Influences and Inspirations

[HuManBing]

Is it wrong that all I can think of D'honairre with a pimp cane?

Harkon Lukas always struck me as the "Daddy-O Darklord" from Fabian's illustration.

[The_Confessor]

Harkon Lukas always struck me as the "Daddy-O Darklord" from Fabian's illustration.

True, but D'honnaire has got the fly clothes. He'd totally rock a purple leopard print fedora.

[HuManBing]

He'd totally rock a purple leopard print fedora.

Lukas already has that fedora, man! Look at the portrait! :D

Lukas is the one who would persuasively show somebody the back of his hand.

He showed me the back of his hand once. It had "Please be nice to me :(" tattooed across it.

In the face of this overwhelming charismatic appeal, I had to be nice to him.

[HuManBing]

Back on-topic, Iain Banks writes some very disturbing fiction. Most is set in modern day Scotland, but the wildlands and the tight-knit clans are all close enough to Gothic roots that you can transpose them relatively easily.

The Crow Road is a good inspiration for non-violent crime solving by a normal person (actually a college dropout). A young man is asked by his grandmother to solve the mysterious deaths and disappearances of aunts, uncles, and other relatives in his family. Along the way, he discovers ancient jealousies, crimes of passion, and a newly-found truce with God. The entire book is marbled with a deft and faint absurdist humor, while meshing elements of the bildungsroman and gumshoe genres. He also sleeps with an aunt and tries to seduce his cousin, so there's an example for all of us there really.

The Wasp Factory is emphatically not a book for the faint hearted. It tells the story from the viewpoint of an individual who is possibly insane and certainly eccentric. Plotwise, it's far simpler than Crow Road, but the real triumph of the book comes from the manic erudition of the off-balance narrator. The little we know of the storyteller is that he's killed three children by the age of nine, tortures animals in order to gain spiritual insights, and lost his genitalia to an attacking dog as a kid. There are passages of the book that hum with a certain perverse logic all to themselves, while at the same time emphatically reminding the reader that the teller is essentially unhinged. From personal experience, I can attest that eating rice of any kind while reading this book will put you off rice for months afterwards.

[The_Confessor]

Personally, I'm a big fan of the classics. In the past year I've read Moby Dick, Dracula, Withering Heights, and The Invisible Man. All of these are good foils for the Domains of Dread. Dracula and Withering Heights being obvious, but Moby Dick gives an absolutely riveting story of one man's descent into madness and those who takes into his insanity as he plunges further into hubris. Meanwhile, The Invisible Man is a great story when taken in the context of the psyche of a Darklord. The central character's belief that the mere presence of his power gives him the right to ignore and freely break the laws of society (beginning with petty theft before moving on to arson and murder) as well as how one's own "gifts" can be as much a curse are both subjects that get straight to the heart of Ravenloft.

[G man]

I like any Lovecraft of course. Poe and Hawthorne are also inspirations for me. Braham Stoker has a short story titled The Judge’s House, that inspired a low level side trek adventure for a solo player adventure. I have some Midnight Syndicate and Nox Arcana music I play in the background when I'm brainstorming RL threads or reading horror. Phillip Glass's Dracula soundtrack is also a must have. The movie Brotherhood of the Wolf always puts me in a mood to play and the soundtrack is nice. I went and watched Season of the Witch with Nic Cage and was disappointed though.

[HuManBing]

Antarctica has a plume of water that's blood red in color. Apparently the low temperatures lead to ionization of ferrous materials, and so the iron oxide causes a reddish tint.

More on Wiki.

Link to a large image.

[Deewun]

I saw the movie The Prestige and IMMEDIATELY wanted to use it as a domain or backdrop or plot or SOMETHING for Ravenloft.