D&D General Reading Ravenloft the setting

[tetrasodium]

If they are going to be rewriting Darklord origins, it would be nice if they stop putting all the Darklord's women in fridges. I get that it is a Gothic horror trope, but man the number of fridged women in Ravenloft is crazy...

Elise (Lamordia)
d'Honaire's unnamed first love (Dementieu)
Estelle Weathermay (Mordent)
Kitiara (Sithicus)
Kristina (Borca - Ivan's sister)
Tatyana (Barovia)
Nine unnamed lovers killed by Malken (Nova Vaasa)
Ludmilla (Markovia)
Misroi's unnamed wife (Souragne)
Ireena (Vorostikov)
Mara (House of Lament)

That's going by a quick review of Domains of Dread, and ignoring the murder of a lover by Von Kharkov (he was involuntarily transformed back to a beast when it happened and was horrified by it) and Tristen's adopted mother (who just happened to drink holy water before it happened, as you do).

I think one of the videos mentioned a new darklord being a woman but don't remmber which domain or anything about it beyond a vague sense of maybe vampire related feeling

 

[Remathilis]

I think one of the videos mentioned a new darklord being a woman but don't remmber which domain or anything about it beyond a vague sense of maybe vampire related feeling

Lamordia, Falkovia and Dementieu are all getting female Darklords related to the originals (or at least have the same last names), all of which has been revealed already.

 

[Faolyn]

And if they could stop making the female Darklords have either a need for a man or a hatred of men be their primary motivation.

Seriously, only one female DL I can think of--Elana Faithhold--doesn't have a man-related backstory.

 

[Alzrius]

Kitiara (Sithicus)

Forgive the nitpicking here, but this one doesn't really count. Kitiara's death was part of Dragonlance's Legends trilogy of novels, and while Caradoc (Soth's senechal) said that he retrieved her soul from Takhisis's realm as Soth ordered him to in James Lowder's novel Knight of the Black Rose, he refused to turn it over, and we subsequently see her spirit during the Summer of Chaos on Krynn, working for Takhisis.

Insofar as Sithicus goes, while the original backstory for Soth being a darklord says that he followed her voice through the mists, that was stated to be a false rumor at the end of the aforementioned novel. Likewise, while the description for Sithicus in the 2E campaign setting books says that her spirit haunts the realm to torment Soth, When Black Roses Bloom (affiliate link) confirmed that this wasn't the real Kitiara, but was instead a duplicate created to torment Soth.

 

[Remathilis]

Forgive the nitpicking here, but this one doesn't really count. Kitiara's death was part of Dragonlance's Legends trilogy of novels, and while Caradoc (Soth's senechal) said that he retrieved her soul from Takhisis's realm as Soth ordered him to in James Lowder's novel Knight of the Black Rose, he refused to turn it over, and we subsequently see her spirit during the Summer of Chaos on Krynn, working for Takhisis.

Insofar as Sithicus goes, while the original backstory for Soth being a darklord says that he followed her voice through the mists, that was stated to be a false rumor at the end of the aforementioned novel. Likewise, while the description for Sithicus in the 2E campaign setting books says that her spirit haunts the realm to torment Soth, When Black Roses Bloom (affiliate link) confirmed that this wasn't the real Kitiara, but was instead a duplicate created to torment Soth.

That's mostly due to his nature as being the only true cannon immigrant that was established in another setting first and later ported to Ravenloft, whereas many of the other Darklords were created for Ravenloft and given origins from other settings in backstory. Vecna and Kas might be the only other examples, but their stay in Ravenloft was so brief it barely counts.

My point is that their are a lot of dead women involved in the fall and punishment of these Darklords, and that it is overused and a little icky.

 

[humble minion]

Lamordia, Falkovia and Dementieu are all getting female Darklords related to the originals (or at least have the same last names), all of which has been revealed already.

Yeah, I'd also assumed that a lot of the new Darklords were female to help rectify that same wildly skewed dynamic.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

And if they could stop making the female Darklords have either a need for a man or a hatred of men be their primary motivation.

Seriously, only one female DL I can think of--Elana Faithhold--doesn't have a man-related backstory.

Many of the male darklords have a female related backstory, Strahd included. There has always been a fine line between Gothic Horror and Gothic Romance. One of the reasons for moving the setting away from exclusively Gothic.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Actually, after sleeping on it, it's fairly apparent that Mordenheim himself is part of Adam's punishment, just as Tatyana is Strahd's.

Which sucks for Elise, who really did very little wrong. But as we've observed before, the Dark Powers have no issues whatsoever in causing collateral damage when doling out their poetic punishments. Just ask Tatyana. Or the entire population of Forfar, who got transformed into face-eating goblyns because their laird was a jerk.

I don't think it has ever been established that the Dark Powers are motivated by a desire to punish evil people for being evil. Which would kind of imply they are lawful good.

I've always felt that the Dark Powers where the most evil of the lot, and probably feed upon negative emotion. The most evil people being the strongest source of negative emotions, the Dark Powers focus on torturing them in order to generate the maximum negativity. And they would much rather turn a hero evil than kill them.

 

[humble minion]

I've always felt that the Dark Powers where the most evil of the lot, and probably feed upon negative emotion. The most evil people being the strongest source of negative emotions, the Dark Powers focus on torturing them in order to generate the maximum negativity. And they would much rather turn a hero evil than kill them.

If it was about sheer negativity, the Dark Powers would have, odds-on, imprisoned ONE good (or at least non-horrible) person at some stage. It's obviously more complicated than that - and equally obviously from a meta point of view there's not really any rhyme or reason or secret canonical explanation as to why they do what they do that's hidden in a top-secret safe at WotC HQ. I don't think about the 'why' of the Dark Powers very much to be honest - and i suspect the designers don't either. The Dark Powers do what's convenient for the game line. Trying to find a logical explanation for their activities is a bit on the doomed side...

 

[Paul Farquhar]

If it was about sheer negativity, the Dark Powers would have, odds-on, imprisoned ONE good (or at least non-horrible) person at some stage.

Good people have hope that things can get better. The Dark Powers first crush hope and goodness, then imprison their victims.