Ravenloft - where is it and how do you get there?

[dragonwarriorfan]

I'm starting a 4e game using Expedition to Ravenloft. The main hook is that the PCs are seeking out the Lightbringers (or perhaps even the Knights of the Raven, not sure yet). The PCs occupations are scholars and each have a cool backstory as to how they chose their occupation. That said, I need to get them to Barovia.

I want to start them at a library or monastery (ideas?) they've been studying at individually, and together decide to look for the "long lost" Lightbringers. Turns out, Strahd had info about the guild planted in this location hopes of attracting scholars and furthering his daywalker legion goal. Anyway, I was was thinking The Seven Pillared Hall in Thunderspire.

From there or wherever, its off to Barovia with some means of counteracting the surrounding fog. The question is, where is Barovia and how far away is it? I don't want to spend a ton of time on travel, but I'd like to add some RP elements to getting there. Thanks in advance.

 

[Zaran]

Is your world mapped out so much that you cannot place a transylvania sized country in some corner? You can do something like 2nd Edition where to get there you have to go to another plane like having to go into a fog on a night of the full moon near a statue set in a graveyard. This way leaving the realm is nigh impossible while Strahd doesn't want the PCs to leave.

 

[Stumblewyk]

In 2e Ravenloft days, it wa possible to enter into Ravenloft (which is located in it's own little pocket "dimension") by passing through any kind of barrier. IIRC, the 2e box set specifically mentions thick fogs, passing under the boughs of menacing trees arched over a road way, or dipping your face into a roadside stream. The general idea being that it's not just a physical barrier you might pass through. Much like some of 4e's Feywild crossings.

Speaking of 4e, the Manual of the Planes states that the Shadowfell contains a number of pocket "demiplanes", strongly hinting that Ravenloft might lay somewhere within it.

All that being said, if you're not interested in introducing planar travel to your game, there's nothing wrong just planting a Germanic/Slavic-style nation within your game world and just calling it Barovia. But if you want to stick true to previous Ravenloft lore, Barovia lies within the Demiplane of Ravenloft, which lies outside the "standard" physical world.

 

[Klaus]

In 4e, the Domains of Dread are located in the Shadowfell. Unlike 2e Ravenloft, where the domains were huddled together, in 4e there is some Darklord-free region between the domains (making them Islands of Terror, in 2e terminology).

If you're in Thunderspire Labyrinth, I'd recommend you create a location there where a great betrayal took place, and when the PCs get there they see smoke or fog coming up from a hidden fissure, and when the smoke/fog clears they're out in the open... in Barovia.

 

[malraux]

All that being said, if you're not interested in introducing planar travel to your game, there's nothing wrong just planting a Germanic/Slavic-style nation within your game world and just calling it Barovia. But if you want to stick true to previous Ravenloft lore, Barovia lies within the Demiplane of Ravenloft, which lies outside the "standard" physical world.

I6:Ravenloft/Expedition to Castle ravenloft never involved planar travel. The mists were controlled by strahd to keep the pcs in the module.

I put barovia north of the netir vale, though if I were to do it again, I would put it somewhere along the dawnforge mountains.

 

[Stumblewyk]

I6:Ravenloft/Expedition to Castle ravenloft never involved planar travel. The mists were controlled by strahd to keep the pcs in the module.

I put barovia north of the netir vale, though if I were to do it again, I would put it somewhere along the dawnforge mountains.

Ah. Never played or ran I6. My earliest (and only) exposure to Ravenloft was the 2e box set. Thanks for the clarification.

 

[webrunner]

Okay, take the exit from the city past the mysterious shopkeeper that sells cursed items and then disappears, go up the misty forest path you're sure wasn't there before, follow the voices at the edge of your hearing through the dark, twisty cavern tunnels, then when you get out of there turn right at Castlevania. You can't miss it.

 

[DEFCON 1]

If you have a DDI subscription and get a copy of Dungeon Issue 186, there's a Backdrop article about the village of Mistwatch, which is on the western shore of Lake Wintermist in the Nentir Vale. In the article it talks about the plague that the town currently suffers under, due to certain townsfolk worshipping the "Chained God". This results in much unnatural death, the dead walking the streets at night, plus banks of fog rolling in through the town streets.

If you wanted to use Mistwatch as a preliminary location to help set up Expedition To Castle Ranveloft, you could easily set Barovia further northwest of Lake Wintermist. Ravenloft has a river running right through its overland map, so you could easily use the western branch of the river that feeds into Lake Wintermist as that river. This would also place the actual Castle high onto the slopes of the Cairngorn Peaks or the Stonemarch.

Start the PCs in Winterhaven, and you can go into all sorts of stuff with regards to Kalarel and the Keep On The Shadowfell, tying him into Cadmus Zaspar and the cultists of Mistwatch, all of which feed into Strahd Von Zarovich and his rule over Barovia. With a few simple tweaks and changes to plot and specifics, you could actually put together a nice little storyline going from Keep On The Shadowfell to Mistwatch, to Castle Ravenloft.

 

[Riastlin]

I seem to recall in 2ed days there was a module called Ship of Horrors or somesuch that involved the PCs going to Ravenloft. The passage happened at night and at sea. Banks of fog, a kraken and a ghost ship all make an appearance as well. All in all was a pretty fun mod as I recall.

Bottom line though is that Ravenloft and/or Barovia are wherever you want them. Its your world (even if using a published setting) so do with it as you like.

 

[Estlor]

If you're going to start with KotS, here's what I'm planning on doing when the current campaign wraps up and we do a Ravenloft one. It borrows a little bit from Ravenloft the campaign setting while keeping you in Ravenloft the adventure.

Run KotS, but instead of Winterhaven, rename the town Lamordia. (Yeah, I know, that's a domain, not a city, but if we're doing an I6-inspired Ravenloft, there is no domain of Lamordia, is there?) Instead of the village being attacked by goblins, they're being attacked by goblyns. Rename Irontooth to some nice, fitting human name and make him a human with a magic cauldron that turns people into goblyns when they're put inside the cauldron. For that encounter, you can have the human mastermind panic and immerse himself in the cauldron as a last-resort to stop the PCs, at which point he comes out as Irontooth.

Now, as for the keep, it is the ancestral keep of Victor Mordenheim. Refluff the monsters in the top of the keep into things like broken ones, crawling claws, golems, that kind of stuff. One of the rooms should have Mordenheim's wife on life support in it. When the PCs get to the Sir Keegan encounter, refluff the skeletons into flesh golem-like clones of Mordenheim's wife. (The DM knows these are Mordenheim's failed experiments to "grow" a new body for his wife.) Then replace Sir Keegen with Mordenheim himself. Have him claim the body-snatching/attacks on the village are the result of Adam and the creature has locked him away here. He'll go with the party but stay out of harm's way in combat.

Now, instead of fighting Kalarel directly, when you enter the final room, Adam can make some kind of a cryptic exclamation about the party being fools for letting him out and go off on them. When they drive him off, Mordenheim thanks them... only to try an open a gate into the Shadowfell to gain the power necessary to capture a divine spark needed to bring an alternate body for his dying wife to life. (So yeah, Mordenheim replaces Keegan AND Kalarel.)

Since the group will pick up on the Frankenstein allusion pretty quickly, I think they'll take to Victor and believe his side of events. For my purposes I'm using the Adam story as he tells it ("Honest, it was all just an accident"). So the PCs will have that delicious moment of realization that Frankenstein's monster isn't the Creature... it's Mordenheim!

*wrings hands and cackles madly*

My plans are basically to just make the entirety of the Nentir Vale Barovia. It's as "safe" as it is because when Nerath was falling, the Vale was protected and secured by the military might of Strahd. Only now the place is falling to pieces because Strahd cares for little but his own plots. And because Strahd is such a bad fellow, it's become a haven for all sorts of undesirable forces because darkness calls out to darkness.