Check Out This Early Ravenloft: The Horrors Within Artwork

As part of today's reveal of Ravenloft: The Horrors Within, Wizards of the Coast also released several pieces of early preview artwork for the new book. You can check the artwork out in all its full glory below:

And here's the cover artwork (by Anna Podedworna) and alternate cover artwork (by Pam Wishbow):

Ravenloft: The Horrors Within was one of several products announced today. You can find a full rundown here.

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[QuentinGeorge]

Err, in the same way as Ravenloft has its own vampire, which was not in any way ripped off from Dracula?!!!!

Can you actually address my point rather than the point you made up in your head? I'm not complaining about there being a "cosmic horror" themed darklord. I'm complaining about literally porting over Cthulhu as is as a darklord.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Can you actually address my point rather than the point you made up in your head? I'm not complaining about there being a "cosmic horror" themed darklord. I'm complaining about literally porting over Cthulhu as is as a darklord.

So what? Ravenloft was always a collection of horror novel and movie pastiches, Cthulhu was always part of D&D, with an interruption due to copywrite issues. He is horror, so he gets filed under Ravenloft.

 

[Parmandur]

Bloodborne has shown beyond a shadow of a doubt that gothic horror and cosmic horror can work together to incredible effect. But the Lovecraft Mythos and Ravenloft are both very specific, very distinct things, that I really don’t think can be combined without changing one or both to the point that it’s no longer really that thing.

Barovia is a very specific, distinct thing...but is Ravenloft all that specific...?

 

[Artamo]

So what? Ravenloft was always a collection of horror novel and movie pastiches, Cthulhu was always part of D&D, with an interruption due to copywrite issues. He is horror, so he gets filed under Ravenloft.

It’s also a dark demiplane where the rules of reality don’t really match up with any other plane - in other words, anything can happen as long as it accentuates the horror.

 

[Voadam]

It’s not Cthulhu as a dark lord here it’s a Yithian in a Ravenloft adventure.

An alien that body swaps with people for months or years. I see it as having adventure story potential in Ravenloft.

It worked for me in Death in Freeport to add mythos horror to D&D.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

It’s not Cthulhu as a dark lord here it’s a Yithian in a Ravenloft adventure.

An alien that body swaps with people for months or years. I see it as having adventure story potential in Ravenloft.

It worked for me in Death in Freeport to add mythos horror to D&D.

It also has Cthulhu as a dark lord (visible in one of the images). I assume there will also be a R'lyeh domain for him to sleep in.

But Yithian do have a lot of story potential, both for body swapping story lines, and just being incomprehensibly alien, without actually being evil.

 

[GarrettKP]

But to your actual point: what would they be doing in Ravenloft? Are they still traveling forward and back in time via mind swapping? Wasn't their library in Australia? Again, I'm reserving judgement, it's just very unclear how you'd use them in the context of the domains of dread.

Much of Ravenloft is just recycling horror stories. Strahd is Dracula, Mordenheim is Frankenstein, etc etc. It makes plenty of sense for Ravenloft to have a domain to cover every version of horror, including Eldritch.

Now as to why Cthulhu and his mythos specifically? Name recognition. If Strahd didn’t take off in popularity as he did, they would have tried to make Dracula a Dark Lord eventually.

And there’s nothing that comes close to matching the name recognition as Cthulhu when it comes to Eldritch Horror.

As for how it would work? Easily. The domain just includes the same or similar method but in a way that doesn’t reference real world events or places, subbing them out for stand ins. The stories can be the same, largely.

Or they can be totally unique to the D&D version of Cthulhu. Look at Baba Yaga. WotC uses her and gave her her own lore and stories within the game while staying true to the core of her mythos.

 

[Charlaquin]

So what? Ravenloft was always a collection of horror novel and movie pastiches, Cthulhu was always part of D&D, with an interruption due to copywrite issues. He is horror, so he gets filed under Ravenloft.

He just doesn’t make sense as a darklord. What the heck would the dark powers even torment him with?

 

[Artamo]

He just doesn’t make sense as a darklord. What the heck would the dark powers even torment him with?

People keep waking him from his beauty sleep.

 

[Charlaquin]

Barovia is a very specific, distinct thing...but is Ravenloft all that specific...?

Yes