let her explore the good and the bad for a fuller and more real level of representation.
Are you excited for Radiant Citadel’s release? Which adventure are you most excited to play through? Do you think D&D should add more wildly unique adventure anthologies like this to their library? Do you like when real world folklore and history is used in your fantasy setting? Let us know in the comments!
Happy Adventuring!
