We need to do something with these people

[Manofevil]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QiAMETe_LA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdyWbHE-IS8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFGodTJH4ws
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dux7Un9t7CY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGyOU6ml-d0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FpeRTmJAZ8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHNUcm11prM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ob9H5nE23mE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01f-VDg9b3c
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwlh3ta6gRA

[tomokaicho]

You mean that more n*zi type storylines should be included in Ravenloft homebrew material? I gotta say, I don't agree with this at all. The fixation on the Third Reich is not a healthy one, even when its being against it.

[alhoon]

I agree with Tomokaicho. While once or twice using former Nazis as inspiration could work, unfortunately, the world history is full of monsters and inspiration. I would prefer if Ravenloft steered away from 20th century evil and more rooted to 10th-18th century evil or mid 19th century.

[Mistmaster]

Well, Falkovnia is there for a reason.

[tomokaicho]

Well, Falkovnia is there for a reason.

Falvokvia, as originally conceived, was not a stand-in for nazi Germany.

[Speedwagon]

Well, Falkovnia is there for a reason.

Falvokvia, as originally conceived, was not a stand-in for nazi Germany.

Admittedly so, but 3e and its Gazetteer really reinforced that perception, to the point that prior to the 5e makeover the common perception of Falkovnia was "Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia had a baby led by Vlad the Impaler". It's even listed in the analogue section of the FoS Mistipedia as "Wallachia and 20th century dictatorships". Plus, the efforts in recent QtRs to further flesh it out like Mephisto's Falkovnia Files last year and the Ministry of Science stuff this year (all of which I absolutely adore btw) and the perception continues. I can understand distaste for the link between the Third Reich and Ravenloft homebrew materials, but I personally don't mind it. While I usually agree with alhoon in preferring 10th-18th century evils I do like the 19th and 20th century stuff if it can be reflavored (while keeping my Ravenloft setting with present year morals at least, so that things like hitting your spouse or forcing yourself upon them due to being married are not ignored by the Dark Powers as the way of the day).

[Manofevil]

Come on people. We've got a man who grabs a 3-year-old and smashes them against a wall and a woman who stomps children to death with her hobnailed boots and nobody here can do ANYTHING with them?

[alhoon]

We have many more such examples in history. Especially the child-killing ones.
Andronikos Komnenos
tied an enemy's mother in law on the battering ram used against the gates of the castle that guy was in and tried to genocide the entire Latin populace of Constantinople to solidify his rule.

[Mephisto of the FoS]

Decimatio

War atrocities and psychopaths exist in every war, I agree that to make Falkovnia revolve just around the third reich is problematic, I may be one of the people who followed up the 3e canon but as I have said before I would prefer if Falkovnia wasn't as related as it is with Nazi Germany, for instance I don't like the use of German language as equivalent to Falkovnian (although I have done that myself, mostly based on Nazi pseudoscience and pulp Nazi inspired movies, mostly zombie movies), since the black box there is one Falkovnian name that has nothing to do with German, Vigila Dimorta as are the names Stangengrad and Lekar, I would preferably mix German with Russian and Latin for the fantasy language.

For me Falkovnia should be more associated with war atrocities in general and tyranny, unfortunately there are many to be inspired from in human history and the Nazi's did overdo it within the 12 years they were in power, and especially with the systematic extermination of political prisoners and people their sick doctrine deemed as inferior. There is also the term "banality of evil" coined by political theorist and Holocaust survivor Hannah Arendt, this spare phrase captures the idea that evil acts are not necessarily perpetrated by evil people, although the ones Manofevil posted are clearly psychopaths, in reality evil is a really broad concept.

[Mephisto of the FoS]

We have many more such examples in history. Especially the child-killing ones.
Andronikos Komnenos
tied an enemy's mother in law on the battering ram used against the gates of the castle that guy was in and tried to genocide the entire Latin populace of Constantinople to solidify his rule.

Andronikos I became known under the epithet "Misophaes" ("Hater of Sunlight") in reference to the great number of enemies he had blinded.

... or another Byzantine Emperor Basil II

"Having crushed the Bulgarians, Basil exacted his vengeance cruelly—he was said to have captured 15,000 prisoners and fully blinded 99 of every 100 men, leaving one one-eyed man in each cohort to lead the rest back to their ruler."

[tomokaicho]

I'm not coming at this from a perspective that the subject should be taboo, or some sort of misinformed political correctness, but rather simple exhaustion at this subject of Nazi Germany and it's leader, which seems to have become a ubiquitous and ever present subject matter permeating everything.

My brother is a Qanon. He told me that Nazis secretly control America. On the other side of the political spectrum, people call my brother a Nazi because of his belief in the Qanon conspiracy theory.

When you have all sides accusing each other of being Nazis in completely irrelevant contexts, with each side taking what they believe to be a principled stand against Nazism as supposedly manifested in political opponents, you know that the subject is devoid of teachable material for any of these people. The lesson we are supposed to learn is not to dehumanize people, yet the whole point of people using this term to describe their opponents is to dehumanize.

What has this to do with Ravenloft? A lot, actually. Falkovnia was a lot more interesting before it became facsimile of Nazi Germany. Vlad Drakov doesn't really have any background that would suggest an interest in creating a "racist dictatorship". A "dictatorship", yes, but not this other thing. Drakov came from Taladas, a continent in the Dragonlance setting, where the various races live in relative harmony. Specifically, Drakov is from Thenol, a country ruled by the clergy of Hiddukel.

At some point in the development of the Ravenloft setting, the decision was made to turn Drakov, a brutal and merciless leader, into a Nazi. Now that Drakov was Nazi, it was easy to write because one could just lift Nazi tropes wholesale. Now Falkovnia and it's leader would be viewed through the lens of the 20th century, and the racism depicted would not be of the "fantasy racism" trope, but actual racism.

People sometimes joke that had Hitler not been refused enrollment at art school, then he would not have become the fascist leader of Germany. Although getting rejected at the art school is a thin motivation for Hitler's later political activities, at least it's something. With Vlad Drakov, there is nothing in his background at all that would suggest that he'd be a Nazi type leader.

I suspect that part of what contributed to Vlad Drakov becoming a Ravenloft Nazi was simple laziness by the writers. They needed to flesh out Falkovnia from the very sparse details in the Black Box, and making Vlad Drakov a Nazi provided for an instant storehouse of endless Nazi tropes. Not only that, of course. Some in the fandom had already suggested that Vlad Drakov is a Nazi.

So here we are. We are stuck with Falkovnia being this trope for the time being, but as for more of this Nazi subject matter being inserted into Ravenloft, I'm against it.

[Mistmaster]

My Vlad Drakov is not exactly a nazi, but my Falkovnia can house between other things people ispired to the third Reich. You don't need to play it straight up Nazi only with Nazi vibes.

[Manofevil]

I realize the largest thing these people have in common is their membership in the Nazi regime but that was hardly the implication I was trying to make here. That's why I didn't include people like Hitler and Himmler who (as far as I can tell) only ordered deaths and never actually killed anybody with their own hands. We don't need a Ravenloft equivalent to the Nazis to create people like this. We don\t even need Falkovnia, not when we have Ravenloft itself. What about Elena Faithold and Nidala spawning some of these, or Yagno Petrovna, or Hazlik, or even Azalin and his Kargat. Nazi type experiments are already being conducted in Dr. Daclaud Heinfroth's asylum. That's not associated with any Nazi equivalent regime. C'mon people think about this. It's worth thinking about.

[Mephisto of the FoS]

Hitler ... who ((as far as I can tell) only ordered deaths and never actually killed anybody with their own hands.

There is always Geli Raubal, Hitler's niece, his half-sister's daughter and had later declared she was the only "woman" he had ever loved. Their relationship probably started when she was 17 and he is speculated to have murdered her (her body had a broken nose, signifying physical abuse before "suicide") and made it look like a suicide, typical malignant narcissistic "love".

[Mephisto of the FoS]

I am not going to talk about politics in this forum (since it is also against this forum's rules) but since you mentioned Qanon I remembered a few articles that claim that Qanon were inspired by Italian leftist activist art group Luther Blisset's fiction book Q (1999) which has a very interesting story that can be used for Ravenloft. All of the editions of the book keep the original copyright statement, which allows the non-commercial reproduction of the book, so it can be downloaded for free.

"Set in Reformation Europe, Q begins with Luther's nailing of his 95 theses on the door of the cathedral church in Wittenberg. Q traces the adventures and conflicts of two central characters: an Anabaptist, a member of the most radical of the Protestant sects and the anarchists of the Reformation, and a Catholic spy and informer for the cardinal Giovanni Pietro Carafa, on their thrilling journey across Germany, Italy and the Netherlands. The four young writers who shelter behind the pseudonym Luther Blissett have created a world of intrigue, violence and intense political and religious passion. Far from the traditional example of historical fiction, Q is the stuff of which cults are made."

The main character, who changes his name many times during the story, first fights in the German Peasants' War beside Thomas Müntzer, during which time he takes part in negotiations which are eventually formalised as the Twelve Articles (which are considered the first draft of human rights and civil liberties in continental Europe after the Roman Empire). Following this, he battles in Münster's siege, during the Münster Rebellion (an attempt by radical Anabaptists to establish a communal sectarian government in the German city of Münster) and some years later, in Venice.

The events in Venice can off course be changed to be set in Pont-a-Museau or any other Richemuloise city.


Roman Catholic Church cardinal Giovanni Pietro Carafa persuaded Pope Paul III to set up the Roman Inquisition, modelled on the Spanish Inquisition with himself as one of the Inquisitors-General. The Papal Bull was promulgated in 1542 and Carafa vowed, "Even if my own father were a heretic, I would gather the wood to burn him".

Giovanni Pietro Carafa was later known as Pope Paul IV and died highly unpopular, to the point that his family rushed his burial to make sure his body would not be desecrated by a popular uprising. His papacy was characterized by

-strong nationalism: he was a war monger and urged King Henry II of France to join the Papal States in an invasion of Spanish Naples and breaking the truce in the midst of the Italian War of 1551–1559. The papal armies were left exposed and were defeated, with Spanish troops arriving at the edge of Rome.

-authoritarianism: during his papacy, censorship reached new heights he introduced the Index Librorum Prohibitorum or "Index of Prohibited Books" to Venice, then an independent and prosperous trading state.

-anti-semitism: he ordered the prosecution of Maranos, Spanish and Portuguese Jews living in the Iberian Peninsula who converted or were forced to convert to Christianity during the Middle Ages, but continued to practice Judaism in secrecy. He had some hundred of the Marranos of Ancona thrown into prison; 50 were sentenced by the tribunal of the Inquisition and 25 of these were burned at the stake. He issued the Papal bull Cum nimis absurdum, which allowed the Jews to live in Rome but confined them to the neighbourhood claustro degli Ebrei later known as the Ghetto of Rome. This Jewish ghetto was established in 1555 and was controlled by the papacy until 1870 (which means that generations of people, in the span of over 300 years were confined there, unable to leave the ghetto without permission). In 1888, the ghetto walls were torn down, and the ghetto itself was almost completely demolished. The Roman Ghetto was the last remaining ghetto in Western Europe until ghettos were reintroduced by Nazi Germany in the 1930s.


The German Peasants' War and the gruesome story of the Siege of Münster is mentioned in Norman Cohn's historical book The Pursuit of the Millennium (1970) which has many stories that can be tied to peasant revolts in Gundarak both during the reign of Duke Nharov Ghundar and Count Strahd Von Zarovich as well to heretical sects of various religions (mainly the various Ezran heretic sects of the House of Sages) or even the Ezran Sect of Nevuchar Springs and the Time of Unparalleled Darkness.


Norman Cohn's book also writes historical accounts on the Hussite Wars in the 15th century and especially the Taborites. The religious reform movement in Bohemia splintered into various religious sects. Besides the Taborites, these included the Adamites, the Orebites, the Sirotci ("Orphans"), the Utraquists and the Praguers. Because the impetus for these movements came from the burning of John Hus, it has become common practice to label them all "Hussites".


One of the most important Taborites included Jan Žižka, who was nicknamed "One-eyed Žižka", having lost one and then both eyes. Jan Žižka, a successful military leader, led Hussite forces against three crusades and never lost a single battle despite being completely blind in his last stages of life. Žižka's tactics were unorthodox and innovative. In addition to training and equipping his army according to their abilities, he used armored wagons fitted with small cannons and muskets, anticipating the tank of five hundred years later (this tactic was also used by Vlad "Tepes" Dracula a few decades later). He exploited geographic features to the full and maintained good discipline in his armies. He had to quickly train peasants to repeatedly face highly trained and armored opponents who usually outnumbered his own troops. He can be used for a Falkovnian freedom fighter or a Valachani or a Gundarak rebel.


Another gruesome historical description in The Pursuit of the Millennium are the Tafurs. Tafurs were a group of participants of the First Crusade, under the Franks. Zealots following strict oaths of poverty, they are said to have committed acts of cannibalism during the Siege of Antioch. The Tafurs took their name from a horseless Norman knight, who assumed the organization and armed leadership of peasants gathered by the preaching and spiritual leadership of Peter the Hermit, and so became known as "King Tafur". "King Tafur" took harsh vows of poverty, relinquished his weapons and armour and donned a sack-cloth and a scythe, urging the rest of his followers to do the same.