New to Ravenloft? Or new to our forum? introduce yourself!

[Rock of the Fraternity]

Hello and welcome to the forum, Isolde.
I hope you'll enjoy your stay.

[Teravala]

Hello everyone. I'm a longtime fan of the setting, and of this site, but never really interacted with it aside from a research capacity for my games, or to provide minor edits to pages. But I decided the time had come to quit lurking in the shadows and introduce myself properly. I currently have a group that is about to finish the published 3.5 castle ravenloft module, and are preparing to embark on a 3.5 conversion (and massive reordering with a generous sprinkle of homebrew) of the Hyskosa's Hexad adventures. So if you have any helpful info on those or personal experiences running something similar I would LOVE to pick your brains for ideas to use. I hope you're all having a pleasant evening, and may your 20's be ever natural.

[Mephisto of the FoS]

Hello everyone. I'm a longtime fan of the setting, and of this site, but never really interacted with it aside from a research capacity for my games, or to provide minor edits to pages. But I decided the time had come to quit lurking in the shadows and introduce myself properly. I currently have a group that is about to finish the published 3.5 castle ravenloft module, and are preparing to embark on a 3.5 conversion (and massive reordering with a generous sprinkle of homebrew) of the Hyskosa's Hexad adventures. So if you have any helpful info on those or personal experiences running something similar I would LOVE to pick your brains for ideas to use. I hope you're all having a pleasant evening, and may your 20's be ever natural.

Welcome traveller...

[Teravala]

Thank you Mephisto. I actually owe you double thanks, I was looking through some topics on here last night and some advice you gave someone on their night of the walking dead campaign was incredibly helpful and relevant for the adventure my group is preparing to begin.

[Mephisto of the FoS]

Thank you Mephisto. I actually owe you double thanks, I was looking through some topics on here last night and some advice you gave someone on their night of the walking dead campaign was incredibly helpful and relevant for the adventure my group is preparing to begin.

Thats why we are here

[Teravala]

That's good to hear. I've never run any of the 2e adventures, so having a wellspring of experience and advice to draw upon while i'm trying to convert the Hyskosa's Hexad modules into a coherent 3.5 campaign sounds amazing. Plus it's cool to meet other people who actually know stuff about the setting aside from surface level stuff.

[Mephisto of the FoS]

That's good to hear. I've never run any of the 2e adventures, so having a wellspring of experience and advice to draw upon while i'm trying to convert the Hyskosa's Hexad modules into a coherent 3.5 campaign sounds amazing. Plus it's cool to meet other people who actually know stuff about the setting aside from surface level stuff.

How are you going to run the Hexad modules? I mean since the level difference from one to another go back and forth.

Feast of Goblyns levels 4-7, number of players 5-7
Ship of Horror levels 8-10, number of players 4-6
Touch of Death levels 3-5, number of players 4-6
Night of the Walking Dead levels 1-3, number of players 4-6
From the Shadows levels 9-12, number of players 4-6
Roots of Evil levels 9-12, number of players 4-6

[Teravala]

I plan to restructure them completely level wise, and to be honest might even reorder the hexad itself. The first adventure will start at level one, and the last one should end around 18. With some travel and side adventures in between the modules. Not a perfect solution, but I dont know how else to do it to be honest. It should be noted I'm running it as a 3.5 conversion.

[Teravala]

How are you going to run the Hexad modules? I mean since the level difference from one to another go back and forth.

More specifically, the order will likely be :
1:Night of the Walking Dead (1-3)
2: Feast of Goblyns (4-6)
3: Touch of Death (7-9)
4: Ship of Horror (10-12)
5: From the Shadows (13-15)
6: Roots of Evil (16-18)

I'd keep the significance of the last 2 being done out of order, resulting in the GC being compromised, but treat the 4 previous lines as if this had always been the ordering of the prohecy. level gaps between adventure modules will be closed through mini adventures of my own creation, or that I've scalped from the archives here.

[The Dark]

I've been lurking on the boards for a couple of years now, and poring through the various netbooks since the Kargatane were running things, and I figured I ought to say something at some point. I got into Ravenloft during the Domains of Dread era, so I'm more fond of its interconnected realms of horror than the earlier "weekend in hell" stuff, but I've been in and out of the hobby enough times over the last ~30 years that my collection is best described as eclectic. If you need to call me by a name, I'll answer to Steve, but I'm just as happy with handles because there are about a billion Steves involved with this setting and rumors of a Steve hivemind are grossly exaggerated.

One of my intermittent hobbies right now is coming up with general ideas for a second Core on The Piazza, with more of a focus on domains that are...friendly is definitely the wrong word for a Ravenloft setting...more accommodating as the origin of non-human PCs. I'm pretty much doing rough outlines for now with the idea of eventually going back and doing a DoD-style outline sketch and possibly a thorough write-up if I can get my scattered mind together long enough to do that (some people have their ducks in a row; I have caffeinated squirrels at a rave). I know there's been at least one project here to create another Core, but I've tried to avoid any discussions of it so that I don't accidentally get influenced by it.

[Teravala]

Welcome Stevehivemind. I hope you enjoy the forums and look forward to seeing anything you create and share.

[Mephisto of the FoS]

How are you going to run the Hexad modules? I mean since the level difference from one to another go back and forth.

More specifically, the order will likely be :
1:Night of the Walking Dead (1-3)
2: Feast of Goblyns (4-6)
3: Touch of Death (7-9)
4: Ship of Horror (10-12)
5: From the Shadows (13-15)
6: Roots of Evil (16-18)

I'd keep the significance of the last 2 being done out of order, resulting in the GC being compromised, but treat the 4 previous lines as if this had always been the ordering of the prohecy. level gaps between adventure modules will be closed through mini adventures of my own creation, or that I've scalped from the archives here.

I would suggest to play Web of Illusion (lvl 7-9) between Ship of Horror (8-10) and From the Shadows (9-12) as it has a close level range and makes a good Hexad adventure for the following reason. You can enhance levels for the adventure though as you have already planned.

VIEW CONTENT:

Maharaja Arijani's name is an anadrome of Inajira as such it could be used to make the PCs believe they have witnessed the 5th verse of Hyskosa's Hexad Prophesy. I would go as far as to have them wash out in Martira Bay, possibly meeting Tavelia (leader of the Kargat there) and even meeting Azalin Rex disguised with his illusions as his late-life king persona (an elderly man with aquiline features and a piercing gaze, with unkempt dark hair topped by a heavy iron crown). Azalin sends them to Sri Raji for some "erand" (maybe a search for Ravana's Bane or a cursed item for his Black Vault collection). Since the PC's have witnessed or even caused the rest of the Hexad signs, Azalin believes that they are crucial into triggering the Grand Conjunction.

Azalin mistakenly believes that the 5th verse "esrever senutrof sih ekam lliw Arijani" involves Maharaja Arijani since he has no knowledge of Inajira's existence (Strahd probably had the events involving Inajira written within a volume of Tome of Strahd that escaped Azalin's research while he was "living" in Castle Ravenloft centuries ago). Alternatively Azalin may have knowledge of the Terg legend of General Strahd Von Zarovich making a pact with a fiend to win the war against them, but the fiend's name is recorded as Ijrail or Inraji so he never made the connection or believed that Arijani with the term "reverse" in the verse, was a better candidate for the 5th verse.

My captors think they could hide this from me in plain sight, but I managed to see through their childish wordplay and deciphered the fifth verse...
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________V
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

In these legends post-Grand Conjunction, the Tergs called a fiend to send after then General Strahd but Strahd banished the fiend. This may be a reference to the event that fulfilled completed Hyskosa's Hexad and defeated the Grand Conjunction. In brief, adventurers went back in time to when Inajira was about to complete the pact with Strahd and banished the fiend before he got the chance, thus changing history.

Also Rudolph Van Richten's false theory in his Guide to Fiends of Arijani and Inajira having a connection has some basis in that it was that similarity in names that made Azalin missinterpret the 5th verse and thus made the Grand Conjunction to collapse.

When Azalin used the PC's to create the 6th verse in From the Shadows he places the roots for the Grand Conjunction to collapse by unknowingly creating the 6th verse before the 5th verse. I believe using Web of Illusion this way explains why this mistake in the order of the signs was made and it can also create two shocks to the PCs. The first one is meeting Azalin Rex as a human and then realising they were working for a lich all along when they are bodyless heads in his laboratory. The other shock is the existence of Inajira himself and the name mistake makes a good reason for "Azalin's impatience" to cause his minions to fulfill the last two couplets out of order. Normaly Azalin, a centuries old lich would have lots of patience to make the Grand Conjunction come to pass, it was his missenterpretation of the 5th Hexad that made his plan of destroying the Demiplane of Dread to escape fail.

From the Ravenloft Gazetteer II
Often dedicating years of planning to his plots, Azalin's long term goals usually strain mortal comprehansion. His thirst for power is both his driving force and his greatest failing. Once he sets his sights on achieving a goal, nothing can dissuade him from his path. As Azalin pursues a given scheme over the years, he tends to become so obsessed with its completion that he may ignore minor flaws that might appear.

Web of Illusion adventure description
Rakshasa . . . For centuries, these diabolical creatures have hunted humanity and preyed upon its flesh. Now the Mists have opened upon the land of Sri Raji—home of dread Arijani, the rakshasa lord. He is the mastermind behind a deadly game of illusion where plots lie within plots that lie within plots. Wise player characters will trust neither their eyes nor their wits, for nothing is as it seems in Sri Raji. The rakshasa have laid their traps of intrigue for the unwary. This time, the unwary are your characters.

VIEW CONTENT:

Actually there is no plot within plot within plot in this adventure, Azalin's plan to send adventurer's for an erand as I described, makes it a better candidate for the above description.

Also for anyone owning the Endless Quest Night of the Tiger gamebook this could be incorporated to Web of Illusion.

From the Read Box
His (Azalin's) plots contain circles within circles, always pitting rivals against each other. Almost as soon as it appears he has made a mistake, his enemies learn painfully that they are doing exactly what he wanted them to do. Though in this case he actually made a mistake...

[Isolde]

Lets remember our Greek
anadrome; A word which forms a different word when spelled backwards.
palindrome; A word, verse, or sentence, that is the same when read backward or forward.

[Mephisto of the FoS]

palindrome; A word, verse, or sentence, that is the same when read backward or forward.

saippuakivikauppias
I think Finnish is the language with the most palindrome words in the world, but definitely the longest.

The word palindrome was introduced by English poet and writer Henry Peacham in 1638. Though it is derived from the Greek roots πάλιν 'again' and δρóμος 'way, direction'; a different word is used in Greek, καρκινικός 'carcinic' (lit. 'crab-like') to refer to letter-by-letter reversible writing. The term comes from the movement of the "cancer" (crab), which moves sideways, and in order to move forward it goes right-left-right-left. When reading a cancer inscription, our gaze goes from left to right and then from right to left, as it would move if it were watching a crab (cancer) moving forward.

A perfect piece of line palindrome.

Doppelgänger – James A. Lindon

Entering the lonely house with my wife
I saw him for the first time
Peering furtively from behind a bush –
Blackness that moved,
A shape amid the shadows,
A momentary glimpse of gleaming eyes
Revealed in the ragged moon.
A closer look (he seemed to turn) might have
Put him to flight forever –
I dared not
(For reasons that I failed to understand),
Though I knew I should act at once.
I puzzled over it, hiding alone,
Watching the woman as she neared the gate.
He came, and I saw him crouching
Night after night.
Night after night
He came, and I saw him crouching,
Watching the woman as she neared the gate.
I puzzled over it, hiding alone –
Though I knew I should act at once,
For reasons that I failed to understand
I dared not
Put him to flight forever.
A closer look (he seemed to turn) might have
Revealed in the ragged moon
A momentary glimpse of gleaming eyes
A shape amid the shadows,
Blackness that moved.
Peering furtively from behind a bush,
I saw him, for the first time
Entering the lonely house with my wife.

[Teravala]

Lets remember our Greek
anadrome; A word which forms a different word when spelled backwards.
palindrome; A word, verse, or sentence, that is the same when read backward or forward.

I also enjoy emordnilap, words that while they are not palindromes, form a different word when spelled backwards, such as reward and drawer, or dog and god.