Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="humble minion" data-source="post: 8215952" data-attributes="member: 5948">Second domain is Hazlan.We have some few commonalities with Barovia here, again it's a heavily human-dominated domain, 92% in this case, and the predominately halflings and gnomes that make up the rest only get a couple of sentences.  And again, we have intre-human ethnic conflict a major theme, more on that later.Hazlan is a weird domain thematically.  It's ripped straight from Thay in the Forgotten Realms, and its relationship to Ravenloft-y gothic horror is ... questionable at best.  As far as i know, Hazlan and Hazlik date right back to the Black Box and have been a continual feature of the setting ever since, but there's never been a major adventure or even significant metaplot point set here.  It almost seems to hang around out of inertia rather than anything.  Ravenloft grognards, am I missing something here?  Has Hazlan been an integral part of anyone's Ravenloft games?As such, the Gazetteer throws a lot of thematic ideas for Hazlan at the wall, hoping some will stick.First is the idea of Hazlan as a magically-polluted contaminated waste tainted by (presumably) Hazlik's experiments - there's strange and unpleasant magic all over the place, the crops rot unwholesomely, aberrations like chuuls and krenshars are noted as being magical byproducts, and there's some atmospheric-sounding sites like the Black Spire and the Hill of the Hundred Paths covered.Second is our ethnic tension.  We have the pale-skinned Mulan who are a 10% minority but form a pampered overclass, and the dark-skinned 90% Rashemani who live as downtrodden serfs.  This state of affairs is reinforced by the dominant religion of the Lawgiver, a reskin of FRs Bane, who is a LE deity of mailed-fits order, tyranny, strength etc. Then we have the Darklord Hazlik, who is the overlord of the country by sheer arcane might, but who is destabilising the place by undermining various of its social structures.  This, frankly, is a bit of a mess.  Hazlik's background involves a doomed crush on another Mulan man (his wife's lover), who entrapped and then humiliated him, for which he exacted horrible revenge which had him packed off to Ravenloft.  His big goal is to escape Ravnloft, return to Thay, commit magical genocide on all the Mulan across both worlds, and then live forever in the body of his female Rashemani apprentice.  So yeah, som ... questionable ... stuff there.  To this end he's recently released strictures on other people learning magic, and has founded magic schools with both Mulan and Rashemani students, so he can use them in his grand design, and this has up him at loggerheads with the Lawgiver's church.I find my self questioning why Hazlan exists, frankly.  It's a perfectly good D&D setting with some interesting things to do, but if it represents a horror archetype at all then it must be one I'm unfamiliar with.  It's been around in Ravenloft for many, many editions and iterations, but as far as i can tell, it's never made much of an impact on the broader setting. There is a few lines talking about how graduate of Hazlik's new magic school are travelling abroad and finding employment as court wizards etc in a setting which is generally fairly light on areas which are mage-friendly, but this is a plot thread that never really gets followed up upon.  Combined with the profoundly confused ethnic and gender/sexuality minefield that is Hazlik's backstory and the place's general social structure, this is a domain I would not be at all surprised to see vanish into the mists when the 5e book comes around. The random class generator chose monk for Hazlan, so here's our iconic local PC.  We have a caliban monk here, 3e Ravenloft's not-half-orc, which basically used half-orc stats to represent unfortunates born physically twisted due to exposure to curses or fell magic in the womb.  Our hero was born in a Rashemani village too close to one of Hazlik's experimental sites, blind in one eye and with misshapen limbs and skin tending to unnatural colours.  As quickly as was decent her horrified village packed her off to the mines, but she fortunately came under the wing of an old veteran mine slave who taught her unarmed combat techniques passed down from captive to captive...[ATTACH=full]133704[/ATTACH]Next up, Forlorn.</blockquote>

Verification