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I'd like to know what would happen if a Darklord came close to a fiend's reality wrinkle...

Technically, isn't a reality wrinkle like a pocket domain centred on the fiend? This is why they can cross borders?

Anyway, I want to know, can a Darklord enter a fiend's reality wrinkle? I want a particular fiend to have an encounter with a darklord...

What do you people think?

Rule wise (and question wise) this was done to death in the old Kargatane 'Ask Azalin' forum. The answer as far as I can recall without doing much research is:

Technically a Darklord can not enter a Fiend's reality wrinkle as this causes the Darklord to 'leave' their domain.

But game wise you can just ignore the technicality and go for what works story wise. Remember the golden rule for DMing:

'If tis cool, thou can do ith.'

The reality wrinkle I view as the sameas some spells. The dark powers refuse to allow a dl to leave his domain.

I believe that a dl could never willingly enter a wrinkle but if the wrinkle was forced onto the dl it would collapse for a time.

NO proof... just an opinion.

I'm not sure about this off the top of my head, but...

Isn't Inajira a Yugoloth? Not sure if that's a type of demon or a type of fiend, but he had some heavy duty interaction with Strahd without any ill effects.

Rhys wrote:I'm not sure about this off the top of my head, but...

Isn't Inajira a Yugoloth? Not sure if that's a type of demon or a type of fiend, but he had some heavy duty interaction with Strahd without any ill effects.

Inajira is indeed a Yuggoloth, which makes him neither demon nor devil. His kind are sometimes refered to as daemons. But all three races are fiends, and they all have Reality Wrinkles.

Gaz I gives Inajira quite a large reality wrinkle, as he has never attempted a power ritual - he doesn't want any more ties to the demiplane than he already has.

On the other claw, his interaction with both Azalin and Strahd was back in the first edition of Ravenloft books, before Van Richten's Guide to Fiends and the idea of Reality Wrinkles. And other than his initial bargain with the mortal Strahd, I think even in Roots of Evil the only time he gets close to the Darklord is during the Grand Conjunction, when the normal rules go out the window.

So it's pretty open to interpretation.

Bloody Morgan

Going by van Richten's Guide to Fiends, darklords can indeed enter reality wrinkles. Although, as Morgan says, most of the encounters between Strahd and Inajira occured outside the demiplane, the Guide describes at least one fight between the two inside Ravenloft.

From what I remember of Azalin's Asking...
A darklord is fully capable of entering a fiend's reality wrinkle, otherwise, how would Inajira been able to confront Strahd?
However, the darklord can not leave his domain while inside of the fiend's wrinkle, that is, to escape on the fiend's coattails, as it were, unless the fiend somehow dissolved/destroyed the domain beforehand.

Inajira confronted Strahd, like others said before, because during the Grand Conjunction they had left the Demiplane. Thus, no reality wrinkle (even if they weren't invented yet) surrounded Inajira. In fact, Inajira wasn't on the Demiplane until AFTER the Conjunction collapsed.

According to my copy of Gaz IV, Malocchio Aderre has a reality wrinkle of 12,000 feet in radius. The guy was given birth by a darklord.

Likewise, the Gentleman Caller is said to have a 1,320-foot radius reality wrinkle. Somewhat hard to make Gabrielle pregnant at such a distance.

My suggestion, a Fiend's reality wrinkle cannot be entered by a darklord as it is a seperate domain boundry, unless the fiend wishes it or the lord is truely powerful.

How would this work? The reality wrinkle remains an impermeable barrier and the same size but the presance of the darklord pushes it to the side, the fiend is no longer directly in the center. The wrinkle curves and warps around the lord like a bright light is blocked by a pillar. There might be a 'reality wrinkle shadow' behind the lord making the wrinkle "U" shaped or the lord might be completely consumed until he wishes to leave.

I would think that darklords would emit a personal sized reality wrinkle at all times since the whole concept of being in a domain is based on them.

So if a fiend got close to a darklord I would still have the darklord in their own domain...just everything else wouldn't be.

Either that or have the reverse take place with a conflict to the fiend's wrinkle if he gets close to the darklord. Though I'd probably go with the former.

Igor the Henchman wrote:According to my copy of Gaz IV, Malocchio Aderre has a reality wrinkle of 12,000 feet in radius. The guy was given birth by a darklord.

Likewise, the Gentleman Caller is said to have a 1,320-foot radius reality wrinkle. Somewhat hard to make Gabrielle pregnant at such a distance.

I wouldn't put it past an incubus as crafty as him...

Cool, either way, I needed a fiend to interact with a darklord physically. Basically, a darklord of my own constuction wants to use a Vecna-like plan to be reborn in a body outside of his domain. However, he also wants the blood of an outsider to flow through him, to further severe his ties to his land. So he needs the fiend (I'm using him to strike a deal with an awakened Baltoi) to escape, and she, with no magical power strong enough to escape, needs him to get her out...

I think that if either a fiend or a darklord deliberately _approaches_ the other, the reality wrinkle "gives way" to make room for the darklord. A wrinkle's not a true domain, it's just *similar to* a domain. Likewise, if one outsider intentionally approaches another, their respective "wrinkles" will distort to allow the two to close the distance between them; else, how could those two devils that Van Richten encountered have been working together? Likewise, why would the Caller even *bother* to avoid Isolde, if she couldn't even get within a hundred yards of him?

Reality wrinkles' purpose in the game is to make fiends a mystery even to the darklords whose lands they visit, and to create an excuse for such creatures to have "salient abilities" (i.e. powers stolen from the lands) and motivations beyond "be mean & nasty" (i.e. stealing said powers) or escaping from Ravenloft (big deal, *everybody's* trying to do that). The purpose of reality wrinkles is not to seal off each outsider inside some kind of cheesy, intangible "bubble" that no darklord or fellow-outsider can penetrate.

Off topic...

But when/if Baltoi awakens, she needs to become the Dancing Demon, or maybe the Demon of Swan Lake.

(If that's too obscure, I'm sorry....)

And for what it's worth, if I had it to do over again, the reality wrinkles would either be smaller or they would be more clearly spelled out. As Ropie said, they weren't intended to be some sort of cheezy safe zone. And those who said they give way were absolutely right. They have to.