What have you done with canon darklords?

[mistshadow2k4]

I've been playing Ravenloft since the black box was the currend edition. Yes, I'm old. That's why my campaign is different in several way from canon; lot of things just didn't turn out the same way as we played. Anyhow, I'm sure others have noticed inconsistencies with the darklords too.

From the start we were told that darkords were morally corrupt individuals, beyond redemption in fact. Simply an evil creature couldn't become a darklord, especially if it was a member of an evil race to begin with. Moral corruption by their own choices was the key to why someone or something became a darklord. Being truly beyond redemtion might be another key as well; a person who commits great evil could possibly still be redeemed, while another who has committed less evil might still be thoroughly corrupt.

Unfortunately, they turned right around and violated this rule. Why is Malken a darklord, since this personality was born from a curse? Malken literally never had a chance to be anything else and didn't make the choice to pursue evil over good. Likewise with Easan, who was possessed by a fiend that drove him mad. And the dark powers actively fooling Elena into thinking she's still good? Ever other darklord is damned by it's own evil and knows it.

Have you changed any of the darklords to fit them with the rule of why they're a darklord? I have with a few in my world (along with one because I just thought she was kind of boring), but I'm interested in hearing what others may have done about this too. Yeah, I'm here to pump y'all for ideas. (But feel free to do the same to me.)

The best example of the change I made with mine was to bring Hiregaard and Malken in line with the book, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. If you've never read it you're in for a shock -- no movie has ever portrayed it accurately. The closest was probably Mary Reilly even though the title character wasn't in the book! To cut a longer story short, Jekyll chose to become Hyde through an experiment in order to indulge his baser desires (remember that this was repressed Victorian England). Unforunately for him, he lost control of it and changed into Hyde when he didn't want to. In my campaign, the sob story about being under a curse is what Hiregaard has told the few who know the secret of his condition. It's not true. He used a wish to gain the power to become Malken and commit the evil deeds he wanted without getting caught, but when he became a darklord because of his corruption he lost control of his ability to change. The real difference here is that Hiregaard remembers fragments of what he does as Malken (and vice versa); formerly, he remembered everything, but the dark powers took that away from him as well. Thus, Hiregaard's efforts to catch Malken are a charade.

Well, I didn't mean to get this wordy. Anyway, I hope some of you will tell us what you've done with the darklords and we can all get a fresher perspective on them.

[Gemathustra]

As of 3rd Edition, it's been strongly hinted, short of Mr Mangrum throwing books at some of us, that Malken is in fact the spirit of Tristan's father, Romir, who committed suicide rather than face up to the fact that he was a monster (the psychologist's definition, not Gary Gyax's).
And possibly to avoid having to suffer from his wife's dying curse.

[Nathan of the FoS]

Harkon Lukas is the darklord I've tinkered with most (unless you want to count "complete elimination" as tinkering). I wrote this in the "Invincible Darklords" thread a couple of pages back:

WRT Harkon Lukas' curse:

IMC I rearranged Kartakass somewhat to explain why Harkon is a darklord and how it's reflected in the domain.

I made the backwoods wolfweres deeply dedicated to their ancestral religion and moral code. Respecting and caring for true wolves is a keystone of this religion, and so is devotion to the Old Wolf--Harkon Lukas in his lupine form. But they don't know that Harkon Lukas is the Old Wolf; the backwoods wolfweres fear and despise Harkon Lukas in his human form because he's perverting their old ways and mixing their culture with human culture.

Harkon Lukas is always trying to win wolfweres from their backwoods ways and draw them into human culture, where they can be his servants; but when they do so, the first thing that goes is their devotion to the old ways and to the Old Wolf, and the second thing that goes is their cultural cohesion to each other. Now Harkon Lukas's "servants" are just as cruel, self-centered, and ambitious as he is, and they're always destroying each other and turning against Harkon--meaning that he requires a continual influx of "backwoods" wolfweres into the ranks to keep his retinue populated.

Harkon Lukas is, to the backwoods wolfweres, the worst kind of traitor--someone who uses the wolves as tools, who thinks nothing of killing off a few wolves in his service to achieve a trivial end. But they love and venerate the Old Wolf--the wolf who could, of course, never build a human empire. To the "humanized" wolfwere, the Old Wolf is a figure of scorn, and the human Harkon Lukas is, at most, a leader of convenience, and at worst a weakling who should be deposed. (He's certainly weaker than his offspring, the greater wolfweres.)


I liked this because it explains several key points:

Why are Harkon Lukas' offspring so often stronger (in game terms) than he is? Because the Dark Powers only give him tools (because to Harkon Lukas, everyone around him is only a means to an end) who are unwilling to serve his ends, whether because they despise what he stands for or because he's too weak to control them.

Why can Harkon Lukas transmigrate to the body of a wolf? Because, to him, the wolves are tools, and not particularly useful ones. In a sense, it's the ultimate expression of his contempt for wolves.

What made Harkon Lukas a darklord? He killed and kills his "people", who should have a claim on him for protection (for example, the wolves of Barovia), because he despises them utterly; and he despises them utterly because they can't give him what he wants--empire and dominion over humans.

That's my three or four cents, anyway.

[mistshadow2k4]

That's really great, Joel. I never worked much on Lukas.

I've never seen where it indicated that Malken was the spirit of Hiregaard's father -- or if I did, I must've just skimmed it. But then I didn't buy Secrets of the Dread Realms because I didn't think it was worth it, as it was just 3rd Edition translations of the darklords (which I did myself anyway) and one prestige class. I do have all the Gazetteers, but I didn't thoroughly read the darklord's stats.

Something else I did to all darklords is that they all have a secret weakness that they're not initially aware of. Von Kharkov may be the only one who has found his. Yep, that cat of Felkovnic.

In Souragne, Anton Misroi replaced the original Lord of the Dead, Lord Samedi. Misroi just thinks that this is a matter of his legend growing and overlapping the original, but tha'ts not entirely the case. Lord Samedi has been forgotten, but there are still two or three Samedi artifacts somewhere on the island. They could be used against Misroi by someone who is a true expert on the loa religion (religion 10+ ranks) if they found one.

More soon.

[Jasper]

The only Darklord I altered was Azalin. No matter how many times I tried to rationalize it I could not give a good reason why the DPs gave him the curse of no new magic. Becoming a lich wasn't what thrust him into a potential Darklord, it was the exicution of his son amf his obsession with ruling over the 'perfect land'.

So I looked to the Batman beyond villian Blight for inperatation for a new curse.
I redid the curse to allow him any spell he wants but make it that no magic can disguise his undead appearance. To keep up with the need for a few hours a day of human appearance I allowed his iron crown to give him five hours of human apperance but after the fifth hour his skin begins to crack and peel away revieling his undead form.
As a result of his curse he is forced to keep other evil undead and rouges as his closest servents dispite the fact that few undead are ever truely loyal and are allways scheming to one up each other. This keeps Darkon from being a truely advanced and glorious nation.
This has been kept over in his new body as it too is slowly deteriorating back into his lich form.


And while not a Darklord I did a complete rewrite of The Sheriff of Barovia. I made him be the Dread Revenant form of Sergi Von Zerovich. The Grand Conjunction allowed his soul to return to his body burried under the castle and he took on the blacked armor of a dead paladin that was tossed over the walls.
He is obsessed with killing the monster he thinks took over his brother but has a overwheliming fear of the shadow cast by Castle Ravenloft keeping him from attacking Strahd in his own home. To bring his brother out he has taken on the role of a vigilante and has been killing rouge and stray Vistani in order have his brother face him in battle.

[Spiteful Crow]

Elena chooses to be an evil jerk. If she didn't rely on her paladin powers supplied by the dark powers and just took a step back and looked at what she was doing, she'd realize that SHE is the evil in the land. It's her "I have powers, so I must be right" attitude which makes her evil.

[DeepShadow of FoS]

The reference to Romir in SotDR was small and obscure, but it's been seized on by several retconners (including yours truly) as the key to fixing Malken. I went so far as to declare that Romir's consciousness has been dispersed among the Hiregaard family, and that "Malken" doesn't fully comprehend what he is--i.e. merely the biggest remaining fragment of Romir.

For the adventure hooks of Nova Vaasa, I sketched out a campaign arc where Malken acquires more of Romir's essence, and begins gaslighting and killing his own descendents to increase his own power.

As for Easan, Steve Miller said elsewhere that the background isn't really incorrect as much as it's incomplete. As I pointed out on that thread, Easan's sanity was restored by the monks of someplace called Vechor, but when that place was destroyed in a mysterious cataclysm, the insanity returned. It's not that hard to fill in the gaps and say that Easan caused the cataclysm while he was sane, thereby earning DL-ship.

Likewise, I hate DL's who appear to earn domains simply by fulfilling a preset bodycount, so when I made Draga Salt-biter the central for for Reckonings, I fleshed out the occupants of the three ships he destroyed on that fateful day. One in particular had a special relationship with Draga...but all of that hasn't been revealed in my game.

That's about the worst I do, just filling in gaps and all that. I think a lot of characters in RL simply need more pathos in their backgrounds .

The one DL I really revamped was Meredoth. IMC he was a 20th level druid , bent on creating a paradise for his family. He succeeded, but discovered he had tied their life forces to the place. One of his kids wanted to go exploring, which was the first in a series of offenses against his supposed selflessness. In the end, he slew his family and rebuilt them as alchemical constructs a la the old Stepford trilogy. Thus, the ghostwalker PC kept seeing ghosts of people who were supposedly still alive!

[Rotipher of the FoS]

I chose a simpler way to resolve the issue of Malken's origins. IMC, the original curse upon Romir wasn't the thing that got the DPs so interested in Tristan, but rather, his response to having been cursed. Romir's son in my games started off as Lawful Evil, not Lawful Neutral; the curse made him subject to brutal, murderous rages, but he'd not been a particularly nice guy to begin with. While the curse made him kill, the fact that he'd enjoyed the sense of supreme domination and control that accompanied the killings -- not to mention a couple of additional deaths he engineered, when he wasn't enraged, to cover up his crimes -- were entirely his own sins. The fact that he hypocritically despised his rages because they represented a loss of self-control, yet didn't feel actual remorse for what he'd done, was what caught the DPs' interest; in accordance with the contradictory emotions that plagued Romir's son, the DPs split his Lawful aspect (the Tristan we all know) and his Evil aspect (Malken) into two separate personalities, and set them to feuding with one another. Hence, Tristan isn't any more the "real" Sir Hiregaard, IMC, than Malken is!

[Rotipher of the FoS]

One thing I did, that somewhat contradicts John Mangrum's timeline, is to reschedule that fifteen year period (mentioned in "I, Strahd") when the Count was allegedly in hibernation to run from approximately 724-739. I figured that if Van Richten had visited Castle Ravenloft before publishing the VRGtV, he'd have surely mentioned some of what he'd learned there in his own book, given that he was naming names anyway. Plus, if he hadn't heard reports of Strahd's public reappearance within a year of his visit, the old sage would've surely returned, to try to finish Strahd off as he'd planned. The events of the Great Upheaval, and his subsequant invasion of Gundar's old territory, put Strahd back in the public eye and warned Van Richten not to go back there.

This explains why Strahd -- who supposedly has far stronger ties to the Vistani than Azalin -- unaccountably didn't lift a finger to intercede in the Grand Conjunction, or try to profit by it as the lich did, or otherwise get ready for the confrontation which Hyskosa's prophecy foretold: the vampire-lord was sound asleep, and unaware of the momentous events wracking the demiplane, right up until the Upheaval really got going. Not only that, but if you superimpose those dates over the "bloodlines" family tree from the black boxed set, it's apparant that two patriarchal figures among the living Von Zaroviches died in that period (one in 729, another in 731), meaning that the House was probably in disarray at the time, not having Strahd or a suitable deputy-leader on hand. So the fact that Barovia didn't pounce on Gundarak's weakness in the early years of the Hexad, while Heinforth was proving himself so incompetent, makes a bit more sense.

Jasper's comments about the Sheriff reminded me of this, because IMC the so-called "Sheriff von Zarovich" was actually a Gundarakite thug who turned bandit after his Duke's demise, barged into Barovia while the real Von Zaroviches were squabbling amongst themselves, and tried to bully his way into power. He falsely claimed the Von Zarovich name as one of many intimidation-tactics he'd learned as a minion of Gundar's, and he spread blatant lies about his band of "Ebon Gargoyles" (actually just more Gundarakite expatriate brutes) to try to scare the peasantry into serving him. Naturally, when Strahd finally woke up, the furious darklord turned the "Sheriff's" men into exsanguinated wolf-snacks, and their leader into an enslaved undead 'brick' he could call up as a shock-trooper in a pinch. The fact that the Gundarakites are so hotly despised and oppressed by the Barovians, peasant and Von Zarovich alike, makes far more sense this way too: they're suffering payback for the "Sheriff's" crimes.

[Nathan of the FoS]

One other very minor point--but a personal favorite: IMC the Shadow Rift is not a domain per se; it's Gwydion's reality wrinkle.

[HuManBing]

I most disliked the character of Vlad Drakov. He is a parody of a bogeyman - a bloodthirsty thug so stubborn that he literally cannot see the punishment he's been given.

His original curse is simply to know he can never conquer any nation. This curse does literally nothing to make him more human. He continues to oppress his subjects in a such a way that most people would be damn glad he doesn't get to rule anything else. His cruelty is entirely unjustified and serves no purpose except to cement his regime of misrule. Meanwhile, he does not even learn from his mistakes - he understands nothing of how the Demiplane works, even to the point that the Dark Powers give him no way to close his borders. His pig-headed insistence on using sword and shield means his armies are easily repelled by gunpowder using cultures.

A little while back, I suggested another curse - he must shed blood in order to delay ageing and regain his youth. This would explain his routine executions and seeminglybaseless wars. This is a quote from an earlier thread:

In my campaign, Drakov's youth and vigor are sustained by the Dark Powers, who keep him in fighting condition as long as he sheds blood for them. Every so often, he orders bloody and gruesome executions, but after a few years go by, the toll of his age becomes clearer and clearer. He must wage war, with blood spillt directly on the earth of Ravenloft's soil, to regain his youth, and the toll must be in thousands or tens of thousands to regain his lost years. This would explain his own lack of regard for his subjects' wellbeing, and it would illustrate a genuine need to prey upon his nation's sons like this, instead of the "can't see failure when it's staring him in the face" template for the standard Drakov.

This also opens up an interesting possibility: Drakov may never be defeated in combat, but what happens when a rival darklord finds a way to fight a bloodless war? Perhaps if Azalin's Kargat were able to take on Drakov's army by turning them into vampires and monstrous creatures, instead of leaving their corpses on the field, Drakov would never get the revigoration he needs so badly.

After a few of these bloodless wars, Drakov would finally pass the point of no return - being too old to lead his armies, he can never reverse the aging process himself, relying instead on his sons to lead the armies. If these sons could be assassinated or eliminated without full-scale war, Drakov himself would surely expire after a few short decades of despotic but militarily impotent rule.

This is the sort of curse that doesn't really change the fabric of Ravenloft drastically. Vlad Drakov would still be brutal and heartless - except now, there is a reason for it, and it's not a visible or well-publicised reason either.

And if your PCs get to a high enough level, they can stumble across defectors from Falkovnia and Kargat agents who tell them bits and pieces so they can put it together for themselves. Really high level PCs may have a mission to infiltrate Falkovnia and try to assassinate Drakov's lieutenants.

One final thing I thought about is the role of the Kargat in 3rd edition Ravenloft. Azalin has that new power of being able to look into anybody's mind at will - so long as they are in Darkon - so the importance of a secret police and information network is not so great.

What role is there for the Kargat then?

My answer is as overseas spies. Azalin might still keep a force of them in the nation to enforce his will, but his magical information powers stop at his border. He would most likely send cells of Kargat members and Kargatane servants across the borders into other domains to stir up trouble and report back on weaknesses in the power structure there.

[Jakob]

I most disliked the character of Vlad Drakov. He is a parody of a bogeyman - a bloodthirsty thug so stubborn that he literally cannot see the punishment he's been given.

His original curse is simply to know he can never conquer any nation. This curse does literally nothing to make him more human. He continues to oppress his subjects in a such a way that most people would be damn glad he doesn't get to rule anything else. His cruelty is entirely unjustified and serves no purpose except to cement his regime of misrule. Meanwhile, he does not even learn from his mistakes - he understands nothing of how the Demiplane works, even to the point that the Dark Powers give him no way to close his borders. His pig-headed insistence on using sword and shield means his armies are easily repelled by gunpowder using cultures.

I actually LIKED him because of this.
...
De gustibus non disputandum est!

Joking aside, I find his constant bloodthirst and cruelty, paired with his military prowess (he IS a warlord, after all) makes him the catalizer of change in the Core.

Before him, the Core never knew war.
Before him, there was practically no diplomacy in the Core.

Being like he is means being static.
Which darklord, in a way, is not?
Take Azalin, for instance: he knows about his curse, he knows about the Dark Powers.
Does this better his position? His curse is still on, he's still prisoner.

The curse doesn't need to be higly... Supernatural.
Darklords are doomed to ALWAYS REPEAT their mistakes. That's it.

The only darklord who I find not much convincing is Easan... But I never bothered too much with him OR Vechor...
So I think I'll just shrug and go on with the rest of the Core.

EDIT: To come back to the topic.
The only modification I made is rewriting Azalin's spellbook (one of the most modified SB in D&D history! ) to better suit my tastes and making the Shadow Rift Gwydion's reality wrinkle.

EDIT2: Nathan, I just noticed you did the same. Ok, we got an empathic link. Who's the wizard and who's the familiar?

[Rotipher of the FoS]

One final thing I thought about is the role of the Kargat in 3rd edition Ravenloft. Azalin has that new power of being able to look into anybody's mind at will - so long as they are in Darkon - so the importance of a secret police and information network is not so great.

What role is there for the Kargat then?

I'm not sure that Azalin would want to fold up the Kargat's domestic spy operations altogether, as he doesn't want to spend all his time snooping through the minds of his subjects. Also, maintaining the reputation of the Kargat amongst Darkon's inhabitants would be vital to keeping the peace -- a "secret police force" isn't really designed to be secret; it's designed to scare the crap out of potential dissidents, because they know darn well that it exists and is watching their every move -- even if he did divert more of their assets to monitoring other domains. Finally, a lot of the upper-level Kargat -- the undead ones in particular, whom he partially keeps under control with his undead-rulership powers -- simply can't be trusted to work outside of Darkon, where Azalin's domination is ineffectual.

Certainly, I can see Azalin re-engineering the Kargat over the next few decades, to become more involved in external spying rather than internal policing. But it's not something that would change overnight, especially given that the higher-ranking Kargat officers are undead and, therefore, not subject to natural personnel-turnover over time.

[mistshadow2k4]

One of the darklords I changed was Jacqueline Renier. I frankly thought her falling in love with Henri DuBois was lame. The lost love curse has been done a bit too often. Instead I chose to expand upon her monophobia.

Jacqueline always loved to toy with a lone victim, or a pair, playing upon their fears, making just enough noise to let them know that they were being stalked, and so on. If there was more than one victim, she would let one see the other dead, but not reveal what was after him or her. She’s even went so far as to let a victim “escape” and then play with them later, allowing the poor individual know he is being stalked for a few nights before she strikes. Sometimes she would rob a victim to gain some trinket, but the kill was always her primary motivation.

When she became a darklord, she quickly found she couldn’t stand to be alone. At first, what she experienced was much the same as the victims she had stalked; the stealthy sound in the dark corner, the little shadow that’s not quite right, a glimpse of something moving out of the corner of her eye. When she was alone she knew she really wasn’t, she knew that something was there with her. Dismissing the fear as simple paranoia didn’t help; it only got worse, as every time she was alone again the feeling grew that something was there, cruelly playing with her just as she had played with so many helpless people before. Eventually, she even began to hallucinate when she was left alone long enough. Very soon she started doing everything within her power to prevent being alone, but even her best efforts occasionally fail her here, and then she finds herself at the mercy of her own fears.

And yet, she cannot stop. She must kill & terrify a victim before killing the poor creature at least once a week. If she doesn't she begins to suffer terrible nightmares in addition to the hallucinations whenever she is alone. She has truly become addicted to terrifying those she stalks.

Henri DuBois is a nobleman who survived being stalked by Jacqueline. Since he got away she has been searching for his whereabouts, both because he knows too much and because she has a relentless urge to let no victim escape her.

[Gemathustra]

Perhaps Jacqueline is also coming to the realization, whether it's really real or not, that something is stalking her, too?
Sort of like Hook's crocodile?