Café de Nuit

That's certainly an intriguing concept and one that had never occurred to me. In this case, however, what reason do you see for the Dark Powers apparently making the Nightmare Man's "chosen companions" his co-darklords? It's not so much that the DPs endowed the Court members individually ...

Personally, I've considered taking the opposite approach with the Nightmare Man IMC: that he doesn't have a published backstory because he actually has no backstory. He's not a man at all, but a constructed entity created by the Dark Powers, possibly as an experimental attempt to build a darklord ra...

One possibly twist to make I'Cath -- sheeesh, can't we change that name? You can't even say it in Chinese! -- a bit more Ravenlofty might be to make one of Tsien's evil daughters into the real darklord. Having the darklord be the most powerful being in a domain is the knee-jerk default, but what if ...

One possible solution to the issue would be for her to let the people she deals with "accidentally" discover that she (apparently) owns a hat of disguise . If the right sorts of people (i.e. the shady merchants and smugglers she does business with) think she's using a magic item to change ...

2. The House of Lamant The house itself is the darklord? A house is a THING how does it rank being a darklord? The House actually works better as an oubliette than a domain, IMO. No need for a darklord or even much of a backstory then, just a creepy environment that the DM can place when and where ...

It is at least debatable as to whether the words "hell" and "hellish" should have any meaning in the Land of Mists. Perhaps they should be avoided. There is a "Hell of Slaves" in Lawgiver mythology. In game, it is somewhat unlikely that a Vassi term for their underworl...

I think the Nocturnal Sea Gazetteer did a fairly good job of patching up some of the Book of Crypts guys (whom would later become demilords of Liffe). Meredoth got the best treatment, overall, int the book, in fleshing out his archetype/personality, connections with Ravenloft and Mystara, and his c...

I had a what-the-@#!* reaction myself when "Feast of Goblyns" came out. Not so much because it wasn't at all logical -- at the time, D&D modules in general were pretty illogical -- but because it actually gave the most thorough description yet published of a Ravenloft domain's terrain,...

Plenty of other adjectives in the same vein -- Gracious, Wise, Favored, Caring, etc -- could work too.

There's also the small matter of Kateri's ghost hanging around Shadowborn Manor after her demise, and of Ebonbane assuming she's the reason it's trapped in its domain. Its attempts to mess with Kateri's former loved ones and allies are motivated as much by its belief that this will weaken her spirit...

Neither of these quotes from the article jibe with my impression of the doctor in the slightest. (I can see why a DM might prefer a passive Van Richten, so as not to outshine the PCs (see our recent thread about him) but the character as presented in the Guides is a very active one.) FWIW, the conf...

Only if fenhounds were smart enough to think to doubt themselves. They're not intelligent enough to stop and assess their own actions' worthiness. Elena, in contrast, is intelligent enough that she ought to know better; in fact, she does doubt her own actions every time she dreams, she just doesn't ...

Yeah, I almost went with lawful evil. LN is just one step away, and the case could be made for either. But to me, "evil" implies a sort of selfishness that these hounds don't possess. They seem more like programmed automatons, with instructions that they can't evaluate or override. Possib...

We know that Strahd has actively suppressed Van Richten's books in Barovia, so he's another possible candidate for quietly backing an effort to discredit the old hunter's works.

Perhaps the box is the entryway to a pocket domain whose darklord preys on children. You could do a ''Coraline''-type solo adventure, with a boogeyman or similar menace as the enemy. Defeating the threat would require cleverness and trickery, not combat; think ''Labyrinth'' or ''The Wee Free Men''.