Lord Soth appears to be a Darklord again in Ravenloft: The Horrors Within

Lord Soth, the iconic Dragonlance villain, appears to be trapped in Ravenloft once more. Wizards of the Coast has released several big hints that Lord Soth will be featured in the Ravenloft: The Horrors Within book due for release later this year. For one, Wizards of the Coast is releasing a D&D Encounters: Shadows of Sithicus mini-adventure as a pre-order bonus for the book. Sithicus, of course, is the Domain of Dread Lord Soth was trapped in. Additionally, the upcoming Actual Play series Dungeon Masters will feature "a fractured band of unlikely allies becoming trapped in a haunted land ruled by the infamous fallen paladin, Lord Soth." One of the selling points of Dungeon Masters is that it will feature unreleased content from Ravenloft: The Horrors Within, with some content available to those who pre-order the book early as mini-encounters.

Lord Soth has an interesting history with Ravenloft. The character was pulled from Krynn (home of the Dragonlance campaign setting) to star in the Ravenloft novel Knight of the Black Rose. However, Tracy Hickman and Margaret Weis later returned to TSR to write more Dragonlance novels and were reportedly unhappy with Soth's inclusion in Ravenloft. The pair featured Soth in a Dragonlance novel and an explanation was given that Soth had been returned to Krynn at the moment of his departure by the Dark Powers that govern Ravenloft. Soth's departure from Ravenloft was eventually shown in the 1999 novel Spectre of the Black Rose.

The previous Ravenloft book, Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, did not feature Soth as the designers wished to keep Soth's freedom from the realm (and his subsequent death in Dragonlance novels) canon. Lord Soth has since appeared in two campaign books - Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen and the mulitversal Vecna: Eve of Ruin, both of which were set during the War of the Lance. More Dragonlance content seems to be on the way, as Hickman and Weis recently publicized that they were working with Wizards again.

 

[Stormonu]

One word: Alternate Prime Material Planes

Something that's gotten lost over the milleniu of D&D (maybe first discussed in the original Manual of the Planes) - it was a way of saying that all the different DMs running their version of a given campaign world was valid because they were alternate copies. Gary's copy of Greyhawk might be considered Prime, but the copy I've run* over the years would be an Alternate Universe and so on for all the other DMs over the years. Same for FR*, Dragonlance - and most importantly, Ravenloft**.

All worlds are valid and your reality is skewed to the one you've experienced.

* The Greyhawk I run never experienced the Greyhawk Wars
** The version I run never had a Time of Troubles, Spellplague or the such
*** No Grand Conjuction here, though all realms have become essentially Islands of Terror, and Victor/Adam are the lords of Lamordia.

 

[TorgoTheWhite]

No argument here, My current campaign is homebrew worldbuild... with a whole lot of interplanar incursions from some of the usual suspects and "big name" shakers. My story for the coming of Orcus is an extreme departure from "canon".

 

[TravDoc42]

Maps
from last nights stream. Courtesy of Reddit.

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Kendralind returning makes me wonder about Kender Vampires returning...

 

[Not a Decepticon]

This looks ... relevant to the interests of my current Dragonlance campaign. Before i dive into a hundred plus hours of it, do you mind me asking for a quick summary/trailer of the concept?

It has cast of characters from Krynn dragged to Sithicus and having to face Soth (tho he is used sparringly, I think it takes a while until he personally steps in and almost kills everyone without breaking a sweat, but has quite few twists on the premise. First, part of the party were taken literally from the middle of final battle of War of the Blue Lady, while others from right before Cataclysm. Second, Paladine, Raistlin AND Fistandantilus all separatelly meddle in the events

 

[wizard71]

I am glad to see Lord South & Sithicus return. I hope the unique Ravenloft undead like Kender vampires make an appearance too.

 

[Echohawk]

It's funny, I'm old enough to remember when WotC announced that only their 5e material was 'canon' any more, and now if they're going to bring Soth back to Ravenloft they're decanonicising a reference in VRGtR where they had Sithicus slowly dissolving into nothingness now its lord had departed...

WotC's 2021 position on canon was actually even more restrictive than that. In this article it was clarified as follows (my emphasis):

Fifth edition’s canon includes every bit of lore that appears in the most up-to-date printings of the fifth edition Player’s Handbook, Monster Manual, and Dungeon Master’s Guide. Beyond these core rulebooks, we don’t have a public-facing account of what is canonical in fifth edition because we don’t want to overload our fellow creators and business partners.

At this point, it is probably safest for any scholar of D&D lore to assume that anything from past Ravenloft products (from any edition, including 5e), could be retconned in newer releases if the WotC team thinks that makes for a more appealing product.

 

[nyvinter]

WotC's 2021 position on canon was actually even more restrictive than that. In this article it was clarified as follows (my emphasis):

Considering it's a game and what happens at your table is canon for your group, this is the best and easiest way to handle it IMO. Otherwise you'd have to check every single thing across 50 years of writing by several uncoordinated writers and that seems like creative hell.

 

[Not a Decepticon]

Considering it's a game and what happens at your table is canon for your group, this is the best and easiest way to handle it IMO. Otherwise you'd have to check every single thing across 50 years of writing by several uncoordinated writers and that seems like creative hell.

That's why Marvel and DC Comics are unreadable.

 

[nyvinter]

One of them at least. I do think all the yearly crossover events since mid-2000s is a bigger villain than canon tangle, at least for Marvel.

 

[Not a Decepticon]

One of them at least. I do think all the yearly crossover events since mid-2000s is a bigger villain than canon tangle, at least for Marvel.

All of crossover events either could be consolidated into one crossover event with other events the same year, or did not need to be an event to begin with.