Café de Nuit

As part of a crossover event between Die By The Dice and Queen of Orphans, one of my players was a guest on their podcast, where she met their party in the World Serpent Inn and traded quests with them. Because she's still stuck in the demiplane, she can enter the Inn but can't use it to travel to any other plane. Meanwhile, the DbtD party can go through whatever doors they like, except if they go through her door, they're stuck with her in the Mists. This encourages them all to trade quests: in exchange for them getting information from an archmage on the Elemental Plane of Air, she's going to get a group together to recover an item in the possession of a newly trapped darklord.

https://soundcloud.com/diebythedice/epi ... he-serpent

Apart from the novelty of the setup, listening to this episode really throws into relief the issue of the demiplane's name: even a Discern Location spell fails to provide the name of the plane, which according to the spell description requires deity-level interference. But...in a place like the Inn, it has to be spoken about somehow. It needs a name. I tried to warn the DM that the name "Ravenloft" referred to the game setting and/or Strahd's Castle, but it appears I was too late and his PC's were already calling it that in-game. They start calling it the "Demiplane of Dread," which seems a little overblown...but in a place like the WSI, it's about as apt a name as any other. After all, this is a place where you can hop around between any worlds you want, what else are you going to call the place you can't ever hop back from, and everyone says that it sucks?

At any rate, I'd love your thoughts, and I'm sure the DbtD crew would love for you to listen.

As part of this event, we're going after the terrorist Dalen Reven from the Azlanti Star Empire of Starfinder. He's a newly minted darklord, but we need a name for his dread domain.

And he needs a curse. And powers and goons and stuff.

But naming the domain is pretty urgent, because an ally of the party is about to cast "Discern Location" on Dalen, which will reveal the name of his domain along with any cluster it's in.

The Planescape Guide to the Ethereal Plane refers to it as the Demiplane of Dread, so I would assume that is the name planar travelers would use.

DeepShadow of FoS wrote:But naming the domain is pretty urgent, because an ally of the party is about to cast "Discern Location" on Dalen, which will reveal the name of his domain along with any cluster it's in.

With naming the domain you could give yourself a little time to breathe as the new Darklord could be "settling in" and thus the 'official' name and what ordinary denizens call it could be very different. The catch is though the true name of a domain sets its tone.

For a brief suggestion of quick and dirty names as you know more about the domain tone than us
*Select the 'culture' of the domain
*Map it to a real world place
*Select an old language from said place
*Select a word which describes the darklords situation
*Feed that word into a online translator and see what you get and tweak as desired

Eaxmples: Eirōneia (Greek for 'Ironic'), Indaba (Zulu for pain), Réabadh (gaelic for punish), Tihooníh (Navajo for Suffering), Cruciamen (Latin for inflicting suffering), Karman (Sanskrit for 'Karma')

Resonant Curse wrote:The Planescape Guide to the Ethereal Plane refers to it as the Demiplane of Dread, so I would assume that is the name planar travelers would use.

Manual of the Planes (2e) mentioned it briefly under demiplanes as 'Demiplane of Dread'.
It was pretty much considered a tall tale to scare planer travellers as nobdy seemed to know of anyone you went there and came back or could even find it.
"Oh yeah, there's this demi plane floating around the ether that traps you forever, so you better watch out newbie *singger*"

And those who claimed to have retured spouted all sorts of weird stuff that they were obviously making it up (and most probably were).
"I flew into the Bremuda triangle on a tricycle and was abducted by aliens. Really! Or my name isn't Baron Munchausen!"

DustBunny wrote:With naming the domain you could give yourself a little time to breathe as the new Darklord could be "settling in" and thus the 'official' name and what ordinary denizens call it could be very different. The catch is though the true name of a domain sets its tone.

Yeah, it's the true name of the domain I'm concerned about here, for that very reason.

For a brief suggestion of quick and dirty names as you know more about the domain tone than us

I really don't know that much more. I don't play Starfinder, and I'm struggling to get info out of the other DM. I know the villain's origin was a humanocentric empire that doesn't acknowledge the personhood of androids. So, the analogs here would be mostly sci-fi races like the Klingons, Kree and the Galactic Empire of Star Wars.

Eaxmples: Eirōneia (Greek for 'Ironic'), Indaba (Zulu for pain), Réabadh (gaelic for punish), Tihooníh (Navajo for Suffering), Cruciamen (Latin for inflicting suffering), Karman (Sanskrit for 'Karma')

Got it. I need the Klingon word for "frustration."

You can apparently google Klingon translator and find several options of English-Klingon translators. Bing even added it to its list of translators.

DeepShadow of FoS wrote:I really don't know that much more. I don't play Starfinder, and I'm struggling to get info out of the other DM. I know the villain's origin was a humanocentric empire that doesn't acknowledge the personhood of androids. So, the analogs here would be mostly sci-fi races like the Klingons, Kree and the Galactic Empire of Star Wars.

At first I though you said the K'kree (from Traveller) and almost wents nuts. Thankfully you said Kree, so crisis averted.

Unfortunatly I dont know much about Starfinder either, apart from the brief blurb at the wiki. It seems to be more sci-fi as opposed to gothic horror.

Trying to find the angle (apologies if I am unclear) - what is the terrorists primary motivation? - "Humans first? Death to 'non humans' (aka robots are not human, hence other races are just defective bio-robots to be destroyed), "Follow the divine being 'X', the purest form of human" (like Platos perfect forms), etc. If this doen't make sense - what is the reason the heros are after him? He must have done something - prehaps work off that?

Unless of course my questions are annoying and you want to call the domain "petaQ SoHba'.

Got it. I need the Klingon word for "frustration."

The word is 'Mogh' if you meant to ask

*Runs away before DS smites her*

DustBunny wrote:Unless of course my questions are annoying and you want to call the domain "petaQ SoHba'.

Almost. I just checked my Klingon Dictionary, and SoH is not an imperative suffix. You mean "petaQ yIba'." I apologize for being a grammar fascist in more than one language.

DustBunny wrote:Trying to find the angle (apologies if I am unclear) - what is the terrorists primary motivation? - "Humans first? Death to 'non humans' (aka robots are not human, hence other races are just defective bio-robots to be destroyed), "Follow the divine being 'X', the purest form of human" (like Platos perfect forms), etc. If this doen't make sense - what is the reason the heros are after him? He must have done something - prehaps work off that?

I'm told he's a kind of dark transhumanist, trying to enhance humankind originally, but then he just focused on himself and tried to ascend to godhood. He committed a number of terrorist actions along the way.

With regard to the DbtD party, he stole the soul of one of them. The guy's relatively okay, still walking around, but he wants it back. That's where my party comes in.

Unless of course my questions are annoying and you want to call the domain "petaQ SoHba'.

Is that...an actual thing?

The word is 'Mogh' if you meant to ask

According to my sources, it's Qu'vatlh: https://t.co/M2Y9KsgOH8

So far, people on Twitter have suggested Xrenfarha, Averous, Qu'vatlh and..."Garth Marenghi's Darkplace ™"

Considering the villain's name is a homophone for "raven," I wonder if we could incorporate it in some way that didn't go too far over the top in similarity to "Ravenloft."

Revenstar? Reven's Star? As a nod to how it's like, Ravenloft in spaaaace?

DeepShadow of FoS wrote:

The word is 'Mogh' if you meant to ask

According to my sources, it's Qu'vatlh: https://t.co/M2Y9KsgOH8

"Qu'vatlh" is an exclamatory Klingon curse word. A frustrated Klingon might yell it out, but "mogh" is the actual word for "frustrated." Qu'vatlh might be the better domain name, though tlh is a nasty sound to pronounce.

DeepShadow of FoS wrote:Revenstar? Reven's Star? As a nod to how it's like, Ravenloft in spaaaace?

Working with that as a basis...

Raven in gaelic is 'Préachán', but it feels a bit off.
So I went with 'Crow' which is 'Caróg', and 'Star' is 'Réalta'

Put them together and get 'Caróg Réalta'
Combine them together to make it more simple and you get 'Carogalta'
Working the same with 'Raven soul thief' -> Préachán Anam Gadi -> 'Préangadi'

Or if you prefer Tolkien
Raven Star -> Craban tinu (Sindarin elvish) -> "Crabatinu"

This is only working with online translators and Wolfglide is probably going crazy at the mangled grammar, so I'll stop now.

Alright, I added Carogalta to the previous three, and submitted it to Twitter to vote.

Go vote for your favorite!

And now, we need more details of the domain, and a curse.

I decided it was a space station because that was slightly less ridiculous than a planetoid.

I'm leaning toward the idea that the populace is some kind of enlightened post-human android, calculated to drive a transhumanist nuts from jealousy, and a Azlanti nuts from racism.

DustBunny wrote:This is only working with online translators and Wolfglide is probably going crazy at the mangled grammar, so I'll stop now.

I know nothing of Gaelic, so my twitching is not that bad.
I have a book about the languages of Middle-Earth, but it is not as clear as The Klingon Dictionary. Online Sindarin may be about as good. As far as I can tell, it is correct to just run the words together into a compound word. My book says "tin" is "sparkle," but also "star" in at least one context. I don't see where the "u" at the end comes from, but I can't confirm that it shouldn't be there. "Elen" and "gil" are also good words for star.

Anyway, if I am going to keep talking, I should contribute to the actual topic. If Dalen Reven was attempting technological modification, he might have integrated himself into the space station itself. Unfortunately, he now has the responsibility of maintaining life support on the station. He doesn't want to, but when he intentionally lets the inhabitants suffer, something goes wrong that only they can fix, threatening his continued existence. If the inhabitants are androids, then perhaps a magnetic induction power grid to charge them would make more sense than traditional life support. The induction could potentially be used against the party, perhaps like a heat metal spell (inspired by induction cooking). A cloud of shrapnel held in a magnetic field could act as the closed domain border.

He doesn't have to be fully integrated. Perhaps he can leave the central processor, but the core starts to melt down. He can't make it out of the domain before it detonates, so he always goes back and resets the control rods.

DeepShadow of FoS wrote:And now, we need more details of the domain, and a curse.

I decided it was a space station because that was slightly less ridiculous than a planetoid.

Okay - starting with the beignning, what sort of space station?

Hamster wheel?
Bernall Sphere?
O'Neill Cylinder?
Dyson sphere? May not count as it is very close to a planetoid, just inside out.
Mix of hamster wheel and O'Neill cylinder
A giant ship cruising endlessly through the void/mists
Typical Trek - Almost indistinguishable from a ordinary shopping complex regardless of shape.

Next will the station be 'in the void'/'mists', floating above the Ravenloft Core, or orbiting a 'generic moon/planet/sun'?

These are to get a basic idea of 'what a tourist would see', and then work on it from there. Trek type would be easiest, but boring IMHO, while the others may require a unecessary amount of work for a 'one off'.