woodsdarkman wrote:2. I'Cath
We gotta have an Oriental Adventures domain in Ravenloft but we are not to happy with Rokushima Tayioo (which makes no sense because it is a much better domain even if the lord needs some work) so I'Cath is born. And it sucks. Way over the top. They tried to throw in every oriental legend in one small domain. The lord I'Cath has no personality and comes off as evil just to be evil.
brilliantlight wrote:4. I'Cath Like you said it seemed to stuff every Oriental cliche together and topped it off with a darklord that has a background that was underdevelopped.
NOW I want to use I'Cath. I tried brainstroming up a Chinese-influenced Darklord with a motivation, back story, and personality. Instantly, I thought of a king, a warrior, entombed inside a crippled form by the God of the East; an evil dream. http://youtu.be/_4G1O49QY1I http://youtu.be/-xiAbDkXDgg?t=25s
INDEED.
Because we ALL want to rule the universe from beyond the grave.
If I were to do something with I'Cath and keep some remnant of Tsien Chiang, I'd probably do a twist on the old story of Mulan and play up some kind of twist on the traditional Chinese concept of filial piety. Perhaps she was driven to fulfill her father's wishes of having an accomplished son, going through the efforts to disguise her gender to fulfill his wishes. However, being a traditionalist, once he found out about all she had accomplished, he cast her out and exposed her, undoing all her good deeds. Feeling betrayed after all she went through to fulfill her filial piety at his reaction, she lost a bit of her sense and became spiteful. Her feelings of betrayal turned loved into hate, and she began her malicious slide into evil that way.
In this take on Tsien Chiang, she doesn't do evil so much because she hates men but more because she feels betrayed by society, a society that holding great people, blessed by heaven with talent and skill, like her back. Notions like filial piety are a joke, and only things like brutal enforcement (like Emperor Qin did in Chinese history) really keep the lessers in line. Her curse is that her own progeny does not live up to her standards, either being pathetically petty and untalented (as in the case of her three evil daughters) or skilled but pathetically idealistic (actually good aligned, in the case of Nightinggale).
I would expand Tsien Chiang's domain somewhat, perhaps making each of her daughter's tree have its separate grove, with each grove positioned at one of the cardinal directions surrounding the interior of her domain. And perhaps at the center is a walled, "forbidden city" type that used to belong to the emperor she murdered. That way you could get a lot more use out of her domain than a one shot uber-boss and also capture a bit of unique Chinese flavor to mix with your Gothic tropes of purity and corruption.
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 of her evil daughters is a darklord who's cursed to forever be dominated by her mother? One who committed some horrible atrocity to try to stand out from her sisters, only to be reduced to just one of three identical minions, eternally overshadowed and ignored by a parent who can't even be bothered to remember which one of her evil kids committed the deed?
I also think Tsien herself should never have been statted as a necromancer. Her description sceams "wu jen (wood/metal specialist)" to me; even her use of victims' bones for interior decorating would fit, if she's got a taboo against using wood for such purposes.
"Who [u]cares[/u] what the Dark Powers are? They're [i]bastards![/i] That's all I need to know of them." -- Crow
The word "I'Cath" probably was inspired by "Cathay", which is an old term for China deriving from "Khitan" (or "Qidan" 契丹) - one of the names for a city founded by an old (and non-Han) dynasty about 1100 years back. It's nonsensical in modern Chinese, but in all fairness, Chinese like all languages has also undergone significant phonetic drift over the centuries. (For example, the female hero "Mulan" was originally pronounced more like "Muk-lan", to go by the rhyme scheme of the poem she features in.) That's not even accounting for the non-Han languages like Mongolian, Manchurian, etc. which briefly became "Chinese" merely through virtue of their speakers conquering the Imperial throne.
If you wanted to translate it into modern Chinese, a workable transliteration might be "E4'Qi4" 恶契 ("malevolent deed", pronounced like "Uh Chee") or "Ye3'Qi4" 野契 ("wild deed", pronounced like "Yeh Chee"). Both have the first syllable as something that a Westerner might reasonably interpret as an "eh" or "ee" sound, and the second syllable literally uses the exact same Chinese character as the old word "Cathay" derives from.
</ChineseLesson>
My main problem with I'Cath is that it is a very narrow single-tale representation of a very broad culture. I can understand the wisdom of limiting the scope of a domain so that the authors can manageably write it up, but I'Cath is literally the only representation that Chinese culture has in the entire Demiplane setting, so the four daughters and sorceress mother have now unintentionally become the de facto representation of all Chinese-themed darklords, simply because no other examples exist.
The actual domain itself exists purely to address one narrow ghost story trope, and I'd say it's pretty successful at that, and I've come around to the viewpoint that it shouldn't be held against it that it's the only Chinese-themed domain. Because none others exist in canon, it's up to GMs and players who want Chinese-style horror to write up homebrew stuff on their own - nothing in Ravenloft canon says this is impossible, by any means.
So, yeah. This is from a guy who used to really dislike I'Cath, and then looked at how he was feeling and realized he was irritated at the lack of a fuller, broader "Gothic Asia" setting. I can't really hold that against I'Cath, or the writers who came up with it. The mere fact that they tried to include even a narrowly-tailored Asian flavored domain is worth merit on its own.
A forum search for "Asianloft" may turn up an old thread that was started to try to fill in the blank spaces with an alternative Asian Core. I seem to recall I had some unfriendly things to say about Cantonese people, though, so take that with a pinch of salt if you do.
Rotipher of the FoS wrote: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 of her evil daughters is a darklord who's cursed to forever be dominated by her mother? One who committed some horrible atrocity to try to stand out from her sisters, only to be reduced to just one of three identical minions, eternally overshadowed and ignored by a parent who can't even be bothered to remember which one of her evil kids committed the deed?
I also think Tsien herself should never have been statted as a necromancer. Her description sceams "wu jen (wood/metal specialist)" to me; even her use of victims' bones for interior decorating would fit, if she's got a taboo against using wood for such purposes.
Makes sense and maybe bring in thelesserevil's idea as well. If the mother is the most powerful she must be a key player. Maybe one of her daughter's was the one who killed the emperor and she is cursed by her mother not being clear on which one it was. You might also expand the domain a bit. Have it maybe 10 or 20 square miles with a village in it. Make the village female dominated by order of Tsien and the men too cowed by such a powerful wu jen that they dare not rebel. Have the daughter strongly disagree with her mother in some policy or other and forced to watch while some policy she REALLY hates is enacted.
Besides I'Cath, I'd like to see somebody do some more work with is Stauton Bluffs. The domain's a bit too compartmentalized between the safe/natural and unsafe/unnatural, meaning it'd seem hard for me to motivate adventures beyond looting old ruins. The entire domain being filled with second level fighters bothers me somewhat when the only trouble they ever face is the occasional natural predator or rowdy peasant. The darklord seems to have some potential if he wasn't so isolated.
As it is, Stauton Bluffs might almost be better as pocket to a greater domain than one on its own.
I hope I'm not being annoying by bumping a slightly old thread but I haven't been here in a while.
Anyway, on the subject of "I'Cath"...
I've been working on a revamped Chinese domain with Tsien Chiang as the DL. As someone else said once, she's not really the problem, the domain is. I picture it as a largely rural domain. It's pretty safe in the villages but the wild areas are haunted by monsters from Chinese folklore, especially the woods and the mountains.
Tsien Chiang comes from an outlander world. Her rulership of the domain is unchallenged but she doesn't have the time for it. She spends all her time in research, mainly on the number 4. She found a vast library in her new home. However, the DPs cursed her; the contents of the library is forever changing. The only way she can retain information from any of the books and scrolls in the library is to copy it down herself.
Originally she assigned her daughters as governors of the domain, dividing it among them evenly. All three (Nightingales was not included, obviously) did such a poor job managing their territories that they embarrassed her. Enraged, she bound them to her tower and assigned mature women from the villages themselves in their places. Tsien Chiang rarely bothers any of the governors so they can pretty much run things as they see fit. They are only obligated to submit yearly reports and are encouraged to keep those reports brief. It's not at all unusual for a governor to bring a report and stack it on top of the unread report from the previous year.
My primary concern is to get good names here. I'm also thinking that the domain could be a little too generic. Maybe it would be a good idea to model it on a particular area? I'm not sure yet. I'm still looking into it.
I remember discussing how to rehabilitate Tsien Chiang into an actual Chinese-style Imperial society. (Assuming such a move is even desirable - which I agree it may not be.)
The furthest we got was a Cixi-style Empress Dowager character. Her name Tsien Chiang could be represented (in standardized Chinese) as 千疆 (Qian1Jiang1), meaning "Thousand Provinces", representing the breadth of her rule. The final title would be 千疆女王, or literally "Thousand Provinces Female King" (as the word for "queen" 王后 in Chinese transliterates as "behind the king" - and is inappropriate for a female who ruled in her own right).
We got that far before deciding that we preferred to leave her in a smaller domain, and to create another continental China style series of domains from scratch.
