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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[Paul Farquhar]

People keep waking him from his beauty sleep.

Yeah, irritating cultists keep trying to wake him up.

Maybe he thought that by moving R’lyeh to Ravenloft from the Pacific he would get more peace.

 

[GarrettKP]

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

We can see in his write up from the preview that he isn’t being tormented like other Dark Lords. The Dark Powers are just keeping him at bay. If he’s the dark lord of the domain, he isn’t active. It’s likely his dreams or just his presence that are causing the torment in the domain.

 

[tetrasodium]

Interesting side note: HPL more or less officially entered the public domain in 1986, when Wandrei finally won his lawsuit against Arkham House. "RQ2: Thoughts of Darkness" was published in 1992, well after - was Bluetspur mentioned in the Red Box? It was in "Domains of Dread", but that came out in 1997.
edit: Even the Black Box was 1990.

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.

A lot of named Lovecraftian entities were in the early mm or something like a deities & demigods book∆. Tolkien stuff was similar I'm sure that it led to a knee jerk "oops no more of that" and they got renamed into more generic serial number scratched off stuff like halflings aboleths & put fiends. Those generic placeholders work fine in FR or whatever, but a setting like Ravenloft needs to fill in the generic part of relevant placeholders to some degree in support of taking the settings's themes tropes and lore off the GM's shoulders or it's just the GM's setting

∆ not sure which and doesn't really matter enough to chet

 

[Artamo]

Yeah, irritating cultists keep trying to wake him up.

Maybe he thought that by moving R’lyeh to Ravenloft from the Pacific he would get more peace.

It’s not HIS fault people go insane looking at him! What’s a guy gonna do?

 

[Charlaquin]

We can see in his write up from the preview that he isn’t being tormented like other Dark Lords. The Dark Powers are just keeping him at bay. If he’s the dark lord of the domain, he isn’t active. It’s likely his dreams or just his presence that are causing the torment in the domain.

So, like I said. The two things don’t work together without changing one or both to the point of no longer being itself.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

We can see in his write up from the preview that he isn’t being tormented like other Dark Lords. The Dark Powers are just keeping him at bay. If he’s the dark lord of the domain, he isn’t active. It’s likely his dreams or just his presence that are causing the torment in the domain.

The thing is, every time he wakes up he trashes the planet. So he must get through a lot of planets, and R’lyeh has been in a lot of places. Ravenloft is probably the first place he can’t completely trash.

 

[Remathilis]

But, like, tell me how the Great Race makes sense in the game…?

I'll tell you in June

 

[Artamo]

So, like I said. The two things don’t work together without changing one or both to the point of no longer being itself.

So what you’re saying is this is Zack Snyder’s Cthulhu?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I'm sure that it led to a knee jerk "oops no more of that" and they got renamed into more generic serial number scratched off stuff like halflings aboleths & put fiends

There was a court case with Chaoseum, who had rights to Call of Cthulhu RPG. They had to remove the Deities & Demigods mythos chapter. The Moorcock chapter was cut too for related reasons, so they are both only in the fist printing (which I used to own ).

There was a separate court case with the Tolkien estate, that led to hobbits, ents and balrogs being renamed. They won on orcs though.

 

[Remathilis]

You know the best thing about the current Ravenloft lacking a Core is? You can absolutely ignore this if you want. Your players never go to Chthululand (or whatever his domain will be) and it exists like Schrodinger's Domain in the Mists.

That said, I am a little disappointed that, after VRGR took a firehose to all the overt IP ripoffs that Ravenloft was famous for, they literally import a major IP character wholesale. Dracula and Frankenstein are public domain too, yet we got heavily reworked versions of Strahd and Mordenheim to avoid them being Great Value Dracula and Frankenstein clones.