In the beginning...

Discussing all things Ravenloft
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Zettaijin
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In the beginning...

Post by Zettaijin »

The Dark Powers have been known to pluck individuals from out of nowhere to then place them within a domain often with new or at least altered memories.

Now, different groups of individuals have differing views on how the world came to be and within the average high fantasy yet still Earth-like D&D settings one can easily transpose existing creation myths from various material such as those devoted to certain faiths or races.

Demihumans tend to share certain common ideas in terms of their respective creation myths but with (sometimes very) different interpretations of common events.

Ravenloft being a patchwork monster of sorts with parts taken wholly from existing worlds and others created from whole cloth for a given individual means people may have different views on creation. How do these people deal with opposing or differing views?

Moreover, is there such a thing as demiplane prehistory? Sure, eldritch abominations may lurk in the darkest corners of the demiplane, but what (if anything) came before what could be called the first civilization?

Also, does evolution exist within the demiplane or is everything tightly controlled by the DPs? Could one accidentally come across the remains of extinct beasts?
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ewancummins
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Re: In the beginning...

Post by ewancummins »

RE Evolution:

Some Lamordians IMC believe in ideas similar to Lamarck's theory of evolution.


RE Fossils:


Fossils exist IMC. I'm not sure I have used them much, but they do exist.
In a different sort of fantasy world, some fossils might simply be the remains of creatures petrified by magical attacks/monsters, but in Ravenloft I'd suggest fossils were:

1) products of spontaneous generation in the earth and rock. Natural and real, but not actually remains of living beings. Rather, the aborted attempts of the Land to produce living beings.

2) stolen from older Prime plane worlds, along with the earth and rock around them (Mists steal a chunk of land)-- so really fossils in the sense we'd mean.

3) copied from other worlds when an Prime Planar territory is mapped and reproduced by the Mists-- real to all appearances, but copies and not originals.

Different views on creation and origins of The Land, and how people deal with disagreements:

Mostly, I treat it as a matter of academic debate. Your typical person does not spend much time worrying about these high order metaphysical questions, and just trusts what the local religious authority of the wisdom of folklore tell him.
Ezra, the Wolf God, the mortisants and death gods of Darkon, Belenus (
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I suppose Belenus could have had a major role in creation-- the real-world mythology that survives seems quite vague, mostly just conjecture based on syncretic identification, apart from him being a solar deity. If anybody knows more, please do enlighten me).
, and so on are not usually described as creator gods. To me, that suggests most of the cults and churches of Ravenloft ascribe the creation of the Land to the Mists (Mists of Death, as Ezran scrolls describe them in canon lore) or to some mysterious ''Powers'' beyond mortal ken.
Whatever it was, it does not answer prayers or show itself.
An absent, dead, or blind Demiurge, maybe...


I prefer to go with a Black Box vibe, in which the ''Dark Powers'' are mostly a metagame thing, and the emphasis in the setting material falls instead on ''The Mists'' and ''The Land."
Delight is to him- a far, far upward, and inward delight- who against the proud gods and commodores of this earth, ever stands forth his own inexorable self.

-from Moby Dick (Hermann Melville)
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Zettaijin
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Re: In the beginning...

Post by Zettaijin »

ewancummins wrote: Fossils exist IMC. I'm not sure I have used them much, but they do exist.
In a different sort of fantasy world, some fossils might simply be the remains of creatures petrified by magical attacks/monsters, but in Ravenloft I'd suggest fossils were:

1) products of spontaneous generation in the earth and rock. Natural and real, but not actually remains of living beings. Rather, the aborted attempts of the Land to produce living beings.

2) stolen from older Prime plane worlds, along with the earth and rock around them (Mists steal a chunk of land)-- so really fossils in the sense we'd mean.

3) copied from other worlds when an Prime Planar territory is mapped and reproduced by the Mists-- real to all appearances, but copies and not originals.
So, would you agree that Strahd astride a reanimated dinosaur is not only a possibility but perhaps something of a necessity? And if not Strahd, then who?
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Re: In the beginning...

Post by thekristhomas »

Zettaijin wrote:
ewancummins wrote: Fossils exist IMC. I'm not sure I have used them much, but they do exist.
In a different sort of fantasy world, some fossils might simply be the remains of creatures petrified by magical attacks/monsters, but in Ravenloft I'd suggest fossils were:

1) products of spontaneous generation in the earth and rock. Natural and real, but not actually remains of living beings. Rather, the aborted attempts of the Land to produce living beings.

2) stolen from older Prime plane worlds, along with the earth and rock around them (Mists steal a chunk of land)-- so really fossils in the sense we'd mean.

3) copied from other worlds when an Prime Planar territory is mapped and reproduced by the Mists-- real to all appearances, but copies and not originals.
So, would you agree that Strahd astride a reanimated dinosaur is not only a possibility but perhaps something of a necessity? And if not Strahd, then who?
and if not now, then when?
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Re: In the beginning...

Post by ewancummins »

Zettaijin wrote:
ewancummins wrote: Fossils exist IMC. I'm not sure I have used them much, but they do exist.
In a different sort of fantasy world, some fossils might simply be the remains of creatures petrified by magical attacks/monsters, but in Ravenloft I'd suggest fossils were:

1) products of spontaneous generation in the earth and rock. Natural and real, but not actually remains of living beings. Rather, the aborted attempts of the Land to produce living beings.

2) stolen from older Prime plane worlds, along with the earth and rock around them (Mists steal a chunk of land)-- so really fossils in the sense we'd mean.

3) copied from other worlds when an Prime Planar territory is mapped and reproduced by the Mists-- real to all appearances, but copies and not originals.
So, would you agree that Strahd astride a reanimated dinosaur is not only a possibility but perhaps something of a necessity? And if not Strahd, then who?

Meredoth?

But, sure, dinos.
I'm the guy who started the Isle of Dread in the Demiplane of Dread thread.

;)
Delight is to him- a far, far upward, and inward delight- who against the proud gods and commodores of this earth, ever stands forth his own inexorable self.

-from Moby Dick (Hermann Melville)
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Re: In the beginning...

Post by The Lesser Evil »

Zettaijin wrote: Ravenloft being a patchwork monster of sorts with parts taken wholly from existing worlds and others created from whole cloth for a given individual means people may have different views on creation. How do these people deal with opposing or differing views?
I think there is some knowledge, to one degree or another, among at least some of the population in some of the domains that their lands were originally parts of other lands. For example, it is part of common Lawgiver myth that Nova Vaasa was once surrounded by other lands, but it was mysteriously separated from those lands as part of the Second Judgement of the Lawgiver. Similarly, the Vacancy of Power is spoken of in Borca and Dorvinia as a time when Borca/Borjia was separated from its own homeworld as a result of the evil actions of the Dilisnyas.
Moreover, is there such a thing as demiplane prehistory? Sure, eldritch abominations may lurk in the darkest corners of the demiplane, but what (if anything) came before what could be called the first civilization?
I think that really depends on how false the DM decides false history is (which will presumably carry over into false pre/natural history). If everything about false history is fabricated purely by the Dark Powers, then the demiplane will have no prehistory. If the false history comes from plucking elements from the Prime Material Plane and altering the details to fit the history the DPs want to construct, then there's probably room for it.
Also, does evolution exist within the demiplane or is everything tightly controlled by the DPs? Could one accidentally come across the remains of extinct beasts?
This is a good question that relates a lot to the above. To some degree, if evolution wasn't at least simulated by the DPs, we couldn't have dogs and other domesticated animals, because those elements depend upon breeding (which depends upon the passage of genes/heredity that also power evolution.) On the other hand, the DPs have directly intervened to keep an ecology from falling apart (like how Nidala and Elena's wiping out of predators in Islands of Terror), so the demiplane doesn't necessarily function as how we are used to it.

In general (with the possible exception of the Shadow Rift and its time distortion, but that's a land so magical evolution might not work the same way anyhow), the Demiplane hasn't really been in existence long enough for any large macroscopic evolutionary changes.
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Re: In the beginning...

Post by thekristhomas »

The demiplane in it's present (if shifting) form.

There is a certain amount of evidence suggesting the existence of previous versions of the
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demiplane before the creation of the core as we know it, perhaps enough time for evolution.

For myself though, I've always leaned toward "fantasy evolution", there are wizards, gods and Immortals out there making new forms of life all the time, some do ok and survive/breed, lots die or never spread further than the dungeon they were created in. Given that the "hit rate" is likelier to be high for "intelligent design" compared to "natural selection", then evolution as we know it is likely to be barely noticable. Which or course, doesn't mean that it wouldn't follow similar patterns, the first god to create life in the universe is likely to have said "oh cool! a single celled lifeform! I wonder what it'd do with more cells..." but the pace of diversity would be very much in the hands of the DM/world builder
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Re: In the beginning...

Post by Igor the Henchman »

ewancummins wrote:
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I suppose Belenus could have had a major role in creation-- the real-world mythology that survives seems quite vague, mostly just conjecture based on syncretic identification, apart from him being a solar deity. If anybody knows more, please do enlighten me).
(not sure why the spoiler tags?)
According to Gazetteer V, the Tepestani have a creation myth in which the gods initially created 4 worlds, based on the 4 seasons of the year, and then Belenus convinced the other gods that they should be combined in one, keeping the best parts of each. So yes, some domains do credit gods with creating the world. Others don't have any creation myths at all, just vague accounts of a distant time before the mists, like Falkovnia's "Twelve Kingdoms" origin story.

I can't say I thought much about how Ravenloft natives explain contradictions in mythology, but in my games I like to use the domains' false histories to get across the flavor of the place to the players, especially in native campaigns. I currently have a cleric of Belenus in my game, and I think learning the tepestani false history, which is full of tales of how the fey tried to destroy and corrupt humans since the beginning of time, is really helping him roleplay his character's zeal to battle them.

As for fossils, I think they should exist but don't have to be fully explained. When they are featured in an adventure, it is usually a "we unearthed something man was not meant to know" kind of situation, like the vestiges of the alien El Koth civilization found in Hazlan. It's really too bad they never got to writing a Van Richten Guide to Aberrations, I imagine there would have been plenty of info on strange fossils and ancient civilizations there.
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Re: In the beginning...

Post by Mistmaster »

In my take on Ravenloft I use a version of the Hala Cult creation myth as a common creation mith; The other eight creator gods involve other known deities (or less known aspects of known deities)
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