Ravenloft Gazetteer Volume I

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Game Rules

3.0 Edition

Domains & Authors

DM’s Appendix Contents

Dates

  • Published 2002
  • Ravenloft 755 BC in theory, but the work was in fact commissioned by Azalin during the winter of 756 BC with S being packed off to Barovia in the spring of 756 BC. [Gaz II, p 4.]

Authors' Notes

Andrew Cermak

Forlorn and Hazlan were split between me and Chris Nichols; telling you which parts were mine and which were his would require a map. I can tell you that I wrote up Tristen and he updated Hazlik. Everything else is pretty heavily mixed.

John W. Mangrum

On the Ravenloft Gaz in general - these have been the Kargatane's baby for a long time. In the latter 2E era, Ravenloft fans clamored for WotC to publish gazetteers for Ravenloft. The WotC Kargat put their first gazetteer on their internal development schedule in the last days of the line. I believe the gazetteers would have been written by members of Azalin's Kargat, but that's all we know about WotC's specific plans. (We don't even know if the plans had progressed that one point yet.) Anyway, in the brief period when we actually held the reins of the setting, the Gazetteers were a major part of our plans. We had S and the metaplot worked out in fairly sharp detail by the time Arthaus picked up the license.

We sent a product proposal to our original developer (shortly before he handed off the reins), setting out formats, narrator info, the entire metaplot in broad strokes, the works. The developers refined our chapter outline and nailed down the number of domains per book. Since then the overarching plan has changed in only minor detail. (In other words, we ain't making this story up as we go along, to say the least.) Really, the only significant change our first developer made to our "grand scheme" was to start in Barovia rather than Darkon, which makes sense. In other words, by our original plan, the domains covered would have been in order of Gaz II, Gaz III, Gaz IV, Gaz I, Gaz V, before continuing onward.

As a note, in our plan S was set to start exploring the clusters and islands in Vol. VIII. Although we purposefully left the exact order of domains she visited flexible, Gaz VIII's focus was just about set in stone: Souragne and the Verdurous Lands.

One more hint -- and this one might as well be the last one I ever give out. The very, very last domain S was to visit -- the absolute final domain in the series -- was Bluetspur.

In our plan, the reader would have been told in Vol. VI (The Nocturnal Sea) exactly how many volumes the Gazetteer series would contain (or at least a strong hint for readers putting 2 and 2 together). In Vol. VII (The Sea of Sorrows), S finds out just as she thinks she's finally, completely done. It would have led to the reaction above -- but wouldn't end there.

As a note, Vol. VII would also have revealed the purpose of S' bracer.

'Course, that's all out the window now, so it's literally anyone's guess what'll happen.

In the real world, limiting the Gazetteers' scope to the Core served two purposes. One was a wrinkle in the metaplot -- as you're putting together above. The other was an "exit plan" for we authors. We knew that getting to the finish line with the complete Gazetteer series would be a remarkable achievement, and that the odds of that actually happening were slim. In case anything did go wrong, seeming to ignore the lands beyond the Core would let us quit midway through without losing face, so to speak.

(Of course, it wasn't our intention to actually leave half the setting next to unplayable for three years...)

On Gaz I - I wrote the Foreword and Kartakass, as well as contributing a bit to Hazlan and doing my usual shadow developer work. (Whoever writes a chapter generally also writes the related material in the Attached Notes as well.)

Chris Nichols

[T]here are a number of elements that had to be removed from Gaz 1 due to space considerations or because we ran out of time. Most never got past the "pile of notes" stage.

  • Brangain was to have survived due to outside intervention (hinted in the published text), and gone on to become a paladin operating in the domains surrounding Forlorn. Brangain would have faced the struggle to keep her half-vampyre nature from emerging and causing her to fall from her paladin status. A tragic figure, I was considering giving Brangain the ephitet "The Weeping Knight."
  • There was to be a sub-plot about Herrd ApKie and his desire to throw off Tristen's yoke and rule the goblyns of Forlorn himself. A hag by the name of Tassinggame was to have helped Herrd by supplying him with magic warpaint that broke the bonds between goblyn and master, giving Herrd's rebel goblyns a Pictish twist. Time ran out on me before I finished this (and we were long on word-count anyhow).
  • There were several sidebars with interviews and secrets that got cut. Several of these appeared in the Gaz 1 web enhancement on the our (the Kargatane's) old site. These included information on the origins of goblyns, the story of Desperation's Road, and a couple others.
  • Andrew Cermak worked on a Forfarian Sword Dancer prestige class that didn't make it into our final draft. A spell called call wild hunt got scrapped (by me) and a magic item, the paints of unbonding, was part of the dropped Herrd ApKie sub-plot.
  • Almost half of Andrew's detailed history of Forlorn got chopped as we tried to hit word count.

Hopefully, some of these tidbits will prove helpful inspiration for your Castles Forlorn game![1]

  1. ↑ Unused Gazetteer I material revealed by Chris Nichols in a Post on the Cafe de Nuit forum

Forfarian

Initially, the Gazetteer language primers were proposed to be longer. Unfortunately, they were one of the first things trimmed for space. However, I managed to save my original Forfarian primer, which I've attached below. The first section and the 'Van Richten nine' section were initially supposed to be part of every primer, followed by a selection of domain-specific words.

Forfarian :

hello - daenacht hael

goodbye - beannachd leat

please - màs e do thoil e

thank you - taing thu

yes - seadh

no - nadh

help! - cuidich!

go away! - rach air falbh!

Mists - saoghal ceò

Where is an inn? - càite bià an òsda

castle - caisteal

druid - druid

goblyn - car fiacail mar

highlands - ghaidhealtachd

nature - nàdur vampire - fuilfarng

ghost - bòcan

lich - màgl cor

werebeast - atharr-beathach

golem - rinn deuine

ancient dead - seann bàs

fiend - olc

Vistani - fìrinneach meirleach

hag - bean mar

tartan - breacan

treant - craobh coisich

tree - craobh

wolf - madadh-allaidh

oak - darach

rowan - caorann

Dread Possibilities Salvaged from Oblivon

Barovia

The Keeper of Secrets

The Keeper of Secrets is a strange entity native to the Plane of Shadow. It entered Ravenloft seven years ago, when Loht opened the Obsidian Gate, and has taken a lair near the Barovian-Nova Vaasan border overlooking the Shadow Rift.

The Keeper is a NE aberration that captures the secrets brought to it on the wind. It occassionally passes on some of this information in exchange for a secret of greater rarity.

Blindspot (Ex): The Keeper is unable to be seen by any magical divination, including scrying and fortune telling. This has protected it from Count Strahd and his Vistani minions.

Creature of Darkness (Ex): The Keeper is composed of shadowstuff. When in complete darkness, it is solid—visitors can hear its clicking footsteps and feel the occasional brush of a feathery antennae or slimy tendril. In any kind of light, however, it is invisible and incorporeal, although its whispery voice can still be heard. In direct sunlight, the Keeper takes 1d4 points of damage per round.

Maddening Whispers (Su): The Keeper’s lair is filled with the quiet susurrus of its trapped secrets, all of which are desperate to be told. The constant, quiet whispering can drive visitors mad; they must make a Madness save (DC 14) for every ten minutes spent in the Keeper’s lair.

Secrets (Ex): The Keeper has captured many secrets in its lair and sometimes shares them, but if it particularly prizes a secret, it will lie to ensure that it is the only creature that possesses that knowledge. It also takes pleasure in revealing secrets that humiliate or cause harm. To determine the chance the Keeper knows a particular piece of information, the DM must decide how widely known the secret is, and then roll to see if the Keeper lies. If it doesn’t, the DM must roll again to determine if the Keeper knows the information. If the petitioner exchanges a secret of greater rarity for the knowledge, reduce the % Lie by 10. The content of the secret is unimportant compared to the rarity; the Keeper prizes a unique magical spell as much as knowing who stole a peasant’s goose. Because the secrets are brought to the Keeper on the wind, the information must have once been spoken aloud for the Keeper to know it.

[PRODUCTION—PLEASE ALIGN THE FOLLOWING INTO A TABLE] Rarity % Lie % Known Common 10 45 Uncommon 20 60 Rare 30 70 Very Rare 40 80 Unique 50 95 [END TABLE]

True Seeing (Su): The Keeper of Secrets has permanent true seeing. If dispelled, it can recast the spell as a free action.

Errata

  • Pg. 124-127
Stygian Inquirer: The Fortitude and Will saves for the Dire Raven are off. It should be +3 for the Will save (+3 Wis, +0 base because animals do not have a good Will save) and +4 for the Fortitude save (+2 Con, +2 Base as animals have good Fortitude and Reflex saves). Also, the hit points for the Dire Raven are wrong. They are listed as: 1d8 (4) but the Dire Raven has a Constitution of 14 so it should be 1d8+2 (6).
  • Pg. 126
The Reflex and Will saves are off for the Silver Fox. They should be +6 Reflex (+4 Dex, +2 base) and +2 Will (+2 Wis, +0 base)
  • Pg. 122
The Reflex save for the Undead Lake Serpent is off by two. It should be 5 not 7 (-1 Dex, +6 Base)
  • Pg. 150
Stygian Inquirer: Strahd's ranged and melee attacks are wrong. He has a higher ranged than melee attack, but his Strength is greater than his Dexterity and he wields a weapon magic weapon too. I have done the math the the attacks should look like this:
Atk +20 melee (1d6+8 and energy drain, slam) or +25/+20/+15 melee (1d10+14, +4 bastard sword) or +19/+14/+9 ranged (1d8+6, +2 mighty composite longbow); I got these number via the following. The BAB for a Ftr 4/Nec 16 is 12/7/2. For the melee attack, you add +8 for STR mod, +4 for the bastard sword and +1 for weapon focus (bastard sword). For the ranged attack, you add +5 for DEX mod and +2 for the bow.
Also the 3.5 DR would be 25/silver and magic as per the RL:PHB entry per an 'ancient' vampire.
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