Drakkenheim is a Dark Fantasy and Cosmic Horror-themed setting for Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition published by Ghostfire Gaming. It currently consists of two books: an adventure called Dungeons of Drakkenheim and a player-focused supplement called Sebastian Crowe's Guide to Drakkenheim.
The ruined city of Drakkenheim was the capital of the great empire of Westemär until it was annihilated by a falling meteor made of a darkly powerful magical crystal: Delerium. Fifteen years after the destruction of Drakkenheim, the city is an urban wasteland, enveloped by a toxic cloud of Delerium-rich dust known as the Haze and populated by horrific mutant monsters. With the annihilation of its royal family when the meteor hit, Westemär has fallen into a vicious civil war. Now Drakkenheim is a beacon for treasure hunters, would-be royalists seeking to find some way to restore the fallen royal family, mad cultists who believe that the meteor offers a divine message, thieves, ambitious wizards hoping to profit from the Delerium, zealots seeking to purify the corrupted city, and many more besides.
This game contains examples of:
- Alchemy Is Magic: The Apothecary, a new base class, uses a mixture of magic, chemistry, surgery, medicine and alchemy to enact wonderous feats, including exorcising evil spirits and reanimating the dead. Its specific subclasses are the Alienist (who uses Psychic Powers), the Chemist (a specialist in damage-dealing elemental spells), the Exorcist (specialized in repelling fiends, the undead, and other beings that prey on the mind and soul), the Mutagenist (who uses alchemical formulas to transform their bodies for superior power), the Pathogenist (who weaponizes disease against their enemies with the excuse that this will let them treat the sick better), and the Reanimator (who creates useful servants from the dead).
- Anti-Hero: Fitting its Dark Fantasy basis, players are expected if not encouraged to play morally complex and not necessarily virtuous characters. Players can even willingly risk themselves by playing with the power offered by Delerium, whether by using destructive and often unstable Delerium-fueled spells or taking subclasses that outright embrace Delerium's might — the Path of the Haze Rager barbarian draws on Delerium's ambient corruption for greater strength; the Delerium Soul sorcerer was literally awakened to their power by exposure to Delerium; Malfeasants are wizards who actively study how to use Delerium regularly, and druids of the Circle of Contamination believe they must 'spread'' The Corruption to help nature evolve. Even non-Delerium-focused subclasses can have sinister flavors, such as a paladin who specializes in cursing enemies, a doomsday-prophesizing bard, and an apothecary who reanimates the dead or weaponizes diseases.
- Beast Man:
- Two of the mutant creatures now found in the ruins of Drakkenheim are Garmyr and Ratlings, both of whom regard humans as utterly delicious.
- Dragonborn, a race of Draconic Humanoids, are part of the "mageborn" collective, being descendants from ancient sorcerous dynasties who mated with dragons as part of their Super Breeding Program.
- Sebastian Crowe's Guide reveals there is a population of assorted anthropomorphic animals in the nation of Terene, who are believed to have been touched by the Old Gods.
- Black Mage: Any character who uses Delerium-powered spells or who takes one of the Delerium-based spellcasting subclasses is dabbling with corruptive forces that could destroy them, but is not necessarily evil. Although, they may be painfully misguided at best considering one of Delerium’s long-term effects include "tearing a hole in reality" that will let in a bunch of invading Eldritch Abominations.
- Body Horror:
- As Contamination builds in a living creature, they succumb to all manner of horrific and disturbing mutations, such as skin sloughing off, eyes rotting in their sockets, tongues dissolving out of the mouth...
- Warlocks sworn to the Flesh Patron gain hideously malleable bodies as a result of their patron's magical affinities.
- Corrupt Church: The Church of the Sacred Flame has a very heroic background as La Résistance against the Arcane Empire and it worships legitimately benign concepts, but the faithful of the Church have exploited their popularity with the masses from their role in toppling the Arcane Empire to firmly consolidate themselves as a political power, including denigrating and aggressively suppressing the individual religions they now disparagingly lump together as the Old Faith and oppressing the mageborn. It's telling that when the Followers of the Falling Fire were founded, they began trying to capture their former seer and have her burned at the stake for heresy.
- The Corruption: Delerium is not safe to be around, and the setting uses a mechanic called "Contamination" to represent how much a being's body and soul are being poisoned by the stuff. A character who reaches Contamination Level 6 transforms into an insane monster and becomes unplayable, and most of the monsters in Drakkenheim are, of course, Delerium-created mutants.
- Creepy Good: Many of the unique subclasses of Drakkenheim are Antiheroic at best, including the fantasy equivalent of mad scientists, people who worship (or try to exploit) The Corruption, apocalyptic fear-preachers, and people touched by Eldritch Abominations. None of these subclasses have moral components, so despite how villainous their powerset may seem, a player character can still be genuinely heroic in temperament and benevolent in ambition.
- Dark Fantasy: Even before the coming of the Delerium, Drakkenheim was a world of moral ambiguity, where the mageborn were oppressed and the zealots of the Sacred Flame were prone to abusing their power in the name of self-righteousness. The Delerium unleashed rampant mutations and madness. And then there's the threat of an invasion by Eldritch Abominations as the Delerium literally eats a hole in reality...
- Dark Is Evil: The Sacred Flame regards all worshipers of the Exalted Darkness as utterly insane and evil, and in fairness some Shadow Cults are devoted to monstrous deities who seek to snuff out the literal and spirital light of creation.
- The End Is Nigh:
- The Followers of the Falling Fire were founded by a Flamekeeper seer turned doomsday prophet who foresaw Drakkenheim's destruction.
- Sebastian Crowe's Guide has a Bard subclass called the College of Doomspeakers, which allows players to play a doomsday prophet, with class features heavily focused on terrifying their foes.
- Fantasy Pantheon: There are three distinct religions in the world of Drakkenheim, which are touched upon briefly in Dungeons of Drakkenheim and expanded upon in Sebastian Crowe's Guide:
- The Flamekeepers of the Sacred Flame are the currently dominant religion, a monotheistic faith that doesn't worship a god so much as the concepts of light, life, hope and good, represented by an eternal sacred flame. It was they who led the uprising against the Arcane Empire a thousand years before the present, and it kind of went to their head, as they subsequently began pushing to essentially become a theocracy. The Followers of the Falling Fire are a splinter cult of the Sacred Flame who worship a priestess-oracle and who believe that Delerium must be gathered and consecrated to enact a great miracle that will save the world.
- The Old Faith is the original religion of the world of Drakkenheim, and is actually more a catch-all term that the Sacred Flame's devotees use to refer to any worshiper of any of the dozen deities who predate the Sacred Flame's church — they didn't and still don't necessarily see themselves as a singular pantheon. These twelve gods and godddesses are: Arwyn the Moon Hunter; Danu, Mother Earth; Dian Cheht the Healer; Gaibhne the Smith; Kromac the Ravager; Lugh the Sun; Morrigan the Witch; Nodens of the Tempest; Nuada the Silver Handed; Ogham the Sage; Phantasia the Dreamer; and Shegorach the Trickster.
- Shadow Cults worship what they call "The Exalted Darkness", the cosmic counterbalance to the Sacred Flame, and are a scattered array of sects and shadow faiths devoted to strange cthonic deities from the Shadowlands and the Abyss, ranging the gamut from malign to benevolent. The Sacred Flame despises them without exemption, forcing them underground.
- Fantastic Racism: Mageborn are subject to considerable distrust and fear by the general populace, which has been fanned and manipulated by the Flamekeepers. Life for mageborn is controlled firmly by a code of laws known as the Edicts of Lumen, which includes amongst other clauses the strict prohibition of mageborn being allowed to inherit noble titles, to avoid the potential rebirth of the Arcane Empire.
- Green Rocks: Delerium is a purple crystal that can be used to augment spellcasting and create powerful magical items... but it's also a powerful corruptive force that induces madness and mutation if not handled carefully. It's also the creation of an Eldritch Abomination and used to weaken reality, allowing it to invade worlds.
- Half-Human Hybrid: The most populous races after humans are their hybrid offspring, most of whom were created during the founding of the Arcane Empire two thousand years before the present, when ambitious sorcerers mated with magical beings such as fiends and dragons to have offspring who would have greater arcane abilities.
- Kill It with Fire: The Silver Order, a militant branch of the Flamekeepers, have decided that ultimately the best thing for the ruins of Drakkenheim is to burn the entire corrupted city to the ground. Their goal is to find both the bones of an ancient gold dragon devotee of the church and the magical relics that can revive him, so he can scorch the city clean. If the party helps them achieve this goal, it destroys the Haze and ends the threat of invasion from the Beyond by sealing the Rift... but Westemär will shatter into a dozen disorganized provinces unless a new unifying king or queen is appointed first.
- Light Is Not Good: Despite the Sacred Flame embodying the concepts of honor, hope and good, its adherents are still mortal, and in particular have a tendency towards self-righteousness and bloodthirsty zealotry. The Followers of the Falling Fire in particular have an apocalyptic creed, and it's spelled out in the epilogues guide that their victory in the clash for dominance over Drakkenheim's ruins will ultimately let the Haze spread to envelop the world.
- Mage Species: The ability to use arcane magic is a recessive genetic trait, one that can also be unlocked by mutation (such as by making a warlock's pact or being exposed to powerful arcane magic, such as Delerium) as well as inherited. The Arcane Empire two thousand years ago was created by the sorcerer descendants of the original warlocks after their patrons mysteriously vanished, who engaged in selective breeding both with each other and with magical beings to create stronger offspring. As a result, arcane magic users and most of the Half-Human Hybrid races are known as "mageborn".
- Plague Doctor: The artwork for the Pathogenist subclass of the Apothecary is clearly based on the iconic Plague Doctor outfit.
- Plague Master: Apothecaries get access to a number of old and new spells that revolve around infecting others with diseases, but those who take the Pathogenist subclass specialize in weaponizing disease, with an expanded arsenal of plague-based spells and subclass features that make their spell-crafted diseases much more potent.
- Rightful King Returns: Invoked; the faction known as the Hooded Lanterns wants to restore peace to Westemär by cleansing Drakkenheim of its corruption and by ending the civil war, which for many centers around either discovering a long-lost rightful heir to the throne or creating a legitimate replacement that the warring noble houses will accept. A possible outcome of Dungeons of Drakkenheim is the players helping the Queen's Men faction achieve victory. Although the Games Master is given discretion to change who the mysterious "Queen of Thieves" actually is, the "canon" answer is that she's actually Lady Katarina von Kessel, who would have been the Crown Princess of Westemär as the eldest daughter of House Kessel... if it wasn't for her being a mageborn. Her ultimate goal is to recapture the enchanted Crown of Westemär and use two of its three wishes to first resurrect her sister (cast into the Abyss before the meteor fell) and then to erase all knowledge of her being a mageborn from the nation's memories so she can claim the title she was denied by the Edicts of Lumen. Whether or not she'll be a good ruler if she succeeds is left ambiguous, but she is noted to be a very shrewd politician with no intention of being a pawn for either the nobility or the Amethyst Academy.
- The Sacred Darkness:
- The faiths known collectively as Shadow Cults believe that reality is based on the interplay of two equally important cosmic forces; the Sacred Flame, and its counterpart, the Exalted Darkness. Adherents can be evil nihilists and fiend-worshipers, but can also believe in shadow as an important balance to light.
- Druids of the Circle of Contamination believe that the mutagenic effects of Delerium are simply part of nature on a more cosmic scale, and so embrace spreading The Corruption as a way to "jumpstart" evolution. Its notable that their power set includes being able to wield contaminated spells with relative safety, and to remove Contamination from others.
- Shout-Out:
- The concept of the setting, a Dark Fantasy city-state that was annihilated by a meteor of Green Rocks, is very similar to Mordheim.
- A merchant in the neighboring shantytown of Emberwood Village, Aldor the Immense, is described as an enormously obese, well-dressed, ever-jovial merchant — he's clearly an homage to the Duke from Resident Evil Village.
- Delerium is sometimes referred to as being "octarine" in color — this is the color associated with magic in the Discworld novels.
- Sorcerous Overlord: Two thousand years before the present, the realm of Westemar was ruled by an array of sorcerer, warlock and wizard dynasties collectively known as the Arcane Empire. After a thousand years of their rule, they became so corrupt and tyrannical that the faith of the Sacred Flame was born and gained legitimacy by marshalling the people to overthrow their mageborn rulers. The ongoing persecution and repression of mageborn is justified as being necessary to prevent a second Arcane Empire from returning.
- Unequal Rites: Wielders of divine or druidic magic are exalted and respected, whilst those who practice arcane magic are shunned, feared and looked down upon. Those who merely "dabble" in magic are given neither overt fear nor overt respect.
