Café de Nuit

We all know that it's basically a DM's prerogative what happens when a Darklord is destroyed, but there are also canon examples of domains being absorbed by neighboring ones in that situation - but, I could have sworn that there have been some sources suggesting, if not outright describing, domains returning to their birth-world if their Darklord is destroyed. Can anyone confirm that, and where I might have gotten that impression from? Or am I just nuts?

On page 13 of the Ravenloft Player's Handbook, the last paragraph of the "Darklords" section describes what happens when a darklord dies. It does not, however, state that the domain necessarily returns from whence it came. I had the impression that such an event was suggested too, though.

In Gonzoron's campaign journals, Odiare falls back into Gothic Earth's Italy when Maligno is destroyed. That's the only example that comes to mind.

Being a full material plane, my domains are not lands casually picked up in other worlds, so when a darklord is destroyed for good, balance shifts in favour of light for a time, than a new Darklord takes the place of the last one.

Hell_Born wrote:but, I could have sworn that there have been some sources suggesting, if not outright describing, domains returning to their birth-world if their Darklord is destroyed. Can anyone confirm that, and where I might have gotten that impression from? Or am I just nuts?

Working from memory...

Technically the first was the I6 adventure. When Strahd was destroyed the mists faded but the PC's were still in Barovia. This really doesn't count though and it was pre-Ravenloft campaign

The next is a possible ending from Feast of Gobbos hexad module. It's described that Daglan's tower is being pulled physically into Ravenloft from it's home plane, which suggests that some geography is physically pulled into Ravenloft. I think one ending can also let the PC's escape by popping back to the prime when the domain collapses. No mention if the tower follows.

The next real one is Roots of Evil from the Hexad modules. When Ravenloft dissolves/breaks up when the prophecy is fulfilled, the PC's end up in the original Barovia. It is at this point it pretty much says that Raveloft Barovia is just a copy of the real thing and that the day after Strahd had his tantrum, the prime people found the keep empty and never knew what happened.

You could also make some assumptions from Soth's stint in RL. Nobody in Krynn mentioned that Dargaard keep had vanished, though it is mentioned as abandoned - so the Ravenloft version is another copy. Though this gets tricky due to the disagreement of Soth in RL.

So it seems one option is for the copied landscape to fade, but the contents of the copy (people, creatures, and externally created objects) can drop back to the original template area.

Mistmaster wrote:Being a full material plane, my domains are not lands casually picked up in other worlds, so when a darklord is destroyed for good, balance shifts in favour of light for a time, than a new Darklord takes the place of the last one.

Mine is a full-fledged plane. A plane between the ethereal plane and the Nine Hells. It is of infinite size and the core is one of an infinite number of cores. Cores come and go all the time. Bavoria was simply the first domain of the newest core.

Relating to what happens to domains in general, most of the campaign setting versions (black box, red box, etc.), it says the domain dissolves into the Mists, gets a new darklord, or is absorbed into other domains.

There are some instances in specific where a domain might return to the Prime. In Curse of Strahd, I believe Barovia goes back to the Prime Material Plane for a time after Strahd is offed, though it will return to the Shadowfell once he revives. If Yagno Petrovna is killed in Circle of Darkness, his domain is deposited on the material plane, though whether G'Henna was fabricated entirely within the Demiplane or if its lands were drawn from somewhere else and making the Barovian Yagno its lord upon first formation. I believe Ship of Horrors had Todstein et al. originally come from the player characters' home world, and with the necromancer darklord's death the land returns home. Or maybe it was just the player characters, I can't recall.

DustBunny wrote:You could also make some assumptions from Soth's stint in RL. Nobody in Krynn mentioned that Dargaard keep had vanished, though it is mentioned as abandoned - so the Ravenloft version is another copy. Though this gets tricky due to the disagreement of Soth in RL.

In the novel, Knight of the Black Rose, Soth ends up in Sithicus and while the domain is fairly original compared to his lands on Krynn (I assume, not a big DL guy), he goes as far as to say that his keep is an almost exact copy of his previous one. That is why he refers to it as 'Nedargaard Keep' as in "Not Dargaard Keep". The distances between areas, the lengths of halls, the number of steps changes every few weeks it seems to constantly bother and remind him that he is not in his home. For a guy with nothing but time on his hands (or at least until the lawyers and authors step in) and who has paced his place for decades, it would be noticeable.