Café de Nuit

Has anybody done anything with it? Locally? Internationally?

I like the idea of a wide-reaching crime syndicate in the Core, just as I like a spider-webbing financial powerhouse based out of Borca.

What could it look like?

Gazetteer V tells us that Malken and his Prince Othmar protected crew deals primarily in gambling (games of skill and chance, horse and dog racing, and caged combat that includes beasts and men), alcohol, and narcotics (opium from Hazlan). Backed by daily assaults, robberies, rapes, and murder...it's easy, logical, to assume that they have expanded into other domains.

And an interesting statistic is in the "Nova Vaasa at a Glance" sidebar: a full 2% of the population are Falkovnian. That's a huge number of Falkovnians, considering that outside of Richemulot (7%), Nova Vaasa is the second-largest importer of Falkovnian muscle (Invidia, with 600 troops on loan, is third and last as far as I can tell). I don't think it's that far of a stretch to think that not all of the 1300+ Falkovnians there are refugees fleeing from one spithole to another...

So, we have a Dark Lord-led crime syndicate with some political backing (Prince Othmar and potentially Vlad Drakov) that employs military-trained enforcers, in addition to every shank-your-mother-for-a-penny low-life in just about the entire eastern half of the Core.

Man, it would be such a waste of Ravenloft not to brainstorm this...

There is information on something similar in Quoth the Raven 21 under the title The Criminal Rings of Nova Vaasa by Eleanor "Isabella" Ferron, but it is based on a revision of the domain. Though as a whole I prefer the canon Nova Vaasa as the revision's Malken has a different background, it has good element's. I guess it takes the canon depiction of the populace similar to Cossacks as an inspiration to make the criminal organisations of the domain similar to Eastern-European criminal organisations, like the Nova Vaasan criminal's tattoo culture influenced by those of Russian Mafia.

I don't see Nova Vaasa as the right domain for criminal Syndacates; I prefer to put Malken Tristen, the criminal rings and theyr issues in Zherisia. Un Nova Vaasa I prefer to put Kharchov,

I see a black hand on the core, its palm centred in Nova Vaasa. From there the fingers (crime families and their turf) reach:

1. Corvia, Darkon (little finger). Darkon is a tough nut to crack, not for its inhabitants and their lack of vice (quite the opposite), but for the Kargat and their Kargatane snitches. Progress is slow, as any overt action will be the end of the family. A lot of street level "cut outs" here and peppered throughout the domain. Very dangerous. Smoke and mirrors. "Legit" gambling establishments the main focus of the family for now.

2. Port-a-Lucine, Dementlieu (ring finger). Lucrative. Guilds (thieves, merchant, labour, etc). Stevedores and heavy smuggling for the most part, with dockside gambling dens and prostitution for all levels of society. Some blackmail, high traffic narcotics (supply for the middle finger, with a contingency cut). Headed by the "Beggar Queen".

3. Lechberg, Borca, and Pont-a-Museau, Richemulot (middle finger). Very lucrative and very dangerous. Mix of smoke and mirrors and guilds (thieves, assassins, merchant, labour, etc). High-end gambling establishments for the bankers (some of which are business partners), du jour nobility and their ilk, and street cons and fly-by-nights ("grab and folds") for the working stiffs, in addition to dockside pay dumps. Party-level narcotics in Lechberg, central hub in Pont-a-Museau. Stevedores, smuggling, assassination, prostitution, cutpurses, blackmail, burglars; it's the single most powerful family of the syndicate outside of Nova Vaasa. They have their hands in everything, but rely on nothing. Headed by a jovial middle-aged postman.

4. Vallaki and Zeidenburg, Barovia, with Karina, Invidia (index finger). Dangerous. Smoke and mirrors.

5. Toyalis, Hazlan (thumb). Very lucrative. Guilds (thieves, merchant).

I'll fluff this up a bit when I got more time. QtR 21 is on reading list now. Thanks Mephisto.

Mistmaster: I like the idea of Zherisia being where the Shadow Rift is. Paridon smack in the middle of the Core, and enlarged. Ravenloft's Waterdeep. The Shadow Rift changed to being a twilight reflection of Tepest. And I've been meaning to redevelop both for some time now. Some day I will...

I actually keep it an island.