Café de Nuit

BTW, Can anyone tell why is Darkon supposed to be in the north? It has some resemblance to the Roman Empire - its conception of afterworld rather resembles Hades.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lapis_manalis

http://www.angelfire.com/rpg2/ancientworlds/underworld.htm
"By coincidence, in Roman ...

So let's steal an idea from the original Gothic story "Castle of Otranto" by Walpole and Shunned House of Lovecraft - an undead physical being buried under the house - and still growing underground, until it assumes grotesque and monstrous proportions. It "sleeps" but its psychical presence is ...

Godefroy is a small man. A Darklord should be a great man. Therefore Godefroy cannot be "fixed". Leave his as he is; he is an interesting character, but not a darklord.

And who said that Darklord must be manlike? There are many haunted houses in the gothic literature; it would be good to ...

Urik von Kharkov is very definitely a German from Russia, even if black. I would suggest modelling him on a Baltic German nobleman, Baron Ungern von Sternberg, Great Khan of Mongolia and an avatar of Black Mahakala; you will get a poetic madman and liberator-despot ready made.


http://en.wikipedia ...

I actually prefer fantastic and meaningless names, such as: Brandoch Daha, Corinius, Corsus, Corund, Goldry Bluszco, Lord Gro.

Strahd von Zarovich is a very good name, and linguistically quite correct, even if spelled a bit strangely (but from the point of view of American audience this spelling ...

The standard convention is to use the masculine version of the name in English, even for women. In fact this is the easy way to distinguish an American with ethnic background from a citizen of a Slav nation. If a woman calls herself Kovalsky you know she was born in America.

Of course, you don't ...

An explanation: In Slavic languages most names have two forms - masculine and feminine. Madeleine Albright in Czech is eg "Albrightova".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madeleine_Albright

This is a simple matter of grammatical gender.

So, if Yagno were a man, he would be called Yagno Petrovich. If ...

Nidala - this is a land of dragon worshippers. From time to time they organize witches' sabbaths, during which the dragon appears and devours victims offered to him. Members of the cult, imitating the dragon, eat some of the victims themselves. In exchange, the Dragon grants sorcerous power to the ...

And one additional point:

Closing Domain Borders makes trans-domain politics nearly impossible. You can invent ways to attack a darklord - a surprise invasion, a small group of assassins - but they are only half-measures. Nothing stops a darklord afraid of an attack from closing the border and ...

I will repost my two earlier post:

"
So, if you want to create a New World of Ravenloft, or Ravenloft post-Time of Ultimate Darkness, I have a few suggestions:

1. Time, Distance, and secrets: My solution is simple. Never say outright what the distances between towns are, how many people dwell in ...

Agreed. At the time those books were coming out, TSR/WoTC had no qualms about namedropping connections between the settings. If it was meant to match, it would've match exactly. If you want to connect them, go ahead, but I don't think it's intentional.


It is clear that both Great Kingdoms are ...

The connection with the Great Kingdom of Aerdy in Greyhawk is pretty obvious. They were famous both for good paladin orders and for fallen paladins such as St. Kargoth.

In the Holy Roman Empire the post was operated as an Imperial Fief by princes von Thurn und Taxis.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thurn_und_Taxis

"Ruggiano de Tassis founded a postal service in Italy. And later in Innsbruck, on 11 December 1489, Jeannetto de Tassis was appointed Chief Master of ...

A small cyberpunk domain would probably lack any ability to actually PRODUCE their technology. Such a domain would have about 10 thousand people. Most high-technology products require components produced in the whole world. Who produces processors? If the domain has a processor factory, they ...

FWIW, I think the "Everyone-Has-A-Hidden-Dark-Side" angle on Nova Vaasa can be played up more effectively if you assume that, while the country nobles pretend disinterest and snooty contempt for the corruption and vice of the cities, each and every one of them is actually up to his armpits in such ...