Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Libertad" data-source="post: 9486375" data-attributes="member: 6750502"><img src="https://i.imgur.com/HQnVP5y.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />This Chapter covers two-thirds of Ezmerelda’s Guide to Ravenloft. And it’s at this point I must highlight the lack of any bookmarks in this PDF product, which makes navigating more difficult than usual. Well, none save for two monster entries, which feels weird as it implies that the authors had plans to make them but just gave up before getting started. The plus side is that the table of contents has built in hyperlinks to jump to the desired location in the book, but that isn’t enough to make up for it.Each domain follows a standard procedure of a broad summary followed by individual entries on the lands, its people, the darklord’s backstory, and sample adventures and domain-specific rules and sub-systems in line with its unique brand of horror. Each domain also begins with an in-character short scene highlighting the darklord’s danger, and ends with a written letter correspondence between Van Richten and Ezmerelda talking about their experiences with the land. We also get a table for the 12 domains, covering their real-world naming conventions and technology level. About half of the domains are within the Medieval range of technology, from Early to Late, with two domains at the Renaissance level, two at Industrial, and two having no naming origins or technology level due to being virtually uninhabited save by monsters. All of the domains’ follow naming conventions from European cultures, from English to Norse, with only Winterhall being listed as “varies” due to being a magical academy drawing in students from across the planes.<img src="https://i.imgur.com/xF1SuRY.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />Amarium is our first domain. A majority-elven realm, it looks upon initial view to be a scene of pristine natural beauty, from endless fields of flowers to enchanting glowing mushrooms in moonlit forests. But this beauty is but a domain-wide illusion, for at 3 AM on nights of the full moon, the illusion fades for 3 minutes, revealing a decaying, colorless world. And yes, divination spells and spells that pierce illusion magic can reveal this, it’s not just flavor text.The domain’s darklord is Prince Narsioch, a megalomaniac elf who is the sun of archfey King Cogar the Quiet. Narsioch was resentful of his father’s popularity and feared that he would live his life in the shadow of the man’s legacy, so he attempted to murder King Cogar with a poisoned blade. But killing an archfey isn’t so easy, and instead he cursed Narsioch to never be a true king before falling into a coma.Although the prince inherited the throne, he would fail again and again to win the public’s support; his attempts at finding wives ended tragically at his own fault, for each time they would fail to live up to his nigh-impossible standards or be so good that he began viewing them as a thread when they accrued political power and support. With divorce culturally taboo, he concocted various means of having them killed. Narsioch’s cruelty extended to the people of his kingdom, causing him to become more and more of a tyrant, causing this former realm of the Feywild to be lost to the Mists. And now, Narsioch is an ugly undead being befitting his soul, and his truesight makes him always aware of the true state of his kingdom.Amarium is a fair-sized islam, of about 55 miles west to east and 65 miles north to south. Narsioch’s unpopularity persists even as darklord, and there’s various political factions seeking to end his reign, from the good-aligned hag known as Grandmother who watches over the settlement of Glimmer that farms all sorts of glowing mushrooms for food and alchemical properties, the fortified town of Newmeadow whose leader Amadán who believes that becoming king and ridding the domain of magic will solve Amarium’s problems, and Prince Narsioch’s ex-wives who are either undead or in hiding such as the delusional dryad Rana who maintains a deadly garden of poisonous monsters or Ultia the Banshee Queen who seeks to build an undead force to destroy the Prince and holds a magic crown that may be key to resurrecting the slumbering King Cogar. It is this crown that Narsioch craves, but his many battles against Ultia fail to make progress, and he finds fewer and fewer people willing to die for his cause, even out of fear.When it comes to stats, we can see that the domain is optimized for Tier 2 play. Most of the common monsters are rather low Challenge-rating wise, being 5 or less, while three of the ex-wives have new stat blocks: Rana the dryad is a Putrid Spirit, a CR 7 undead that has poison-based attacks, spells, and aura, Chalybe is a CR 9 fire giant ghost whose people were genocided by the Prince, and Ultia is a CR 11 Banshee Queen that has warlock-style spellcasting and legendary resistance. Prince Narsioch is a CR 15 undead whose capabilities revolve around life-draining, fear, and possession-based puppeteering of others. The remaining power players have NPC stats from the core rules who are much less powerful than these entries.Thoughts: Amarium makes a strong first impression going forward. It’s fey origins make it novel in comparison to other existing Ravenloft domains save for the Shadow Rift that unfortunately never got an official conversion to 5th Edition, its darklord has a dramatically-appropriate curse, there are various factions at play and not all of which want what’s best for the domain, and interesting regions and communities with their own goals and problems provide a variety of adventure hooks. There’s plenty of ideas here to make an adventure or even short campaign in Amarium alone.<img src="https://i.imgur.com/DgoxgRq.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />Dromeria is our next domain, situated in a valley with one road to the south leading out of it into the Mists. The land is fertile, perfect for vineyards and orchards, but many of its settlements are gone, razed to the ground from the ongoing civil war. Five political leaders fight each other for control over Dromeria’s resources, but the most powerful one at the moment is Raghar the dread king and the domain’s darklord, presiding over the former capital city. Once beautiful, it is now full of empty, decaying buildings as more living citizens are replaced with undeadRaghar is a living human whose features cause many to mistake him for undead: pale skin and gaunt features, skeletal wings sprouting from his back, a third eye that is growing on his left collarbone and his normal eyes are but empty sockets save for one glowing with an odd cross-shaped light. He was an orphan from Barovia, saved by the Vistani from being eaten by the hags of Old Bonegrinder. After traveling to many realms, he was adopted by a bounty hunter and god of justice who taught him what he knew. Raghar never forgot his homeland, and how so much of its misery was due to both the direct actions and negligence of Strahd. He formed an adventuring company to return, with the intent of staking the Count to end his reign. Although competent, Raghar was an “ends justify the means” kind of guy, and he ended up making deals with the vestiges at the Amber Temple. When his party raided Castle Ravenloft, they managed to actually defeat Strahd, but Raghar was more than willing to claim the darklord’s power and become the domain’s new leader, but his allies tried to stop him. He killed them for standing in his way, and so the Dark Powers took notice and granted Raghar a domain of his own.Dromeria has five major factions, each of them with their own unique theme and resources, a few of which are cruel and resourceful enough to become the new darklord should they become victorious. The Mist-Scarred Blades control the southern pass, their Duchess conducting experiments into the Mists as a possible bioweapon to use; the Hounds are members of the Saviejo, an ethnic group who worship a beast-goddess who count many lycanthropes among their number; the Blackfeather Knights, ruled over by an evil wereraven duchess whose cliffside city has the highest standard of living in Dromeria but has totalitarian laws; the Boldsteels, mostly consisting of peasant conscripts without much monstrous or magical might but whose duke forces all citizens (including children) to make up for this; and finally the Grey Hordes of Vemmis, Raghar’s undead army.Regarding relative level of power and tiers of play, Dromeria is a bit higher than Amarium, with 11 out of the 17 common monsters being CR 5 or less, but topping out at CR 13 mostly made up of Sorrowsworn fiends. We also get two new monsters, the Mist Apparition (CR 3, undead that represents souls who died when wandering the Mists and have a life-draining attack along with being able to appear as a target’s beloved friend or hated foe to instill debuffs and forced actions) and the Forgotten(CR 4 Sorrowsworn that fear loneliness and being ignored, and has stealth-based attacks). As for the darklord and rival warlords, most of them aren’t very powerful save for the Saviejo’s leader who is a Loup Garou (CR 15 monster). Raghar himself is a CR 20 paladin with necromancy-related magic, Legendary Actions and Resistance, along with several of the Dark Gifts from the Amber Temple Vestiges.Thoughts: While I do like the diversity of settlements and warring factions with their own tactical and supernatural niches, the darklord leaves me cold. His backstory feels a bit too tied-in to Curse of Strahd, and given that that adventure was rather explicit that nobody managed to defeat the vampire count it feels weird to have someone who did and is just seemingly forgotten. It would be like having a legendary villain who defeated Elminster or one of Dark Sun’s dragon-kings but doesn’t have the notoriety and acclaim that would go with it. Raghar also doesn’t feel as “cursed” as Narsioch and other darklords here. Sure he’s a powermonger who fell far from lofty ideals, but he’s still doing what he was doing before being claimed by the Mists; using violence and making things worse for the people he’s supposedly protecting.<img src="https://i.imgur.com/wCrRDhE.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />Dutrong is a classically gothic realm: a rural realm of malnourished, oppressed, and deliberately-uneducated peasants ruled over by decadent vampire families who tax them in grain, gold, and blood. Its darklord Belépiné LaBergere affects the mannerisms and dress of a stereotypical arrogant highborn noble, but in reality she has less power than she lets on. The vampire’s tyrannical ways are preventing them from fully living the lives of luxury they so crave: by keeping the domain a backwater, they have fewer and fewer local resources in training people for education, the arts, and the finer things in life. Crop failures and expanding swampland is leading to a higher death rate for commoners, and there’s too many vampires sired to not contribute further to this, causing even the undead to suffer a food crisis. When you have both the nobility and commoners worrying about their next meal, revolution is bound to happen. Vampires unable to feed eventually devolve into Bloodstarved, CR 7 undead similar to vampire spawn save that they deal less damage, don’t have Regeneration and can only regain hit points from a Bonus Action Bloodfeast on a clawed target, and have a lot more hit points at 130 vs the spawn’s 82.The expanding swampland is known as the Tear Morass, slowly growing each year and whose cause is unknown, and it has swallowed up several settlements into ruin. At the heart of it is a unique monster known as the Primaeval Blood, a gigantic ooze-like being made of blood and possessed of alien intelligence, which attacks with pseudopods and the ability to “weaken the blood” of touched creatures that imposes vulnerability to necrotic and poison damage on top of disadvantage on attack rolls and ability checks.Regarding level-based difficulties, most of the common monsters in Dutrong are low-CR undead, with only a few rising above CR 5 and only the Primaeval Blood within the Tier 3 range. But its reigning vampire rulers are all traditional CR 15 monster manual vampires, barring one Vampire Spawn and the darklord Baroness LaBergere who has her own stat block which is more or less a typical Vampire but with a lot more skill proficiencies and various literal blood magic attacks and Legendary Actions like creating a thrown lance made of blood or forcefully ripping the blood out of other creatures as an AoE attack.As for its darklord, she was once a noble eager to be next in line to the family name, so she murdered her siblings in order to become Baroness. She then went on to claim adjacent lands of other nobles via underhanded tactics, and was then married with children. The onset of motherhood and the difficulties of childbirth caused her to confront her own mortality, fearful that she could lose all she had built up from the randomness of fate. Like so many others in this campaign setting, she researched dark magic to attain immortality, eventually becoming a vampire after murdering her husband as part of a human sacrifice.Flush with perceived invincibility, Baroness LaBergere granted her children and favored vassals vampirism as well, but she was at once too power-hungry and too liberal with those she converted to undeath. While her barony fielded a formidable force of undead warriors to conquer even more land, vampires and vampire spawn aren’t effective peace-time rulers. The need for blood, combined with the new undead’s lack of experience in blood-drinking, led to scores of death, as hundreds of people died each month simply from the “blood tax,” eventually encouraging a revolt. The Baroness commanded legions of the night to put down the rebellion, and in so doing gained a new kingdom. A kingdom shrouded in Mist, a kingdom doomed to crumble before her very eyes and even her own children are at risk of becoming little more than bloodcrazed beasts.Thoughts: I really like Dutrong as a domain. It is a bit one-note in terms of theme and not entirely original, but it really hits the notes of gothic horror in how even the villains and monsters have imprisoned themselves with their own misdeeds. Turning rival vampire families against each other and even the darklord can make for a good “enemy of my enemy” scenarios, and the eldritch horror in the swamp is an unconventional threat that still ties into the domain’s themes. While the primaeval blood may be hastening the process to the next revolution, its expanding swampland is also causing innocent people to starve to death, and is thus something PCs would want to stop.<img src="https://i.imgur.com/mhy72No.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />The End is not a land in the conventional sense, its reality ever-shifting into unsettling, nightmarish landscapes with little rhyme or reason besides the goal of breaking the minds of those unlucky enough to end up here. Eventually, those who remain too long lose hold of their memories and eventually turn into monsters that are literal Remnants of their former selves. Via the Content Warning sidebar, the End is meant to evoke the themes of dementia.There are some relatively stable points of interest spawned from the mind of the resident Darklord, such as the Ballroom full of discordant music and dancers with unrecognisable faces seemingly shattered like broken glass. Or a regal court with a king whose form constantly shifts and each time someone doesn’t look at him (even due to blinking) he ages one full year.Common monsters in the End tend to be on the low side of CR 5 or less barring two exceptions, with existing monsters being ones that evoke sensations of the unfamiliar and imperceptible like allips and will-o-wisps. We have five new monsters for this chapter, four of which are Fragments, incorporeal aberrations that appear as unfinished versions of various creatures like a half-done piece of artwork and are directly controlled by the Dark Powers: Decaying Memories (CR 3, no innate attacks but creatures nearby suffer psychic damage and possible levels of exhaustion on failed Intelligence save), Fugue (CR 10, huge cloud-like beings that can cast various enchantment spells, aura dealing psychic damage, and can lure people towards it on a failed Wisdom save), Mind Dreg (CR ½, basic attack dealing psychic damage and regains hit points from doing so), and Remnant (CR 5, appear as shattered versions of who they once were, are under the permanent effects of Blink and have a touch attack that imposes an ever-increasing die size on rolls like the Bane spell and a rechargeable stunning psychic attack). The fifth monster, the Gibbering Horror, is CR 7 and basically a gibbering mouther that has cannibalized its own to the point it has grown in size and power.And what of its Darklord? He is the Warden, his original name long since lost. He wanders the End, tormented by the Fragments as he tries desperately to make sense of reality and now is now a fearful, bitter man in a world he can never understand. He was once a respected court mage who aided his lord in becoming a fearsome conqueror; the mage’s wife grew disgusted with her husband, who became just as power-hungry as the man he served. When the kingdom’s transition to peacetime proved that a warlord does not automatically make one a good ruler, foreign invaders took advantage of local tensions. The Warden, long accustomed to viewing every problem as a nail that needs hammering, sought to solve this problem with unmatched, unstoppable violence, using a forbidden spell from his research to end the life of every being for miles around to defeat the armies. He was successful, but caused countless casualties beyond just the enemy soldiers. That was enough for the Mists to take attention, sending him to the End.In terms of stats, the Warden is unique in being a non-evil darklord, being of Neutral alignment, even if the act that condemned him was unquestionably evil. The text says that the darklord’s “torment is cruel, even for the Domains of Dread. Every moment is a spiral of confusion, fear, and mental anguish that never ends, and keeps getting worse.” In terms of stats he is a CR 17 incorporeal being whose main methods of offense revolving around mental assaults, from spawning Decaying Memories, deadly hallucinations that deal psychic damage, cause attackers to hit their allies in fits of delirium from a failed Wisdom save, and so on. Due to the Warden’s existence, he takes the maximum possible damage from psychic attacks, a notable weakness. He also has poor Strength and Charisma scores and no proficiency in those saves, another Achilles Heel.Thoughts: Of the first four domains covered, this one’s my least favorite. First off, the Warden was a power-hungry man who effectively dropped a magical nuke regardless of the cost. So you’d imagine that his domain would reflect his crimes. Being afflicted with what is basically magical Alzheimer’s feels out of left field and not in line with his sins. Compare the Warden to the previous entries: Prince Narsioch was spiteful of others being beloved and viewed as more legitimate rulers, so his attempts at sabotage merely prove him for the monster he is in the eyes of the people. Raghar dedicated his life to overthrowing a tyrant, only to become a tyrant himself. Baroness LaBergere willingly became a vampire in hopes of not losing her familial legacy, but it’s her undead nature and crimes that make her dynasty more fragile than ever.Additionally, the End’s malleable nature and real lack of three-dimensional characters outside of the Warden’s vague memories hampers it as an adventuring locale beyond a one-shot or brief foray, limiting its potential.Thoughts So Far: As outlined above, the domains with the exception of the End all have a fair amount of adventure hooks and locales beyond the Weekend in Hell style “defeat the Darklord,” and do a good job of evoking classical fantasy tropes but with dark gothic twists. I wasn’t as fond of Dromeria’s darklord, but even outside of him the domain has enough potential to be entertaining. Amarium and Dutrong have strong incentives for PCs to help out the people suffering under its darklord, and a variety of factions they can plausibly ally with or pit against a common enemy.Join us next time as we venture into four more domains, such as Malbor which takes place on a mountain-sized Gulthias Tree!</blockquote>

Verification