Way to have not kept up with any Ravenloft product since 1990.
- Har'akir had a settlement, named Mudar, and by 1997 was in a mult-domain cluster that contained Sebua (also Egyptian themed) and Pharazia (Arabic themed). There was plenty of space for Egyptian themed monsters.
- Falkovnia was not trying to be "historical Vlad". Apart from impaling and a first name, Vlad had little in common with Vlad Tepes. He and Falkovnia were more the horror of a the Prussian-Germanic "blood and soil" terror. If you don't think 1930s-1940s Germany is horrific, then I have no words. (I have no idea what your stupid bear reference is about)
- Urik and Valachan had nothing in common with Barovia. Again, you didn't keep up with any Ravenloft material, and it shows.
- If you've read any material on Lamordia, you'd know that those that have written for it know very well that Frankenstein is the monster, but Mordenheim/Adam are not identical to the Shelley work. On a broader thematic note, making the scientist female severely undercuts the themes of the domain.
The core has hundreds of thousands of people and yes, enough farms to support its population. Its discussed several times in the sources and is indeed the whole reason for Falkovnia being able to cause trouble amongst its neighbours (it is the breadbasket of the core). Again you haven't read any of the sources, have you?
Yes, Har'akir had one settlement that was always noted as being small and tiny, because that was . I know way more about the monster books than I do the main setting books, and let me tell you, there are way too. Like, the monster books are running under the assuption of multiple towns and Kar'akir being massive enough to have multiple places to stumble into tombs full of corpse scarabs, not just the one small town.
He absolutely was. That's the joke. That's why his domain was up next to Strahd's. Pop culture Vlad and Dracula chilling together in the same area. His domain absolutely exposes, plus it is one of the ones that is absolutely a slave to the 90s metaplot they required in everything
Urik is basically Blackula. That's the joke. Ravenloft has one iconic vampire and its Strahd, and all other vampires will be compared to him. I made a funny because his curse is tied to the werepanther aspect which, frankly, the modern internet would consider a turn on, so its clearly not a good sign of horror when a sizeable portion of the 'net is just going "Oh that's hardly anything concerning". Its supposed to be a horror setting and that's the best they can come up with. "He's a more different vampire who's also a panther". Look, I get Ravenloft is trying to be the Hammer Horror setting, but, c'mon. They can try better.
How does making her a woman change the whole theme of the region? Frankly I think the one thing they missed here was doing the "Its Frankenstein's relative!" thing like so many movies. But like, the theme of the region should be "Mad scientist goes too far in their creation of life", with the addition that the lost wife is the monster. See also how the original had to turn what should be regular people into absolute combat monsters and had to have the whole convoluted thing with Adam and "oh he got an EVIL SOUL that's SUPER EVIL because how dare you try to raise the dead without consulting with the dungeons and dragons gods!" because, shock, it turns out Dungeons and Dragons is very unsuited to actually doing a horror campaign in due to being built on being a heroic fantasy game where the one sub-system the game has for resolving problems is "Here is how to kill it". If the original Ravenloft wasn't as good as it is, the setting wouldn't have launched, and basically no domain lives up to Ravenloft
No, it turns out I haven't read many of these because Ravenloft was released 5 years before I was born and, when it was 1997, I was a lot more interested in Lost World and getting a Chasmosaurus toy, because frankly the only Chasmosaurus toy comparable to it in the years since is the Creative Beasts one. So everything I know I've picked up through osmosis. So tell me: Why should I care about these older versions of the settings as they just seem poorly thought out, inconsistent from day 1, absolutely bogged down in the meta-plot of the setting trying to escape from its 'weekend in hell' roots (which, frankly, it never did), dated to all heck or have absolute weird bents that indicates the writers at the time didn't even understand the original story? I notice you haven't even touched on I'Caith or Sri Raiji, which at least indicates you see the problems on those two. Why should I, someone introduced to this way later than you, not just assume the rest of the setting is as bad as those two awful early examples and not just say we should write the whole thing off?