D&D General Reading Ravenloft the setting

[Voadam]

and one (possibly two) of Ravenloft's very, very few actual dragons. Why are there no dragon darklords?

4e added one (well dracolich) tying into the 4e ancient dragonborn Arkhosia war with the tieflings. See Dragon 378.

 

[Voadam]

Azalin pales in comparison to a lot of other D&D liches in a number of ways the top Ravenloft lich darklord should be shining.

Of course this ended up later with Vecna and the Burning Waste Cluster for a literal demigod lich as the top-tier lich darklord of the setting who could stand side by side power wise with other D&D world liches, but I did not feel that really worked for the desired feel of Ravenloft. Even when Vecna was there Azalin still felt like the iconic lich for the gothic horror D&D flavor of the line.

 

[Alzrius]

After a couple of months in Darkon, any foreigner will wake up one morning with their memories wiped with no saving throw, and replaced by an entire lifetime of false memories in which they're Darkon natives. That imposes obvious hindrances to having foreign PCs adventuring here, especially since the only way of recovering your memories (other than leaving Darkon) is with artifact-level magic or the use of a book that's in Azalin's possession. And of course by that time the PC doesn't even want to regain their memories because it'd mean the loss of all their false ones. It's not really clear why this happens - I don't think Azalin's responsible (why would he bother?) and from the Dark Powers point of view the phenomenon doesn't seem to be torturing Azalin particularly, so I'm not sure it's them either. Anyone know?

I don't know the answer to this, but it's been around since the original Realm of Terror boxed set, assuming I recall correctly. The only guess I can make is that it's either meant to push forward a particular horror narrative, or it's meant to be a basis for having the PCs raid Avernus to get their memories back (though this latter one is iffy; not only is that essentially suicide, there's no basis for the PCs to even suspect that lost memories are recoverable to begin with, short of leaving the domain).

What I found notable with regard to this Gazetteer specifically, insofar as that particular feature of the domain goes, is that it echoes (either by implication or explicitly stating so; I can't remember) the three methods of regaining your memories (without leaving Darkon) laid out in RQ3 From the Shadows, two of which are only temporary and one of which is permanent. The catch, however, is that the permanent method requires using a quill of law, a minor artifact that - if I remember correctly - wasn't actually updated to D&D Third Edition. So PCs might have some problems there!

He's got an odd conflict between his prorities - he wants to escape Ravenloft (Why? He's been here hundreds of years, what is there for him back home anyway?)

Actually, a point of differentiation in Ravenloft Third Edition is that Azalin has now resigned himself to not being able to return home. He's still planning on fighting his "tormentors," but he's realized that even if he can manage to get out, there's nothing to stop them from simply snatching him up again.

but his curse is supposedly targeting his weakest psychological point of ... stopping him learning magic? I guess his sin is his unbending need to not be defied, whether by his son or by the Dark Powers. But in that case why curse him with the inability to learn magic? It's a little muddled here.

I'm of the opinion that this is an artifact of his character development. Azalin wasn't very well fleshed-out (no pun intended) when we first met him back in I10 Ravenloft II: The House on Gryphon Hill (where, as I recall, he was working with "The Alchemist" because he wanted to transfer himself into a different body, or something to that effect; another reason, I suspect, why the module has been retconned as much as it has), and the Realm of Terror boxed set didn't add much when it got around to making him a darklord. There was no mention of his having had a son, for instance, until the aforementioned RQ3 From the Shadows (which introduced his ghost), and it wasn't until Gene DeWeese's novel King of the Dead that (again, if I recall correctly) Azalin was depicted as being obsessed with resurrecting and "redeeming" him.

Please note my use of affiliate links in this post.

 

[Faolyn]

but his curse is supposedly targeting his weakest psychological point of ... stopping him learning magic? I guess his sin is his unbending need to not be defied, whether by his son or by the Dark Powers. But in that case why curse him with the inability to learn magic? It's a little muddled here.

It's supposed to make him extremely jealous any time he encounters a spell he doesn't already know. Whether that's an actually interesting and sufficiently curse-like curse if up to you. But in 2e, at least, there were a bajillion spells, to the point of filling those four Wizards Spell Compendiums (even if most of those spells were superfluous to anyone's needs), so I suppose there was a greater chance of him seeing someone (i.e., a PC0 with a spell he didn't know.

I can't remember what his spell list is, but I imagine that if you really wanted to make it more of a curse, you could remove a lot of the more common spells from his books. No magic missile for him!

Of course, you could say that another part of his curse is that he mostly wants to do his research and instead has this giant country to run, and his personality is such that he can't delegate.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

He can't learn new spells but he can hire spellcasters to craft magic scrolls, I guess.

And we have to remember Azalin, after Strandh, was one of the main characters of the metaplot. He was responsible of the events about the grand conjuction.

I guess the demiplaned will be divided into different "layers". The first one would be the classic Barovia and neigbour domains, with a menace level between Scooby Dood, R.L.Stine's Goosebumps, Chiller Bones, Charmed and Buffy Vampire-Slayer, and a second layer, more dangerous, with a level as Doom Eternal, Kult: Lost Divinity and Mortal Kombat, practically the post-apocalypse hell on the earth. The irony is some dark lords become as "necessary evil" to avoid these infernal layer to attack zones from the material plane.

 

[humble minion]

Actually, a point of differentiation in Ravenloft Third Edition is that Azalin has now resigned himself to not being able to return home. He's still planning on fighting his "tormentors," but he's realized that even if he can manage to get out, there's nothing to stop them from simply snatching him up again.

Even that's a bit wobbly. It says that in his writeup, and he makes a comment to that effect in one of his margin notes in Gazetteer I, but word from the writers was that the purpose behind the whole Gazetteer project was part of another plot to escape. So they obviously didn't view him as entirely resigned. Or it might have just been confusion again.

 

[Alzrius]

Even that's a bit wobbly. It says that in his writeup, and he makes a comment to that effect in one of his margin notes in Gazetteer I, but word from the writers was that the purpose behind the whole Gazetteer project was part of another plot to escape. So they obviously didn't view him as entirely resigned. Or it might have just been confusion again.

It wasn't a plan to escape; it was a plan to restore his son to life. The designers revealed everything behind where the plot involving Doomsday Gazetteers was going after the line folded.

 

[humble minion]

It wasn't a plan to escape; it was a plan to restore his son to life. The designers revealed everything behind where the plot involving Doomsday Gazetteers was going after the line folded.

Ah, you're right of course - I've read that document before but I'd forgotten the detail - it was actually the Gentleman Caller who was using the whole business to try to escape, Azalin was just piggybacking on his plot.

 

[humble minion]

First thing up in Necropolis, we have ... character backstory! After the Requiem turned Il Aluk into a realm of the undead, S apparently spent a lot of time studying the horrible place in fascination. S also had a daughter. 'Had' in past tense - said daughter strayed too close to a captured ghoul that S was 'interrogating', which broke free and attacked her. S destroyed the ghoul, but too late. S's daughter sickened, died, arose again, and is now a ghoul roaming Necropolis. And is not happy about this or about S in general, reading between some rather unsubtle lines.

This is not a long chapter, perhaps making up for the space Darkon took up. And to be fair, that's reasonable. Necropolis is a geographically small and very new. While I haven't read or played the Grim Harvest/Requiem sequence of adventures, basically Azalin was building a giant arcane machine to blow himself out of Ravenloft, but on its first test run it instead blew him to necromantic dust, flooded the entire city of Il Aluk with necrotic energy which killed every single living thing inside it and turned them into undead, and turned its test subject into a unique negative energy elemental calling itself Death, who was Darkon's darklord for a while until the intervention of PCs resulted in Azalin's reassembly and return to that role (I wonder if he was happy about that?) and Death's becoming the Darklord of the new domain of Necropolis. Necropolis is a dead, dead place. Living creatures die with horrifying speed as soon as they enter the domain, and in 3e, even very powerful magic couldn't really protect you from that. The effect can be delayed by wearing a particular flower (from the only plant growing in Necropolis) next to the skin, but this extremely expensive and unreliable means is the only possible way that living PCs will ever get to spend time in this place, which limits its utility as an adventure location. In most campaigns, you'd spend more time dealing with critters slinking out of Necropolis, and the various knock-on impacts of the capital city suddenly being an undead hellhole, than you would actually adventuring here.

Geographically, Necropolis is a large city (even after the disaster of the Requiem and half a decade of its inhabitants brawling with each other, it's got a population larger than the great majority of domains), now crumbling under lack of maintenance and necrotic corrosion. There are four satellite villages around it, rather cringeingly named Despondia, Degradia, Desolatus, and Decimus, which is apparently what they were called even before the Requiem, a stroke of dubious creativity that i hope some game designer is suitably embarrassed about now. The city - is a city. Roads, buildings, governmental offices, gardens reduced to dust and ash by the Requiem, shops and dwellings populated by skeletons and ghosts, ghouls and the like clinging with varying degrees of success to their individuality and memories. Death rules despotically, Azalin's old state religion of the Eternal Order has morphed into a cult of undead supremacy, the populace is split between those mindlessly mimicking routines of their past lives, those factionalising into brawling street gangs or backstabbing ambitious creeps, and some (vampires and ghouls in particular) who are trying to work out some way of reliably getting the human sustenence they need when no human can live here for more than a couple of minutes. Still, there are reasons to come here. Any necromancer or scholar of the undead is in clover here, plus there's the entire famed library of the University of Il Aluk sitting around, and Azalin's personal stash of evil magic items is rumoured to be here too.

As far as the Darklord goes, Death lacks ... something. He's actually got an interesting backstory, in life he was a clone of Azalin (one of many) that Azalin bred in an attempt to skirt around the curse that stops him learning new magic. This failed obviously, so Azalin;s next job for the guy was to test his dread machine, which also did not go to plan. Death, it's fair to say, carries more than a bit of resentment of Azalin over from his human incarnation, which is one reason his curse is actually so poetic. During the events of the Requiem, Death was much, much more powerful than he is now. Azalin's return and meddling PCs really diminished him from what he once was. But that's his curse - he proclaims himself (and mostly believes himself) to be the literal incarnation of Death itself, in line with the teachings of the Eternal Order, but somewhere deep inside he's cursed to know that he's really just the byproduct of a complicated industrial-necromantic accident. He wants to believe he is the master of undeath and that Azalin (who he resents) quivers before him - but in reality he's the minor Darklord of a minor domain that is surrounded completely by Azalin's much larger, more powerful domain.

How any of this is likely to matter to PCs, or to actually be meaningfully used in a campaign, I confess baffles me a bit. Necropolis is just so hostile as to be really difficult to visit. Even places like Cavitus and Bluetspur are more survivable. As such, I wouldn't be surprised to see it go away in the upcoming 5th ed iteration of the setting - especially as Necropolis is so fundamentally tied in with Darkon, and we know that domains sharing common physical borders is going to be a thing of the past as we move to the Islands-in-the-mist model.


Random class generator spat out Warlock this time around, which actually leads nicely into something i wanted to talk about a bit. But first, here's the character. Halfling dhampir chain pact warlock of the fiend. I figure she was a scholar or professor working at the Univerity of Il Aluk when the Requiem happened, and found herself turned into a vampire. She had just enough fading mortal conscience left to leverage her knowledge of the great library to break into the forbidden archives and find a book that promised her a return to humanity - if she made a deal. Unfortunately, she did not phrase her side of the deal completely correctly. Instead of being returned to full halflingdom, her patron returned her just far enough to still qualify as mortal, technically. She was not happy about this, but once you've made a pact, you've made a pact. This why you read the fine print. Anyway, here she is having an animated 'discussion' with her rather smug fiendish pseudodragon familiar, who acts as her patron's voice.

Anyway - warlocks in Ravenloft raises a ... lot of questions. Traditionally Ravenloft was not a happy place (at least in the long term) for those who take a means-justify-ends view of power. Powers checks for any sort of necromancy, no matter how benign, for many conjurations, and i think some enchantments. Familiars, animal companions, paladin's steeds all being malicious entities out to corrupt their masters. If you go by Van Richten's Guide to Fiends, then a fiend pact warlock has maybe a month or two of existence left before they get dragged bodily into hell and their patron starts walking around in their skin. They're deliberately, consciously making pacts with fiends and this is Ravenloft, what do they expect?? And dhampirs etc are not in a much better place (I didn't follow 4e - was there a tiefling domain shoehorned into the place at some point, like i understand there was a dragon- and dragonborn-centric domain? Because tieflings in old-school Ravenloft are marginal too). Ravenloft was always very very unforgiving about dabbling with darkness. But just off the top of my head, looking at the 5e subclasses we have so far - phantom rogue, necromancer wizard, fiend warlock, great old one warlock, death cleric, undying warlock, fathomless warlock, long death monk, spores druid are basically doomed off the bat if we're using an old Ravenloft-y approach to dabbling in darkness, while beast barbarian, whispers bard, shadow monk, conquest paladin, vengeance paladin, archfey warlock, genie warlock are all running pretty close to the wind, and swarmkeeper druid, beastmaster ranger, wildfire druid, any paladin summoning a mount, and any caster summoning a familiar might also be depending on how 5e RL continues the 'dread companion' paradigm.

I'll be interested to see how WotC squares the circle. They've been (from what I've seen) very reluctant to impose or even strongly recommend PC option restrictions in their campaign settings (beyond 'a more traditional X campaign would not contain Y, so if you want to play Y, check with your DM'), and even more reluctant to have PC abilities/qualities that have negative consequences, or which are wholly detrimental (we've seen veeeery few Sunlight Sensitivity PC options since veryearly in 5e, I'm just saying - even dhampirs don't have it!) But the consequences of choice and of dabbling in darkness is right at the core of Ravenloft. I know there's talk of Tainted Gifts and the like, which give PCs power at a price, and that the tragic hero is a staple of the genre - but the new Ravenloft could be a lot more high-fantasy and a lot less gothic if it leans more to the 5e-ish side on PC options. And it'll be an interesting indication for what WotC might do with Dark Sun in future - a setting that absolutely cannot function in a recognisable form unless PCs options are harshly limited.

 

[Voadam]

Anyway - warlocks in Ravenloft raises a ... lot of questions. Traditionally Ravenloft was not a happy place (at least in the long term) for those who take a means-justify-ends view of power. Powers checks for any sort of necromancy, no matter how benign, for many conjurations, and i think some enchantments. Familiars, animal companions, paladin's steeds all being malicious entities out to corrupt their masters. If you go by Van Richten's Guide to Fiends, then a fiend pact warlock has maybe a month or two of existence left before they get dragged bodily into hell and their patron starts walking around in their skin. They're deliberately, consciously making pacts with fiends and this is Ravenloft, what do they expect?? And dhampirs etc are not in a much better place (I didn't follow 4e - was there a tiefling domain shoehorned into the place at some point, like i understand there was a dragon- and dragonborn-centric domain? Because tieflings in old-school Ravenloft are marginal too). Ravenloft was always very very unforgiving about dabbling with darkness. But just off the top of my head, looking at the 5e subclasses we have so far - phantom rogue, necromancer wizard, fiend warlock, great old one warlock, death cleric, undying warlock, fathomless warlock, long death monk, spores druid are basically doomed off the bat if we're using an old Ravenloft-y approach to dabbling in darkness, while beast barbarian, whispers bard, shadow monk, conquest paladin, vengeance paladin, archfey warlock, genie warlock are all running pretty close to the wind, and swarmkeeper druid, beastmaster ranger, wildfire druid, any paladin summoning a mount, and any caster summoning a familiar might also be depending on how 5e RL continues the 'dread companion' paradigm.

I'll be interested to see how WotC squares the circle. They've been (from what I've seen) very reluctant to impose or even strongly recommend PC option restrictions in their campaign settings (beyond 'a more traditional X campaign would not contain Y, so if you want to play Y, check with your DM'), and even more reluctant to have PC abilities/qualities that have negative consequences, or which are wholly detrimental (we've seen veeeery few Sunlight Sensitivity PC options since veryearly in 5e, I'm just saying - even dhampirs don't have it!) But the consequences of choice and of dabbling in darkness is right at the core of Ravenloft. I know there's talk of Tainted Gifts and the like, which give PCs power at a price, and that the tragic hero is a staple of the genre - but the new Ravenloft could be a lot more high-fantasy and a lot less gothic if it leans more to the 5e-ish side on PC options. And it'll be an interesting indication for what WotC might do with Dark Sun in future - a setting that absolutely cannot function in a recognisable form unless PCs options are harshly limited.

How does Curse of Strahd handle it? I was gifted CoS but have not read most of it, I read the tarokka parts for a 5e gothic campaign I was running but held off on the rest to play the module as a player. In the game I was in (currently on hiatus) our vengeance paladin's warhorse always came back as loyally undead after it was killed once. I don't know if that was the DM's invention or inline with the advice for ravenlofting it up.