Domain of the Month: Barovia.

[KingCorn]

Happy New Year Everybody! Will this new year bring hope to the land of mists, or simply new horrors? Lets find out.

While I am new hear on Cafe Nuit, I figured why not try and restart that old tradition the old blood of the Fraternity did many years ago with a domain of the month, to really bring out that creative spirit. And there's no better place to start than where it began: Barovia.

[Mistmaster]

My only contribute to Barovia so far has been the the flasshing out of Sergey's Ghost. Hereis the second:
Barovia Town and Barovia Village; I always had a pet peeve in the idea that a nation capital could be seated on a village; so I propose this solution: Barovia Town is a fair sized town seating in the position Barovia canonically is; Barovia Village, instead is the house of Sthrad's retinue's family, and is seated on the same peak Castle Ravenloft stands.

[KingCorn]

My only contribute to Barovia so far has been the the flasshing out of Sergey's Ghost. Hereis the second:
Barovia Town and Barovia Village; I always had a pet peeve in the idea that a nation capital could be seated on a village; so I propose this solution: Barovia Town is a fair sized town seating in the position Barovia canonically is; Barovia Village, instead is the house of Sthrad's retinue's family, and is seated on the same peak Castle Ravenloft stands.

Makes sense. Could see it also as a bit of a military center for Barovia, going back to its old army traditions. It also makes Barovia village that much creepier. Cause just near this large, proud, lively town is this little village of arcanists, madmen, and cursed families who are all claim to serve the lord of this great land. Many speak of mad things, of monsters and demons and blood, while others simply refuse to say anything.
If you need any material for your Barovia, look up the Dacians. They were basically the ancestors of the Romanians going all the way back to Rome, and there mythology was they were founded by a great werewolf.

[ewancummins]

My only contribute to Barovia so far has been the the flasshing out of Sergey's Ghost. Hereis the second:
Barovia Town and Barovia Village; I always had a pet peeve in the idea that a nation capital could be seated on a village; so I propose this solution: Barovia Town is a fair sized town seating in the position Barovia canonically is; Barovia Village, instead is the house of Sthrad's retinue's family, and is seated on the same peak Castle Ravenloft stands.

I don't think of the Village of Barovia as a capital.
It's a slowly dying village in the shadow of a haunted castle, ringed by magical toxic fog. The gypsies who work for Strahd come and go as they please or as their master bids, while the townspeople are trapped like cattle in a pen. Bad place, not somewhere nobles want to be.
The Devil Strahd barely even rules Barovia in a conventional sense, leaving things up to the nobles and burgomasters--so long as none prove so foolish as to declare their independence or to claim lordship over Barovia as a whole.

I like King Corn's idea about the Dacians.
The Barovian Falx? For simplicity's sake, I'd just treat it as a scythe. It does a little less damage than the greatsword (2D4 instead of 2d6) , can be used for trip attacks, and while it won't crit as often as the sword when it does the results will be really nasty (x4!).

[Mischief]

I have decided to try remapping the core because it's been at least a decade since I've done a good old fantasy-style map, so why not? For starters, everything is quite a bit bigger. Mordent is one of the smaller domains: it fits in a 50x50 mile (80x80 km) box, and is attached to Dementlieu which is around 125 mi (200 km) long by 150 miles (240 km) across and has a massive pastoral countryside of beautiful lakes, fed by meltwater from the snowcapped Lamordian mountains to the north.

Barovia doesn't change sizes at all. It's a wee speck of red in the heart of the central highlands, a much-needed pit stop on the treacherous Old Svalich Road trading route. It can't change size because that ruins the domain's essential flavor: you are trapped in far too small a space with Strahd. He can get you when he wants you. There is no place to hide from his grasp, nowhere out of range.

Even though Barovia is tiny, Strahd's influence extends well outside into the Falkovnian territory of Tepest to the northwest (a very tenuous holding to be certain), Verbrek to the north, and Invidia and Gundarak to the south. Strahd enjoys the (more false than true) vanity of believing himself the shadow lord of these adjacent lands because he generally can get what and who he wants, when he wants using diplomacy, Vistani allies, and supernatural agents in service to him. The eastern forests of Forlorn stymie Strahd's influence. They tend to fall more under the sway of the larger woods of Sithicus.

If anyone can think of smaller domains, ones that lean on grim fairy tales or Eastern European folklore that would fit into the Barovian Highlands, I'd be interested. I have an empty land buffer between Lamordia and Darkon and I've been thinking of slotting Forlorn there, but that would leave Barovia snuggled against Sithicus.

[KingCorn]

I have decided to try remapping the core because it's been at least a decade since I've done a good old fantasy-style map, so why not? For starters, everything is quite a bit bigger. Mordent is one of the smaller domains: it fits in a 50x50 mile (80x80 km) box, and is attached to Dementlieu which is around 125 mi (200 km) long by 150 miles (240 km) across and has a massive pastoral countryside of beautiful lakes, fed by meltwater from the snowcapped Lamordian mountains to the north.

Barovia doesn't change sizes at all. It's a wee speck of red in the heart of the central highlands, a much-needed pit stop on the treacherous Old Svalich Road trading route. It can't change size because that ruins the domain's essential flavor: you are trapped in far too small a space with Strahd. He can get you when he wants you. There is no place to hide from his grasp, nowhere out of range.

Even though Barovia is tiny, Strahd's influence extends well outside into the Falkovnian territory of Tepest to the northwest (a very tenuous holding to be certain), Verbrek to the north, and Invidia and Gundarak to the south. Strahd enjoys the (more false than true) vanity of believing himself the shadow lord of these adjacent lands because he generally can get what and who he wants, when he wants using diplomacy, Vistani allies, and supernatural agents in service to him. The eastern forests of Forlorn stymie Strahd's influence. They tend to fall more under the sway of the larger woods of Sithicus.

If anyone can think of smaller domains, ones that lean on grim fairy tales or Eastern European folklore that would fit into the Barovian Highlands, I'd be interested. I have an empty land buffer between Lamordia and Darkon and I've been thinking of slotting Forlorn there, but that would leave Barovia snuggled against Sithicus.

I've always been more partial to a sizable Barovia, to illustrate that Strahd's ability to landgrab and get things done even with the Dark Powers constraints, and it gives one more to play around with. As well, it makes Strahds ability to just appear all the more creepy. Cause with a small domain, you have that dread that he could find you by the fact you have no where to run. With a large domain, you have the sudden fear that it doesn't matter how far you run, so long as you are in Barovia you are Strahd's prisoner.

[Mischief]

I've always been more partial to a sizable Barovia, to illustrate that Strahd's ability to landgrab and get things done even with the Dark Powers constraints, and it gives one more to play around with. As well, it makes Strahds ability to just appear all the more creepy. Cause with a small domain, you have that dread that he could find you by the fact you have no where to run. With a large domain, you have the sudden fear that it doesn't matter how far you run, so long as you are in Barovia you are Strahd's prisoner.

How big is a good size? Miles wise? Population? Settlements? I'm looking for second (and third and forth opinions) because it could get expanded a bit. I crunched the numbers and Strahd is literally going to drive Barovia's humans to extinction if one goes by the vanilla 5e headcounts.

[Mischief]

I'm double posting (terrible I know) because everyone needs to admire this nice thing.

Barovia... in 3D.

https://zootlocker.com/barovia/nofog.html

[Mistmaster]

My only contribute to Barovia so far has been the the flasshing out of Sergey's Ghost. Hereis the second:
Barovia Town and Barovia Village; I always had a pet peeve in the idea that a nation capital could be seated on a village; so I propose this solution: Barovia Town is a fair sized town seating in the position Barovia canonically is; Barovia Village, instead is the house of Sthrad's retinue's family, and is seated on the same peak Castle Ravenloft stands.

I don't think of the Village of Barovia as a capital.
It's a slowly dying village in the shadow of a haunted castle, ringed by magical toxic fog. The gypsies who work for Strahd come and go as they please or as their master bids, while the townspeople are trapped like cattle in a pen. Bad place, not somewhere nobles want to be.
The Devil Strahd barely even rules Barovia in a conventional sense, leaving things up to the nobles and burgomasters--so long as none prove so foolish as to declare their independence or to claim lordship over Barovia as a whole.

That is not the way I want it to be thought; My Sthrad rules exactly like he did when he was a mortal, (Only during winters, when snow and ice insulate the various places, does he brood and distracts himself with his blond-haired obsession) Ravenloft Castle is the seat of power of the state of Barovia, and a State needs a Capital City which can't be really too far from the seat of power, so Barovia (the urban agglomerate) is the only one which makes sense, but then it can't be a dying village, but I do admit that a Dracula Expy without a small village of fearfull prople near his castle would lack something. That's why I opted for giving the domain both of them; a capital for the State, and a setting for classic Dracula horror.

[KingCorn]

I've always been more partial to a sizable Barovia, to illustrate that Strahd's ability to landgrab and get things done even with the Dark Powers constraints, and it gives one more to play around with. As well, it makes Strahds ability to just appear all the more creepy. Cause with a small domain, you have that dread that he could find you by the fact you have no where to run. With a large domain, you have the sudden fear that it doesn't matter how far you run, so long as you are in Barovia you are Strahd's prisoner.

How big is a good size? Miles wise? Population? Settlements? I'm looking for second (and third and forth opinions) because it could get expanded a bit. I crunched the numbers and Strahd is literally going to drive Barovia's humans to extinction if one goes by the vanilla 5e headcounts.

I've always been in favor of a 5x or 10x size for the domains, at least in the core. Cause if something constitutes as a country/kingdom it should at least be 40 miles across. At least. It makes everything make more sense and gives you more room to put stuff in.

[ewancummins]

I've always been more partial to a sizable Barovia, to illustrate that Strahd's ability to landgrab and get things done even with the Dark Powers constraints, and it gives one more to play around with. As well, it makes Strahds ability to just appear all the more creepy. Cause with a small domain, you have that dread that he could find you by the fact you have no where to run. With a large domain, you have the sudden fear that it doesn't matter how far you run, so long as you are in Barovia you are Strahd's prisoner.

How big is a good size? Miles wise? Population? Settlements? I'm looking for second (and third and forth opinions) because it could get expanded a bit. I crunched the numbers and Strahd is literally going to drive Barovia's humans to extinction if one goes by the vanilla 5e headcounts.

That's why the Mists keep on bringing people into Ravenloft. The demiplane is like a vampire, a parasite of other worlds, stealing people, animals, resources, even land.


But I did increase populations and land areas IMC. I made the Core closer to the size of the Thirteen Colonies, sans western claims.

RE Barovia Town versus Barovia Village, I might grow Vallaki in size and population and make it a de facto 'capital.' The burgomasters and nobles (though I think the 'noble families' should really just be gentry and a few people claiming descent from the lucky ones who survived the Bloody Wedding) can meet there every summer to coordinate affairs.

[The Lesser Evil]

On the subject of annexing land, the 5e D&D Adventurer's League had a plot arc "Misty Fortunes and Absent Hearts" vaguely connected to the Ravenloft/CoS that had Barovia annexing a lot of land from Faerun, specifically the Moonsea region area around Phlann (but not Phlann itself), including the Quivering Forest, Glumpen Swamp, Vanishing Hills, and even a xenophobic elven community named Greenhall. Unfortunately, this being organized play modules, there's little to no geographical information on these locations and no maps. Even in the FR material there's scant mentioned I've found so far. Mischief did some hard work digging around and post a previous thread and found some potentially useful maps (their post quoted below, thanks Mischief!). If one wants want to expand Barovia from the threads in the AL league above, they'll need to do some creative extrapolation to combine these obscure areas from the Moonsea area into Barovia.

Plotwise, the justification for this addition was

VIEW CONTENT:

that this Barovian witch supreme of sorts, Esmae Amarantha had merged with a vestige from the Amber Temple. This has given her the power to annex areas from the Material Plane and add them to Barovia for Strahd. If she collected all the plot McGuffins, her power would have been even greater.

You can get a summary of a lot of this stuff in the Mistipedia, if curious.

One of the Adventurer's League Modules, may have descriptions
Fan map Barovia with locations marked
North Moonsea Map
Phlan area map
Another lowres Moonsea map with the marshes

LQ Map of Orașnou with descriptions I think this pdf is okay for web distribution, but I'll delete if anyone believes otherwise.

[KingCorn]

The Moscovici Home for the Disturbed is one of the finest asylums in all of Barovia. Founded in Immol in 691 by the local Thaani, with help from local Hala witches, it is seen as a model for what Barovian medicine should be: simple and effective. The founders of the asylum claim that they founded the asylum as a way to repay the Barovian people for there kindness in accepting them in there hour of need, a way to help heal those broken in spirit as they were.

The truth is more complicated. While the original founders did wish to give back to the Barovian people and to help those who where scarred as they were, it was also founded as a way to observe the further powers of the mind, as well as to monitor the potential plans of the Silent Masters. Using there natural mental abilities, the staff of Moscovici Home will often put there patients into a deep trance, hoping to find some hidden information about the goings on of there former masters, sure that every instance of madness can be traced back to them. Several patients have told them of the Nightmare Court, which they interpret to be the true powers of Bluetspur, beings of pure thought.

In spite of their paranoid studies, the staff of Moscovici Home do treat there patients somewhat well, avoiding doing permanent damage in their studies, and have brought many back from the brink of madness. However, they have had some sources of shame. One of their early staff was known to be less careful in his treatment of patients during "research". Eventually exiled, he later fled to Gundarak, entering the emply of Dr. Dominiani as Dr. White.

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

I'm double posting (terrible I know) because everyone needs to admire this nice thing.

Barovia... in 3D.

https://zootlocker.com/barovia/nofog.html

super cool!

[KingCorn]

Recently, Count Strahd has been making many visits to Immol. While most believe it is family business with his cousin, others believe it for romance as the count has been seen courting a peasant girl of remarkable beauty. Strahd believes he has once again found Tatyana, another chance to win her heart. He has taken to the old art of wooing her, hoping it will yield better results than past attempts.
However, not only is the girl not Tatyana, she is not even truly human! She and her family are creatures created by Lyssa von Zarovich using alchemy and the fleshcrafting arts she learned in Bluetspur. Lyssa's creature lower Strahds guard, and when he is weakest drain him as he has drained so many others, ensuring Lyssa the throne of Barovia.