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User talk:Darklord-MRA

2023-10-26T02:40:58Z

Darklord-MRA: Created page with "Story seed: "Barton's Nightmare" "All right old man. It's war, if that's what you want. Between us. Between ME. A whole regiment of us, all ages form against you, the only real one." --Ray Bradbury, "Night Call Collect""

Story seed: "Barton's Nightmare"
"All right old man. It's war, if that's what you want. Between us. Between ME. A whole regiment of us, all ages form against you, the only real one." --Ray Bradbury, "Night Call Collect"

Lamordia (5th Edition)

2023-08-17T01:17:12Z

Darklord-MRA: Created page with "As detailed in Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, Lamordia superficially resembles the previously canonical version in most respects, but almost all of the high-tier underpinnings of the setting have been changed. Here is an incomplete list of the changes: * No mention is made of Adam's existence, and Dr. Mordheim is the Darklord of Lamordia, rather than a creature of the Doctor's creation. * Dr. Mordheim is gender-flipped, named Viktra rather than Viktor, and Viktor's..."

As detailed in Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, Lamordia superficially resembles the previously canonical version in most respects, but almost all of the high-tier underpinnings of the setting have been changed. Here is an incomplete list of the changes:

* No mention is made of Adam's existence, and Dr. Mordheim is the Darklord of Lamordia, rather than a creature of the Doctor's creation.
* Dr. Mordheim is gender-flipped, named Viktra rather than Viktor, and Viktor's wife Elise is reinvented to become a character which narratively combines traits and story purposes from both the original Elise and the Doctor's creation Adam.
* Rather than being the completely artificial monster that Adam was, Elise is a woman whom Viktra Mordheim loved in life (originally she was a grave-robber who crossed paths with the Doctor and they were mutually smitten), who died and was then restored to life with a glowing artifact known as the Unbreakable Heart. (This writer assumes that the Heart was invented solely for the VRGtR portrayal of Lamordia and has no equivalent in earlier canon, but could easily be mistaken and welcomes correction on this point.) Viktra covets Elise's recapture both for the woman herself and for the Unbreakable Heart, with the latter also being pursued by numerous other individuals and groups across Lamordia.
* Viktra was transported to Ravenloft to become Lamordia's darklord at the moment when she was to be arrested for numerous murders in her original dimension, which is vaguely described and likely has little basis on Viktor's former homeland.
* The citizens of Lamordia idolize Viktra Mordheim, though she has little patience for their fawning. This writer is unsure how this compares to the portrayal of Viktor, but suspects it of being at least somewhat different, as the idea of an adoring public seems at odds with the extremely traditional presentation of the Frankenstein motif in older Ravenloft works concering the Doctor.
* The Sleeping Beast's nature is left unstated, with no hint of it being a demon, let alone the most powerful demon in all of Ravenloft.

Teresa Bleysmith

2022-04-11T10:06:26Z

Darklord-MRA:

{{canon}}

In [[5th Edition continuity]], Teresa Bleysmith is the [[darklord]] of [[Staunton Bluffs]]. Her backstory is largely the same as that of pre-5th edition [[Sir Torrence Bleysmith]], whom she betrays in [[5th edition]] canon. Teresa Bleysmith now exists as a [[ghost]], damned to endlessly repeat the day of her betrayal.<ref>[[Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft]] p. 173</ref>

{{Homebrew non-canon}}

In the Darklord-MRA discord campaign (which was based on a somewhat careless reading of the paragraph description in Van Richten's Guide), Staunton Bluffs is portrayed as a "Groundhog Day" scenario, where time restarts every time Teresa dies, forcing her to relive the day when she betrayed her brother to an invading army. She departed Castle Stonecrest through a secret passage to meet with a small band of brigands, who followed the same passage back into the castle and eventually opened its gates to the army which had meanwhile marched across the small county, burning three small villages to the ground and slaughtering every inhabitant. The day-long massacre ends with the brigands killing not only Torrance but his children, whom Teresa genuinely loved, and she threw herself off a cliff to her death in grief; the Dark Powers denied her such an easy escape from the consequences of her short-sightedness, and now she mindlessly replays the day of her betrayal over and over.

Teresa Bleysmith appears as a black-haired woman of fairly average attractiveness, who would look ordinary enough if not for the marks of her dark bargain, which are invisible to herself and any other inhabitant of Staunton Bluffs. She smells permanently like smoke, and her tattered clothes look to have barely escaped a fire; a series of black tally marks appear on her skin as the inhabitants of Staunton Bluffs die one by one during the mercenaries' attacks, until by the end of the day she's almost completely black from head to toe with these "tattoos". Even at the start of the day, though, when nobody has yet died in the current loop, the smoke smell around her marks her guilt, as do the bloody tears that stream continuously from her eyes. Only at the end of a loop, when she takes her own life in guilt, is there any visible explanation for this blood, as her broken body lies at the base of the bluffs with a sharp, two-pronged rock impaling her through the back of the skull.

A haughty aristocrat with a profound sense of entitlement, Teresa doesn't consider herself malicious, but her incredible myopia meant that she simply did not consider that the brigands she betrayed her brother to, being murderous cutthroats as they were, would not stop with just one death, and might even kill her beloved nieces and nephews (to say nothing of the massive civilian casualties). It did not occur to her to specify that these children, or any other innocents, were not to be harmed; she naively believed that her betrayal would result in a quick and reasonably bloodless coup, instead of the scorched-earth invasion which happened. Since she is somewhat more morally lucid than the average Darklord, not being as willfully committed to Evil as your Count Strahds and Azalin Rexes, the Dark Powers simply deny her the ability to learn from her experiences and possibly repent. Instead, her memory is erased every time she dies, and she reverts to being the same spoiled and treacherous girl that she was at the start of the day, again freely and recklessly making the choices that caused hundreds of deaths in the real Staunton County. Interactions with player characters have the potential to "destabilize" the time loop and even possibly avert it, but in such an event the Dark Powers will most likely just reset the loop early, rather than allowing Teresa to actually reconsider her selfishly destructive choices. (Alternatively, if the time loop is broken, this can be used as an excuse to replace the "Groundhog Day" scenario with a more nearly RCS-canonical version of this Domain.)

{{ref}}

[[category:character]][[category:NPC]]
[[category:5th Edition Continuity]]
[[category:Female]]
[[category:Human]]
[[Category:Bleysmith Family]]
[[category:Betrayer]]
[[category:Betrayed]]
[[category:Collaborator]]
[[category:Conspirator]]
[[Category:Darklord]]
[[category:Deceiver]]
[[category:Deceived]]
[[category:Disloyal]]
[[Category:Fratricide]]
[[Category:Ghost]]
[[Category:Human]]
[[category:Incorporeal Undead]]
[[Category:Inhabitants of Castle Stonecrest]]
[[Category:Inhabitants of Staunton Bluffs]]
[[category:Killer]]
[[category:Liar]]
[[category:Manipulator]]
[[category:Manipulated]]
[[category:Murderer]]
[[category:Murderer-by-Proxy]]
[[Category:Noble of Staunton Bluffs]]
[[Category:Suicide]]
[[category:Quisling]]
[[category:Regicide]]
[[Category:Stauntonian]]
[[Category:Traitor]]
[[category:Undead]][[category:Incorporeal]]
[[category:Unfaithful]]
[[category:Wrathful]]

User:Darklord-MRA

2022-04-10T10:51:05Z

Darklord-MRA:

Playing Curse of Strahd and Van Richten's Guide since April 2022. This is a dumping ground for my game info.

Status of all 39 Domains described in VRG as they stand in my campaign.
* Barovia - Played very close to exactly as described in Curse of Strahd, with minimal influence from VRG or the older Ravenloft CS.
* Bluetspur - Intended for very sparing use. IMO memory modification doesn't work on players, so it can only influence the plot retroactively.
* Borca - Fairly uninteresting to me, but assumed to be canonical and connected to Barovian backstory. Dorvinia's subsumption fits in.
* The Carnival - Severely lacking in both detail and consistency; the DL being a sword might have been cool if it wasn't 1 of 2 examples.
* Cyre 1313 - Extremely interesting but too vague for me to make much use of soon; would really love to see a fully canonical expansion.
* Darkon - Cliche as f***, and broadly enough described that I don't have much to work with; unlikely to see use, though its DL is.
* Dementlieu - Personally unappealing to me, so unlikely to appear in my campaign, but assumed to canonically exist somewhere out there.
* Falkovnia - A huge fan of the retcon here; the setting is a little boring, but it's more likely to see limited use than several others.
* Forlorn - The old lore confused me completely, and the new lore is bafflingly vague; I don't have much to work with on this one.
* Ghastria - Exceedingly one-note and almost impossible to make significant use of anywhere but in a "players can & will die" one-shot.
* G'Henna - Conceptually interesting to me, but unlikely to have much applicability to gameplay. More likely to loosely inspire a new DoD.
* Har'Akir - One of my overall favorites of the DoD; more likely to play this one somewhat in line with old lore (eg Osiris rather than Ese).
* Hazlan - An example of what I tend not to like about classic D&D; will be used only when fits with backstory of eg FR-connected players.
* I'Cath - I could swear I know this story from another setting entirely. I would hesitate to try and use it, for fear of doing it poorly.
* Invidia - This will require deep study of the old lore to make sense of; currently it's an interesting idea but almost totally a cipher.
* Kalakeri - I might have preferred Sri Raj before the revision; nothing about the changed version strikes me as especially interesting.
* Kartakass - The whole "land of bards" shtick does nothing for me; neither version of Harkon Lukas makes much sense or is very interesting.
* Keening - A one-note setting with basically zero utility (though certainly better post-retcon as a city of the deaf, rather than dead).
* Klorr - My single favorite of the briefly described Domains, though requiring major work to actually make it usable. A key project for me.
* Lamordia - A broadly decent but not super-appealing setting, with lots of marginal utility; I'm unlikely to make it a central focus.
* Markovia - Entirely on the fence about whether this one is super-useful or totally useless; would take a lot of work to go anywhere with.
* Mordent - Uninteresting to me, though too significant to ignore completely; I've a headcanon for Godefroy, but find ghosts in general boring.
* Nightmare Lands - Too broad in their description in VRG for me to do anything with; major research of old lore might change this eventually.
* Niranjan - One of my favorite concepts in the book, but seems hard to use in a campaign without simply killing off all the PCs outright.
* Nova Vaasa - Confusingly schizophrenic; I can't tell if it's supposed to be Czarist Russia or the Mongol Hordes, & the VRG DL makes no sense.
* Odaire - I just don't particularly like this scenario and am unlikely to visit it, though it's on-theme enough to reference as a BG event.
* Richemulot - Stories of plague hit a little too close to home for my taste, and the wererat thing is kinda dull; I probably won't use it.
* Rider's Bridge - Hardly deserves to be considered a Domain at all; this is more like a wandering villainous event to shake things up.
* Risibilos - The story of Doerderon is interesting, but then the Strahd doll shows up and nothing makes any sense whatever. A terrible joke!
* Scaena - A boring one-off story as written; I could only make it cool by bringing in an out-of-setting element, such as SCP's Hanged King.
* Sea of Sorrows - DL is of little interest and unlikely to appear, but the Domain as a whole is dotted with points of interest to visit.
* Shadowlands - Generically described and would require massive expansion to get anything out of; I might or might not care about the old lore.
* Souragne - A very cool setting which I'd want to do true justice to, or else not try to use it at all. Many sources of inspiration apply!
* Staunton Bluffs - Discarded the original setting entirely due to misreading the writeup; now a totally new & slightly cool scenario.
* Tepest - This is a setting/story that loosely appeals to me as a reader, but I would entirely fail at properly portraying it for others.
* Tovag - I like the story of Kas & Vecna enough that both Tovag & Cavitius might see use someday, but there are some lore issues to work out.
* Valachan - Kinda okay but hard to get much outta as written; I'm of 2 minds about the DL switch - Urik is dull but Chakta is a woke Mary Sue.
* Vhage Agency - Too good of a story vehicle not to use, but not super interesting IMO, and certainly I don't adhere to the fan writeup I saw.
* Zherisia - Sodo is an awesome monster, but it'd be hard to reveal him to the players, and overall slasher stories bore me to tears.

Of the other domains that used to exist and haven't been explicitly subsumed, the only ones that I have much interest in ever doing anything with are the dark elf kingdom of Arak and the Shadow Rift, the islands of Rokushima Taiyoo, and possibly Vorostok if I ever get heavily into the Birthright campaign setting which it connects to, although that currently seems unlikely to happen. A couple others have minor interest value, such as the Saragoss ship-graveyard near Sri Raj and the tunnels of Paridon below Zherisia, but overall these don't generally convince me that they need to exist as separate-but-connected Domains, rather than simply distinct Locales under the same single Darklord. Sithicus and Verbrek are definitely not of any particular interest to me, while Vechor is a neat idea but too vaguely described in the amount of lore I saw. The only other canonical Domains I can think of include Bileplate, Sanguinia, Nidaria and the Phantom Forest (which falls into the Shadowlands easily enough), the two other desert Domains to the east of Harakir whose names I forget, and the former areas of Gundar and Dobrivnia, which are still present as regions in more important Domains.

Malitain

2022-04-07T14:58:34Z

Darklord-MRA: Created page with "Stated in Van Richten's Guide as a "cult-infested" city from the same world where Barovia originally existed, and as the origin place of the Ulmist Inquisition."

Stated in Van Richten's Guide as a "cult-infested" city from the same world where Barovia originally existed, and as the origin place of the Ulmist Inquisition.

Category talk:Dread Possibility

2022-04-05T12:06:56Z

Darklord-MRA: Created page with "So, I'm the new guy here, and I don't want to make any trouble for you guys...but maybe this category page, which lists dozens of Dread Possibilities, could actually explain w..."

So, I'm the new guy here, and I don't want to make any trouble for you guys...but maybe this category page, which lists dozens of Dread Possibilities, could actually explain what they ARE? Just a thought. [[User:Darklord-MRA|Darklord-MRA]] ([[User talk:Darklord-MRA|talk]]) 06:06, 5 April 2022 (MDT)

User:Darklord-MRA

2022-04-03T16:10:19Z

Darklord-MRA: Created page with "Playing Curse of Strahd and Van Richten's Guide since April 2022. This is a dumping ground for my game info."

Playing Curse of Strahd and Van Richten's Guide since April 2022. This is a dumping ground for my game info.

Arijani Vasavadan

2022-04-03T08:08:25Z

Darklord-MRA: Created page with ">Speculation: May be the same individual as http://fraternityofshadows.com/wiki/Maharaja_Arijani."

>Speculation: May be the same individual as http://fraternityofshadows.com/wiki/Maharaja_Arijani.