D&D 5E Ravenloft: Souls of Darkness

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TheIdeaOfGood

Explorer

• May 21, 2021

• #1

Just reading through the new Ravenloft book, I had this idea: The setting of Dark Souls would actually make a great domain. There is already a white fog obscuring parts of the world, everything is a testament to faded glory and Lord Gwyn/The Soul of Cinder being the Darklord. His descent into irredeemable darkness was when he, out of nothing but fear for his precious fire, betrayed the pygmy's descendants and sealed in their darkness, therefore damning his world to an endless cycle of half-life and undeath...He himself had to relinquish a great deal of power to prolong the world's existence but all it got him was a short reprieve and a tortured existence as basically an undead physical god.

 

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LuisCarlos17f

Legend

• May 21, 2021

• #2

The new Ravenloft has been designed with the goal you can adapt your favorite franchises from videogames or movies. Now they are going to await and see what ideas are created by the players.

 

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DemoMonkey

Hero

• May 22, 2021

• #3

"The new Ravenloft has been designed with the goal you can adapt your favorite franchises from videogames or movies."

So... Domains of Dread are isolated places where the inhabitants can never enact change and are doomed forever to enact the same plots, from which they can never escape? Ruled by a Darklord who is imprisoned with them, whose machinations torment them eternally?

I present to you, drawn from ancient media, the ultimate Darklord...

 

Stormonu

Legend

• May 22, 2021

• #4

I thought this was the ultimate darklord?

 

LuisCarlos17f

Legend

• May 23, 2021

• #5

Today the metaplot is totally frozen, but I trust in a future this will start to run. Would you rather sooner or better? And I would like to allow the possibility the fate of some dark lord wouldn't be the destruction but the redemption. Then the domain would spilt in a "shadowfell domain" where the influence of the dark powers is weaker.

 

loverdrive

Prophet of the profane (She/Her)

• May 23, 2021

• #6

TheIdeaOfGood said:

Just reading through the new Ravenloft book, I had this idea: The setting of Dark Souls would actually make a great domain. There is already a white fog obscuring parts of the world, everything is a testament to faded glory and Lord Gwyn/The Soul of Cinder being the Darklord. His descent into irredeemable darkness was when he, out of nothing but fear for his precious fire, betrayed the pygmy's descendants and sealed in their darkness, therefore damning his world to an endless cycle of half-life and undeath...He himself had to relinquish a great deal of power to prolong the world's existence but all it got him was a short reprieve and a tortured existence as basically an undead physical god.

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A difference between darkness and evil/corruption is kind of a big deal in Dark Souls, so I wouldn't refer to Lord Gwyn as "dark lord", but other than that, it sounds cool.

 

Ruin Explorer

Legend

• May 23, 2021

• #7

loverdrive said:

A difference between darkness and evil/corruption is kind of a big deal in Dark Souls, so I wouldn't refer to Lord Gwyn as "dark lord", but other than that, it sounds cool.

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I mean, literally Gwyn would be the Darklord, which is the specific unspoken title of someone in charge of a Ravenloft domain (I don't know if you know this or just forgot). He wouldn't actually be called that by anyone except in a metagame sense or perhaps by trans-domain travellers like Van Richten. In the domain he'd be referred to as Lord Gwyn as usual. But he fits well as a Darklord in the terms of Van Richten/Ravenloft. There is also perhaps a certain poetic irony in that Gwyn was trying to stop the Dark Lord from being born (according to one DS NPC) and yet himself became a Darklord.

But yeah for the OP, Dark Souls would actually work very well as a particularly scary Ravenloft domain.