Ravenloft: Heir of Strahd Cover, Synopsis Revealed

The cover and synopsis for Penguin Random House's new Dungeons & Dragons novel has been revealed. This week, Penguin Random House revealed the official title and cover for Ravenloft: Heir of Strahd, a new novel by Delilah S. Dawson. The new novel is due for release in April 2025. The new novel follows a group of adventurers who arrive in Barovia under mysterious circumstances and are summoned to Castle Ravenloft to dine with the infamous Count Strahd. This marks the first Ravenloft novel released in 17 years.

Penguin Random House has slowly grown its line of novels over the past few years, with novels set in Spelljammer, Dragonlance, and the Forgotten Realms released over the last year. Characters from The Fallbacks novel by Jaleigh Johnson also appears in art in the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide.

The full synopsis for Heir of Strahd can be found below:

Five strangers armed with steel and magic awaken in a mist-shrouded land, with no memory of how they arrived: Rotrog, a prideful orcish wizard; Chivarion, a sardonic drow barbarian; Alishai, an embittered tiefling paladin; Kah, a skittish kenku cleric; and Fielle, a sunny human artificer.

After they barely survive a nightmarish welcome to the realm of Barovia, a carriage arrives bearing an invitation:

Fairest Friends,

I pray you accept my humble Hospitality and dine with me tonight at Castle Ravenloft. It is rare we receive Visitors, and I do so Endeavor to Make your Acquaintance. The Carriage shall bear you to the Castle safely, and I await your Arrival with Pleasure.

Your host,
Strahd von Zarovich

With no alternative, and determined to find their way home, the strangers accept the summons and travel to the forbidding manor of the mysterious count. But all is not well at Castle Ravenloft. To survive the twisted enigmas of Strahd and his haunted home, the adventurers must confront the dark secrets in their own hearts and find a way to shift from strangers to comrades—before the mists of Barovia claim them forever.

 

[Bedrockgames]

But could you say these are Ravenloft without huge RAVENLOFT on the cover?

I am all for the classic Ravenloft layout. I still remember when they got rid of those atmospheric borders and shifted to a white background, without the Fabian art (not that all the early supplements had Fabian art anyways). That actually did make a difference in terms of the feel of the material (I think the line really benefited from the layout and art design)

 

[QuentinGeorge]

The VAST majority of domains are human-dominated. I did a thread a while back which was a readthrough of the Gazetteers, and almost every domain was heavy-majority human, and a significant majority were specifically called out as being hostile to non-humans (and usually spellcasters too)

Off the top of my head, Sithicus is largely populated by elves. Darkon is a chunk of Conventional D&D World transplanted across the Mists entire, and has a D&D-typical mix of races. Certain quasi-monster races like mongrelmen, shadow fey, and broken ones have specific domains where they constitute the majority. I know Vechor has an elf Darklord, not sure about the population off the top of my head. But to the best of my knowledge there's no dwarf domain, no halfling domain, no gnome domain, out of probably hundreds published.

Ravenloft has always been very very human-centric.

Vechor is almost entirely human as well. Even Darkon has a human plurality.

 

[GreyLord]

You see, no, having the player being undead is really not going along with how Ravenloft worked as a setting either. The setting was always about being that lone candle against the darkness, not a super-cool powerful monster.

I was just hypothesizing how to toss Dragonborn or something like them into the setting period (not that they would be available for player usage or not...just trying to figure how they could have a horror type Dragonborn race in there that could reflect the true horror of the setting). These would not necessarily be for players to use, just a way to shoehorn Dragonborn in a general way.

 

[Bedrockgames]

If you wanted to add warforged in Ravenloft, you do it properly and refluff them.

Lamordia's alliance with Falkovnia leads them to provide Drakov with a "better" sort of soldier, but the revealed truth is that the Lamordians are unable to truly create life (Mordenheim's creation of Adam is the only time this ever happens, and with the Dark Powers assistance), so what warforged are instead is the traumatised souls of dead Falkovnian soldiers placed into new bodies, and sent back to the front to die again against Azalin's unending undead soldiers.

That's actually something that can work on a thematic level.

My big issue with things like Warforged, is they feel too steampunk. I really don't like steampunk aesthetic with Ravenloft. I do think what you are describing gets much more at the theme, and the setting does have mechanical golems already so I think you could do it that way without veering into steam

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Dragonborn in Ravenloft ... would depend on the circumstance. I've thought for a long time that there was legit horror-story potential in dragons that he Ravenloft line almost completely neglected

Dragons as monsters of horror are sadly neglected, perhaps because Lair of the White Worm (novel and movie) were so terrible. The original Lambton Worm folktale is well suited to Ravenloft though. Perhaps, after becoming cursed by accidently killing his father, Dragonslayer John Lambton became a dark lord, and the people of County Durham were transformed into dragonborn to torment him. Clearly, to defeat him and escape from the domain, the PCs will need to recover his cursed spiked armor and kill him with it.

Alternatively, the dragon could be the darklord, and the domain populated by dragon-themed monsters. I had a sidequst in my last Ravenloft adventure, featuring a crystal dragon who, polymorphed into human form, had been an adventurer wielding the Sword Blackrazor. After getting drawn into Ravenloft she had been corrupted by the dark powers into a crystal shadowdragon. Since my players decided not to go after her, she is still alive and could become a dark lord in her own right.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I really don't like steampunk aesthetic with Ravenloft.

Why not? There is a huge overlap between gothic and steampunk, and Lamordia is explicitly a steampunk domain. Not to mention the Eberron domains.

But you could always have a warforged with a human skin stitched over it's mechanical parts. It's easy enough to refluff appearances, and that seems pretty horrific to me.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

What are you talking about? In the "days of the core", all the domains bar Darkon and Sithicus were almost entirely human, and only Sithicus had a non-human majority.

Darkon is a generic fantasyland, with all the standard fantasy races present and correct. And it traded with all the other core domains, so anyone visiting it would naturally encounter non-humans. They don't have to be in a majority to be familiar, in most D&D settings non-humans are not a majority. But of course, one of the reasons the core was such a terrible idea was non-humans would have migrated over the whole core and been found everywhere.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

may be slightly different time period

I dunno. I'm 56, and by the 90s I was grown up and battling depression, so grimdark was the last thing I needed.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

If you wanted to add warforged in Ravenloft, you do it properly and refluff them.

Lamordia's alliance with Falkovnia leads them to provide Drakov with a "better" sort of soldier, but the revealed truth is that the Lamordians are unable to truly create life (Mordenheim's creation of Adam is the only time this ever happens, and with the Dark Powers assistance), so what warforged are instead is the traumatised souls of dead Falkovnian soldiers placed into new bodies, and sent back to the front to die again against Azalin's unending undead soldiers.

That's actually something that can work on a thematic level.

Keith Baker's Dread Metrol domain does something similar.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I'm pretty sure "walking cat-man" is more obviously non-human that "person with pointed ears".

There are only so many mechanical rice picker accidents you can have before people start to get suspicious.