Isle of Ravens discussion

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Nathan of the FoS
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Isle of Ravens discussion

Post by Nathan of the FoS »

The Fraternity of Shadows is currently accepting submissions for our ongoing Nocturnal Sea Gazetteer-type project. There are five domains in this area and I’ll cover the Isle of Ravens.

I presented a micro-gazetteer on the Isle of Ravens in Quoth the Raven XIII, and I expect the information in the Gazetteer will be similar to what's presented there. That said, there's always room for expansion and elaboration, and the more people contribute ideas, the richer the domain will be! Ideas which contradict the information found there will be less likely to reach the final draft, unless they're just too good to be denied. :lucas:

To offer a synopsis of my vision of the Isle of Ravens:

The real problem with the Isle from a DM's point of view is that, as initially written, there's very little to do there other than get turned into a raven. I have endeavored to address this problem in three ways:

1) By making the Lady of Ravens someone who is willing, even eager, to recruit adventurers to work for her (and willing to recruit by fair means or foul). If the PCs can be useful to her, she's more than willing to use them instead of destroying them.

2) By putting fey on the island. These are deliberately reminscent of the spirits in Shakespeare's The Tempest, and give both another kind of encounter and an opportunity (through Caliban, the Lady's erstwhile servant) to oppose the Lady of Ravens with "inside help".

3) By (very briefly) describing the Tower of Flint and its occupants, thereby creating the potential for a dungeon crawl up the tower. (I know, dungeon crawls...but a little combat now and then is good for the system!)

Making the Isle of Ravens a truly dynamic domain is rather difficult; you could never set a campaign there, for example. However, it might well be possible to build a campaign around the Isle of Ravens, especially by using Felauragoth (see the Book of Sacrifices) and/or by using the Lady of Ravens as a plot instigator--someone whose actions kick off a chain of events which sweeps up the PCs. I hope that our finished product will make that both a viable and an attractive option for Ravenloft DMs.

Things in bold are those I think offer the easiest points of attack for would-be contributors:

1) Physical description of the island:
Terrain: The island is roughly 1 mile square; the coasts are steep and rocky on all sides except one white sand beach at the southeast corner coast on all side.
Flora: Essentially a temperate rain forest; thick deciduous forest with lots of moss and ground cover, with a few conifers near the foot of the tower
Fauna: mostly ravens, with a few small mammals and largish ground-nesting birds (pheasants, turkeys), plus the various fey (naiads, dryads, Caliban)

Might there be other features of note?


2) Shipwreck is also integral to the Isle of Ravens (as it is to the Ile de la Tempete), and there are presumably many of these shipwrecks around the island. (Sailors in Ravenloft should just stay home!) Some can be interesting adventure hooks to bring people there for a reason (see the examples in Quoth the Raven).

3)Domain specifics:
- Date of domain creation? This is extremely unclear for the Isle of Ravens, and dread possibilities relating to this point are particularly welcome.
- Background story (see QtR 13)
- Powers: see QtR 13
- Closing the border: see QtR 13
- Her hope: OtR 13
- Strategies to describe: How does the Lady of Ravens react when approached by a shipwrecked crew? What determines her reaction to them? How does she decide who becomes a raven? Does she actively attempt to create shipwrecks, as Monette does? If so, how? How might she be laid to rest permanently (QtR 13 does offer one suggestion, but others are welcome)? What does she do to search for her name and history? Who is helping her in the search? Is anyone (other than the Dark Powers) opposing her, and if so, why?

Also, please note that the entire Tower of Flint is up for grabs; I offer a brief description of its interior and "inhabitants" in QtR 13, but I'm willing to change pretty much everything I wrote there in favor of more detailed things (ghosts, magical servants of the Lady, traps, things that the Lady has acquired, and so forth).



What I have written so far appears in the Book of Sacrifices and in expanded, revised, updated 3.5 Quoth the Raven. I recommend the latter, as it has all the information the first does and more besides.

Please discuss here of your ideas / suggestions on this domain, and what you’d like to write to add to this domain description. Do not forget, you can add adventure hooks and dread possibilities sidebars! Sight and sounds too!

Illustrators are of course more then welcome to submit drawings, or contact me for specific works.

Nathan
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Post by cure »

One thought would be to have a reputed 'gold ship' supposedly sunk upon the ile's reefs. Why the Nova Vaasans or the Darkonese were sending out or receiving a ship loaded with gold may take some thought. Traditionally, bribes between kings and massive plunder of the natives would be the two chief instances. So something else might be in order. Of course, it could all be a plot by the lady herself, but a believable story, denied by the Darkonese or Vaasan authorities of course, would still be necessary. A possiblity is that one of the lord of Darkon in Azalin's absence accumulated a looted forture (the treasury/mint?) and fled with it upon his return.
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Post by Drinnik Shoehorn »

Aren't the borders always closed? That to me suggests that the DP don't want the Lady to interact with other people. Why? Maybe she craves company, but can't get it because of the ravens.
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Post by Nathan of the FoS »

Drinnik Shoehorn wrote:Aren't the borders always closed?
...Huh?

I don't think so...I'll check in Domains of Dread, but I'm almost certain that "the domain borders are always closed" isn't mentioned.
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Post by Little Ole Me »

Maybe the Lady can be someone like like Circe in the Ulysses - she can and will be entertained by the right people who shipwrecked on her island, even take a good-looking warrior as a lover, but because she is very fickle and temperamental, she can also easily turn on those she is initially welcoming towards and turn them into ravens. Or feed them to her ravens?

As for her searching for her name and identity, she could do this the usual way: actively hiring adventurers from ports in Darkon, Nova Vassa, Liffe, and even Greben to look for magical scrying items/information. She may not want to meet them in person if she takes after the ravens of her namesake since ravens are very secretive when it comes to their nesting ground location. I can easily suppose that her ravens can travel all over Ravenloft and therefore they can trasmit valuable information to her about the comings and goings of various important people in the Core and the islands. According to some online bird websites I've read, the raven "language" is one of the richest of the birds with many different nuances. So the Lady can easily be a rich source of information that she intends to use/barter for her name/identity.
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Post by Nathan of the FoS »

Little Ole Me wrote:Maybe the Lady can be someone like like Circe in the Ulysses - she can and will be entertained by the right people who shipwrecked on her island, even take a good-looking warrior as a lover, but because she is very fickle and temperamental, she can also easily turn on those she is initially welcoming towards and turn them into ravens. Or feed them to her ravens?

As for her searching for her name and identity, she could do this the usual way: actively hiring adventurers from ports in Darkon, Nova Vassa, Liffe, and even Greben to look for magical scrying items/information. She may not want to meet them in person if she takes after the ravens of her namesake since ravens are very secretive when it comes to their nesting ground location. I can easily suppose that her ravens can travel all over Ravenloft and therefore they can trasmit valuable information to her about the comings and goings of various important people in the Core and the islands. According to some online bird websites I've read, the raven "language" is one of the richest of the birds with many different nuances. So the Lady can easily be a rich source of information that she intends to use/barter for her name/identity.
Quick question--have you read the QtR 13 write-up of the domain? I just want to make sure we're on the same page before beginning discussion...

Circe is one of the inspirations for the Lady of Ravens (along with Fuschia Groane from the Gormenghast books, Atya from "Claws in the Night" by Fritz Leiber, and Prospero from The Tempest--with a little Poe anti-heroine thrown in for seasoning) but I'm not at all sure she would be a seductress; she's pretty anti-people. Someone who resembled her "false love" physically would certainly prove an object of fascination, so she might attempt to seduce someone like that--but even a brief slip from her ideal would provoke jealous rage and a swift death at the beaks and claws of the ravens.

Hiring adventurers seems a bit out of character for her, partly because she's anti-people, partly because she doesn't have that much initiative, but mostly because she doesn't really have anyone to negotiate for her. She has a crystal ball, which helps with information collection, but I think she wouldn't send out the ravens for several reasons.

Most importantly, her tie to the ravens is part of her curse; as long as they're in the domain she controls them absolutely, but if one leaves she's no longer connected to it at all. That means she can't really send them somewhere--as soon as they reach the domain border they're just birds. Smart birds, but just birds. In addition, she's emotionally attached to them; she would be extremely reluctant to "lose" a raven by sending it away.

She has become a rich source of information, just by sheer accretion of things that have been brought to her by past victims; that's one of the reasons the Fraternity wants to get on her good side. But it's all on paper--stories, histories, natural philosophy, and so forth--not what we might call "current events". There are many groups (notably the Fraternity, but also others) who would really want to get their hands on it; what kind of things would she want in exchange for access to her personal library?
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Post by Little Ole Me »

Nathan, I did, but as you said, we could present our ideas. I didn't realize the ideas should be faithful to your source - I thought we'd either follow your ideas or come up with new ones to complement or replace those. Now that you've clarified that we are doing an expansion on your initial ideas, I'll just take back my suggestions then!
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Post by Bluebomber4evr »

Just out of curiosity, how much official, published material on the Isle of Ravens is there? I haven't seen much aside from the extremely brief blurb in Domains of Dread. :?
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Post by Mangrum »

Bluebomber4evr wrote:Just out of curiosity, how much official, published material on the Isle of Ravens is there? I haven't seen much aside from the extremely brief blurb in Domains of Dread. :?
That's about it.
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Post by Nathan of the FoS »

Well, I feel like I've thrown sand into the wellspring of creativity...sorry 'bout that, LOM. Does anyone have more ideas for a) encounters on the island, b) the Tower of Flint?
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Post by Lord Cyclohexane »

Basic ideas (all need work, just simple things that came to mind):

- Pyoor Twohundredsummers has learned of the Lady of Ravens and has sent one of his ravenkin to parley for information about the lost Sunsword. Did things go well? Did that ravenkin fall under her sway? Has he found allies? Have some of the more powerful individuals transformed by the Lady also become ravenkin, and plot against her under the guise of simple ravens? Do the ravenkin have the ability to resist her influence sometimes, or are they immune and it enrages the Lady just as Death is enraged with the thought of some undead who are immune to his will?

Or, as another idea, perhaps Pyoor learns that Caliban has indeed found a sword, only not the one he seeks. One of Caliban's pawns has unearthed the Sunsword, and Pyoor intends to have it. But what can be traded for it? And is it even in Caliban's possession still when the PCs arrive to try and trade for it, or has he unwisely tried for his revenge with it?

- Seeking a way to recover her lost name, the Lady of Ravens has employed the services of [Dr. Ilhousen's evil assistant], who had become cheated of his prize when the Nightmare Court pulled Dr. Ilhousen's asylum into the Nightmare Realm. In return for information that may give him some revenge, the assistant is performing regression therapy on the Lady, hoping that one of her dreams will be of her childhood, remembering someone calling the Lady by name. But will he attempt to control her by altering her memories slightly? And how long will the Lady's patience last as each attempt ends in failure? Who is bluffing, who is in control?

I'll try to come up with additional ideas later.
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Post by Gonzoron of the FoS »

Lord Cyclohexane wrote:Basic ideas (all need work, just simple things that came to mind):

- Pyoor Twohundredsummers has learned of the Lady of Ravens and has .
I like this idea, but with a small edit: Pyoor is dead (IIRC), as of Gaz I, and has been replaced by Keeva Sixtywinters.
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Post by Lord Cyclohexane »

Sorry for above, the assistant is Dr. Tasker. And while he usually uses barbaric methods like shock therapy, he has learned a bit of Dr. Ilhousen's methods and finds some (like dream therapy) to have its uses, especially in destroying the confidence of a patient so that they have to depend more on Dr. Tasker. By ripping them down, using their dreams and modifying it so that their memory of the event becomes even worse than ever, they open up more to Dr. Tasker and share more secrets, thus either making them much easier to heal afterwards or making them great pawns. Will he do the same with the Lady of Ravens?

-------------

Another idea, since the Lady is constantly summoning creatures to do her bidding:

As her frustration grows, the Lady is courting stranger and stranger allies. Instead of summoning more fey, who have proved useless as their focus is more on protecting nature than on gaining information, she has decided to summon someone much more interested in things hidden: the fiendish Drigor. But this time, has she violated Aleister Crowley's first rule, that one should never summon up what one cannot put down?

And to follow on the Adventure Hook from the QtR 13 article... Will Drigor aid the Lady, simply as a pretense for spending time analyzing Styrix's Rift Spanner and thus finding out what his own design flaw was?

-----------

(Above refers to VRGtF, p47: "An example of freedom of movement is found in The Madrigorian. In an autobiographical passage, the fiend Drigor describes its efforts to research and construct a strange device, a ship which is in part mechanical and in part magical. This device would allow him to pierce the barrier around some place called the "Astral Plane," and thereby escape our reality.
"This project involves an astounding effort of mundane and magical design, engineering and construction. Never have I heard of any effort remotely like this one. This odd project stands as a testament to the scope of Drigor's imagination and creativity, but its continued presence is testimony to the unfortunate failure of its efforts.")
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Post by Lord Cyclohexane »

gonzoron wrote:
Lord Cyclohexane wrote:Basic ideas (all need work, just simple things that came to mind):

- Pyoor Twohundredsummers has learned of the Lady of Ravens and has .
I like this idea, but with a small edit: Pyoor is dead (IIRC), as of Gaz I, and has been replaced by Keeva Sixtywinters.
Argh, that's what I get for being lazy in my research. I was going to actually look that up and verify, and didn't, to my sorrow.

Thanks for keeping me on the straight and narrow, GonzoRon!
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Post by Nathan of the FoS »

NecrotiCarny wrote:Basic ideas (all need work, just simple things that came to mind):

- Pyoor Twohundredsummers has learned of the Lady of Ravens and has sent one of his ravenkin to parley for information about the lost Sunsword. Did things go well? Did that ravenkin fall under her sway? Has he found allies? Have some of the more powerful individuals transformed by the Lady also become ravenkin, and plot against her under the guise of simple ravens? Do the ravenkin have the ability to resist her influence sometimes, or are they immune and it enrages the Lady just as Death is enraged with the thought of some undead who are immune to his will?
I like these ideas, the Necroticarny formerly known as Lord Cyclohexane. Here, it seems to me that those transformed by the Lady should all become "true" ravens, under her control; having the ravens lose their individuality is central to her darklord's curse. I think it makes sense to say the ravenkin would be able to have a chance to resist her "automatic takeover", just as familiars/dread familiars do; if they fail, they become ordinary ravens, but if they can resist they would make ideal spies and scouts for those who wish to work against the Lady. (For example, they could fly right into the Tower of Flint and even take out small valuables without necessarily being caught, which would be extremely difficult for almost any other kind of scout.)

Or, as another idea, perhaps Pyoor learns that Caliban has indeed found a sword, only not the one he seeks. One of Caliban's pawns has unearthed the Sunsword, and Pyoor intends to have it. But what can be traded for it? And is it even in Caliban's possession still when the PCs arrive to try and trade for it, or has he unwisely tried for his revenge with it?
That could be interesting--a nice tie-in between the Lady of Ravens and Barovia. One could easily generate a mini-campaign from that, I think.
Seeking a way to recover her lost name, the Lady of Ravens has employed the services of [Dr. Ilhousen's evil assistant], who had become cheated of his prize when the Nightmare Court pulled Dr. Ilhousen's asylum into the Nightmare Realm. In return for information that may give him some revenge, the assistant is performing regression therapy on the Lady, hoping that one of her dreams will be of her childhood, remembering someone calling the Lady by name. But will he attempt to control her by altering her memories slightly? And how long will the Lady's patience last as each attempt ends in failure? Who is bluffing, who is in control?
This is a really fascinating possibility, although I'm not sure it's a workable one, given the Lady's personality...she's really pretty anti-human contact, let alone the intimacy that would be necessary here. I don't think she would trust anyone that much...

But, on the other hand, she's truly desperate, and her hold on reality is not all that strong to begin with. She might give Dr. Tasker a chance...and the good doctor might get more than he bargained for, and call up a dream which becomes too real to escape--marooning the Lady and himself somewhere on the borders of the Nightmare Lands!

If you wanted to get really Time of Ultimate Darkness with that, it might create a permanent junction between the Nightmare Lands and the Nocturnal Sea (the domain that replaced it geographically, remember!), allowing the nightmare inhabitants of the Land of Nod free access to the waking world simply by traveling from the top of the Tower of Flint, projecting into the Nightmare Lands, to the bottom in the Nocturnal Sea...

Waddya think?
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