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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Pauper" data-source="post: 6826974" data-attributes="member: 17607">Edit: long, rambling discussion of Ravenloft follows -- be warned!That is a major tangent, and one I won't touch. I'll simply point out that the Hickmans' opinion of what is canon in Dragonlance is almost exactly the same as Ed Greenwood's opinion of what is canon in the Forgotten Realms -- respect as creators, but they do not own the rights, so cannot declare what is 'officially' canon. (To confirm this, see Tracy Hickman's own blog post about this: <a href="http://www.trhickman.com/qa-owns-dragonlance/" target="_blank">http://www.trhickman.com/qa-owns-dragonlance/</a> )You might want to check with John W. Mangum on this one: "Vistani can navigate the Mists, and can lead others to any destination." (<a href="http://www.fraternityofshadows.com/wiki/Category:Vistani" target="_blank">http://www.fraternityofshadows.com/wiki/Category:Vistani</a>)That same page notes that "[t]he Vistani are a human sub-race of gypsy wanderers who centuries ago adopted the Land of the Mists as their home. It in turn has adopted them, granting them several unique abilities that command respect and inspire fear. It is possible that their place or origin either is lost to them or is mythical. It is suggested that they can still venture beyond the Land of the Mists and they have been encountered on Gothic Earth in particular." Gothic Earth was the setting for the Masque of the Red Death setting that became a popular Organized Play campaign in its own right back in the day.That's a different question -- yes, not every Vistani is powerful enough to defy the will of the domains' Darklords. That's a very different thing than saying they can't navigate the Mists.I suspect that may have been ret-conned, as the gypsy fortuneteller you could summon on Twitter looked less like an annis hag and more like an elderly gypsy woman -- that character was explicitly identified as Madame Eva.Or, yeah, they could just go with the Doctor Who solution. Timey-wimey!Suspected yes, but not confirmed -- Vecna's escape from Ravenloft is still canon, as far as I'm aware.I suspect we'll meet Madame Eva during Season 4, so knowing a bit about her background may be useful to help tell the story. But it's true that, especially in her case, knowing the backstory isn't the same as knowing the truth.Ehh, we could get into a huge discussion over exactly how things exist in Ravenloft as a domain, but my guess is simply that the designers of this adventure don't want to have to re-create the entire Ravenloft setting in order to tell this story. I'll simply point out that references to 'domains of terror' both in Fifth Edition and in Fourth (when the domains were moved from the Deep Ethereal to the Shadowfell) suggest that a Fifth Edition Ravenloft may well have decided to do away with the concept of 'the Core' and simply made every domain an Island of Terror again. Since the other domains aren't relevant to the story being told in Curse of Strahd, there's simply no reason to refer to them. It doesn't mean they don't still actually exist.In terms of adventure chronology, Azalin doesn't appear until I10 - The House on Gryphon Hill, but because Strahd isn't a spellcaster in the original module, and canonically learns spellcasting from Azalin, if the Strahd in "Curse of Strahd" has spellcasting ability (as the Strahd of "Expedition to Castle Raveloft" did), then there's a good chance Azalin is around somewhere, even if he doesn't directly play into the events of the module.It should be noted that both Children of the Night: Vampires (an AD&D source) and Champions of Darkness (a Third Edition source) note that Jander Sunstar failed to kill himself, as he was spirited away by the Dark Powers at the last possible moment. As noted in the Fraternity of Shadows FAQ: "When the Dark Powers find a toy that they like, they do not let go of it that easily!"My understanding is that the Hickmans were consulted on Curse of Strahd (which is stlll more input than they had with Expedition, I agree), but the heavy writing and design is Christopher Perkins work; Perkins has given Hickman many props, and even recommended that DMs get ahold of the original I6 module in PDF before running the new one, but he definitely refers to it as his own work, "might be my best work to date" is the phrase he used on Twitter.I will say, though, that one of the strengths of Ravenloft as a campaign setting is that the presence of the Dark Powers -- a mysterious, overarching cabal of evil overseeing events in the setting -- justifies just about any difference between two fans' differing views of the setting. "The Dark Powers did it!" is a pretty easy way to smooth over any disagreements.--Pauper</blockquote>

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