Café de Nuit

So, I will admit part of this is because of an ambitious crossover I want to do with The Piazza/Wildspace Magazine Team in the future. Big Mac, the lead editor, certainly seemed interested. But, I've had an idea of merging the logic of Spelljammer and Ravenloft through a unique cluster that evoked the rules of both. Obviously, it can't FULLY evoke both and concessions will be made... especially on the spelljammer side. I have read The Dread Space, but I wasn't fully sold on it for various reasons. (Mind you, I love Hour of the Raven's work otherwise.) As this is a thread that is heavily built on the Spelljammer Campaign Setting, I'll assume familiarity as such.

Let's first muse on logic then. So, it's a cluster that mimics the feel of a Crystal Sphere. Travel will have to be done via spelljamming ship. But, just HOW big would this misty-wildspace be? For one, as big as the Powers probably need... but really, you'd probably want to fake the SJ-approach to distance, where a ship can achieve a certain amount of travel per day. Likewise, worlds would probably be facades/barriers between domains as one gets closer to the domain proper. Anything beyond "the simulation" could be abstracts of what a world may have or slowly degenerate into misty barriers like with other domains. Or rather, the black clouds as referenced in CGR1 (how the mists manifest in Wildspace)

Now, what's the central linchpin for such a cluster? I'd imagine some manner of port/hub akin to the Rock of Bral, Tarvin, Dragon Rock, etc. But, its twist would be sailors and travelers slowly abandoning it to economic failure. I'm imagining a Darklord that would have wanted market domination, destroying rivals to promote his own company, resulting in a failing hub area within a sphere that doesn't see much travel anymore. Maybe he exploited folk tales of horrible monsters, now made real through a curse... and thus the starry shores are now actually dangerous. Perhaps, taking from Bloodborne, an "Insight" mechanic allows one to better see the monsters at the cost of one's sanity. Helmsight exists in SJ already, so why not "Helm Insight"? Use of this special helm could warrant saving throws (perhaps Madness), resulting in the double edged sword of damaging knowledge.

This begs a question, if the central hub is surrounded by danger, would that leave the rest of the cluster pretty cut off too? What other "worlds" may exist that would have "traded" with this hub at one point (even if it's probably False History)? I'm not certain if this is a project of its own yet, but perhaps it has potential... and if it does, it would be cool to see FoS and Piazza crossover.

After reading this, my first thought is to make the Darklord someone who already has a history of unwarranted overkill, a history of being trapped in a limited area, and a history of trying to break the rules only to fail. The Darklord of Mistspace should be The Fool, trapped on a Dread Spelljammer that preys on ships traveling the domain. The Spelljammer already functions similar to a domain in how it traps people aboard ship, and the Legend of Spelljammer boxed set (along with the end of the novel series) can be used to partially populate the Ravenloft version. There can certainly be subdomains within Mistspace like there are islands in the Sea of Sorrows, but like the Flying Dutchman, the lord of the space between those specks of land is the captain of the Dread Spelljammer.

I do like the idea of a Dread Spelljammer being the prison-lair of the "main" darklord of Mistspace. The trick might be finding a way to distinguish them sufficiently from Pieter/Pietra van Reise. I've never read "The Legend of the Spelljammer" to know whether there are any good hooks to twist there.

However, having a Ravenloftized version of the Rock of Bral also makes sense. Of course, if I recall correctly, there are strong implications that Prince Andru himself may have committed some Acts of Apparently-Not-Quite-Ultimate Darkness himself. What did this darklord do that warranted a domain when Prince Andru did not? Maybe there's something in the history of Bral that could be leveraged. (Unless, of course, you're not actually leaning into this domain as Dark Bral.)

At any rate, I feel that each domain within Mistspace should have something about it which is uniquely Spelljammerish. For example, you propose that the darklord exploited monstrous folk tales made real. However, maybe there was no Vistani-style curse but instead a smoky glass bottle sold by the arcane for their usual inexplicable reasons.

How is Mistspace tied to the rest of the Domains of Dread? Although I wouldn't mind a mistway or two, I would not want a spelljamming vessel touching down in Barovia. Perhaps part of the torment behind Mistspace is that it is NOT connected to the larger world, unlike the traditional crystal spheres bobbing in the Phlogiston.

Anyway, just spitballin'. Please disregard anything that does not suit your fancy.

I mused on "The Core" being "A World" in this "Crystal Sphere". However, the passage a spelljammer would undergo to enter atmosphere is unstable... So, you're likely to either have a ship just burn up and crash or have enough juice to glide down as its helm fails completely. So, your ship is a dud and you'll have to find a way back into "wildspace".

Andru is a fascinating villain that's just begging the Dark Powers to nab him up, for certain. Though, I'm not certain another "celebrity cameo" would be the best for the setting. Admittedly, I'm guilty of this when I swallowed up Jaibul and The Black Rajah from Voyage of the Princess Ark into a domain of dread. But, I try not to otherwise.

The Dark wrote: Thu Sep 11, 2025 5:16 pm After reading this, my first thought is to make the Darklord someone who already has a history of unwarranted overkill, a history of being trapped in a limited area, and a history of trying to break the rules only to fail. The Darklord of Mistspace should be The Fool, trapped on a Dread Spelljammer that preys on ships traveling the domain. The Spelljammer already functions similar to a domain in how it traps people aboard ship, and the Legend of Spelljammer boxed set (along with the end of the novel series) can be used to partially populate the Ravenloft version. There can certainly be subdomains within Mistspace like there are islands in the Sea of Sorrows, but like the Flying Dutchman, the lord of the space between those specks of land is the captain of the Dread Spelljammer.

The Spelljammer can THEORETICALLY pierce the mists. It would be an amazing twist if the Fool was literally a Darklord. Making him a Van Reisse like figure is always a cool interpretation. Though, I considered a Bral homage as the center point as it does seem kinda expected, but such a thing feels so iconic to Spelljammer. Plus, having a Van Reise nod feels like stepping on the Sea of Sorrows. Besides, Spelljammer literally has its own sea of sorrows, which is just confusing and is proof that TSR writers never talked to each other much.

And as for Overkill, I think Night_Druid of SJ community fame has you beat. He mused the idea of a Darklord dating back to the First Unhuman War, where an Elven Navy leader gave the orders to use an experimental weapon on the world of Borka, turning the tides against the humanoid menace. There's one problem, it worked too well. Everything on Borka was destroyed and it drove the leader man, while also obsessed with the horror he created. He's not here, but I can try to figure more details. Such atrocity is certainly right at home in such a cluster.

doctornecrotic wrote: Sat Sep 13, 2025 10:07 pm Andru is a fascinating villain that's just begging the Dark Powers to nab him up, for certain. Though, I'm not certain another "celebrity cameo" would be the best for the setting. Admittedly, I'm guilty of this when I swallowed up Jaibul and The Black Rajah from Voyage of the Princess Ark into a domain of dread. But, I try not to otherwise.

To be clear, I was not advocating for stealing Andru directly. He's needed on the Rock of Bral! I was pondering whether Spelljammer canon features some historical rival (named or otherwise) who might have gone even further than Andru in their bid for power and thus been claimed by the Mists.

doctornecrotic wrote: Sat Sep 13, 2025 10:07 pm Besides, Spelljammer literally has its own sea of sorrows, which is just confusing and is proof that TSR writers never talked to each other much.

Highly unfortunate, that.

doctornecrotic wrote: Sat Sep 13, 2025 10:07 pm And as for Overkill, I think Night_Druid of SJ community fame has you beat. He mused the idea of a Darklord dating back to the First Unhuman War, where an Elven Navy leader gave the orders to use an experimental weapon on the world of Borka, turning the tides against the humanoid menace. There's one problem, it worked too well. Everything on Borka was destroyed and it drove the leader man, while also obsessed with the horror he created. He's not here, but I can try to figure more details. Such atrocity is certainly right at home in such a cluster.

And, of course the Domains of Dread already have their own Borca as well. But, yes, I agree that scenario would be right at home at the intersection of Spelljammer and Ravenloft.

I think the idea of a Spelljammer and Ravenloft crossover can work very well! I think the "Bloodborne"-ish insight, black clouds and "Flying Dutchman" equivalent are very interesting.

For the Darklord, I'd suggest that you check the lore/story of the original four Phantasy Star games for inspiration. I think the idea of a darklord that is basically a (imprisoned) star/sun or black hole may solve the issues of having a typical humanoid darklord who could just escape with a Spelljammer. The imprisoned cosmic force acts through a powerful proxy (such as a ruler, pirate, mystic, etc), who would be the "effective" darklord. Perhaps the imprisoned force can affect how spelljamming works in its vicinity, trapping people and ships (almost like being caught in the gravitic pull of a black hole).

I believe classic stories that take place on a ship would be awesome inspiration. Jason & the Argonauts, Moby Dick, etc.

I think sci-fi fantasy settings can be useful inspiration too, although you'd have to re-skin some things. I'm thinking of stuff like Thundercats, the DOOM games universe, perhaps even the poems in "Return to the Rat Planet" (by Hilton and Woessner).

I'd love to hear what you come up with as this setting takes shape!

LeMaxul wrote: Sat Sep 20, 2025 1:49 am I think the idea of a Spelljammer and Ravenloft crossover can work very well! I think the "Bloodborne"-ish insight, black clouds and "Flying Dutchman" equivalent are very interesting.

For the Darklord, I'd suggest that you check the lore/story of the original four Phantasy Star games for inspiration. I think the idea of a darklord that is basically a (imprisoned) star/sun or black hole may solve the issues of having a typical humanoid darklord who could just escape with a Spelljammer. The imprisoned cosmic force acts through a powerful proxy (such as a ruler, pirate, mystic, etc), who would be the "effective" darklord. Perhaps the imprisoned force can affect how spelljamming works in its vicinity, trapping people and ships (almost like being caught in the gravitic pull of a black hole).

I believe classic stories that take place on a ship would be awesome inspiration. Jason & the Argonauts, Moby Dick, etc.

I think sci-fi fantasy settings can be useful inspiration too, although you'd have to re-skin some things. I'm thinking of stuff like Thundercats, the DOOM games universe, perhaps even the poems in "Return to the Rat Planet" (by Hilton and Woessner).

I'd love to hear what you come up with as this setting takes shape!

As an aside to the black clouds, there is something akin to that in Krynnspace canon. So, that could be a sort of planar gateway going directly one-way into the demiplane. Now, it has its own rules (especially resulting in bad souls disappearing into said cloud, either through death or being whisked away).

And as for wider Spelljammer influence, I did make an "Appendix S" series in Wildspace Magazine. I should really broaden it further to cosmic horror, naval horror, and the like. I have some nods to Cthulhu Mythos, Sargasso Sea Horror Tales, and the like already.

doctornecrotic wrote: Wed Sep 10, 2025 2:56 pmSo, I will admit part of this is because of an ambitious crossover I want to do with The Piazza/Wildspace Magazine Team in the future. Big Mac, the lead editor, certainly seemed interested. But, I've had an idea of merging the logic of Spelljammer and Ravenloft through a unique cluster that evoked the rules of both. Obviously, it can't FULLY evoke both and concessions will be made... especially on the spelljammer side. I have read The Dread Space, but I wasn't fully sold on it for various reasons. (Mind you, I love Hour of the Raven's work otherwise.) As this is a thread that is heavily built on the Spelljammer Campaign Setting, I'll assume familiarity as such.

It's an interesting idea! And I love "crossover canon" that connects two different settings.

I will admit however, that I am personally more interested in the opposite idea of your idea. Ravenloft has some locations that have been swallowed up from the Material Plane and I'd like to be able to create Spelljammer crystal spheres around those places, to explore what happened to Barovia's world...and planetary system.

(Is there a big "Barovia-shaped hole" on "Barovia-world"? If you try to land a spelljamming ship on "Barovia-world" from Wildspace, do the Mists of Ravenloft extend up into the sky? Is it possible for people on the Material Plane planets (or visitors to those planets) to attempt to go into The Mists on a "rescue mission" and make it back out? I've actually been trying to make a list all the Material Plane worlds mentioned in Ravenloft products for my list of "minor D&D worlds" on The Piazza, but I keep running into the "False History" thing where the world does not really exist. But so far I've found a couple of planets (or places on planets that were actually real places pulled into Ravenloft.) Anyhoo, your idea is great too, so I don't see why we could not do both things.

doctornecrotic wrote: Wed Sep 10, 2025 2:56 pmLet's first muse on logic then. So, it's a cluster that mimics the feel of a Crystal Sphere. Travel will have to be done via spelljamming ship. But, just HOW big would this misty-wildspace be? For one, as big as the Powers probably need... but really, you'd probably want to fake the SJ-approach to distance, where a ship can achieve a certain amount of travel per day. Likewise, worlds would probably be facades/barriers between domains as one gets closer to the domain proper. Anything beyond "the simulation" could be abstracts of what a world may have or slowly degenerate into misty barriers like with other domains.

OK, so Spelljammer operates on the scale of ships travelling one million miles per day (for the benefit of Ravenloft fans who do not know this) and Spelljammer crystal spheres are measured in "Spelljammer Days" (or SJDs) with that being a bit similar to a Light Year (LY). Just as a real-world light year is the distance light travels in a year, a Spelljammer Day is the distance a spelljamming ship travels in a day. If you do not want a simulation of a crystal sphere to be as big as a crystal sphere, all you need to do is reduce Spelljamming Speed inside the "Wildspace Domain".

So long as people on the ships have the sense that they are accelerating to a speed much faster than tactical speed (which is measured in units of 500 feet per turn - hexes in Spelljammer on the Spelljammer combat map) spacefarers are not really going to be able to figure out the exact speed of the ship.

You could even do some sort of weird "Fantastic Voyage" thing where a wizard tried to cast a spell on an entire crystal sphere and the magic went wrong and the inside of the sphere got miniaturised and is now the size of a crystal ball (or something else similar to the palantir from Lord of the Rings). Ancient Netheril created 10th-12th level spells and the reversable spell "Proctiv's Breach Crystal Sphere / Proctiv's Seal Crystal Sphere" works on an entire crystal sphere, so perhaps a Netherese lich tried to recreate Proctiv's spell and seal Realmspace (or another crystal sphere of your choice) to keep out the "strange outsider creatures" that early Netherse spacefarers had fought and killed and instead of the spell working as intended, it sucked him into a Ravenloft domain that is a dark orrery of what Realmspace actually is. You could do this with a bespoke crystal sphere, if you wanted total freedom to design planets and asteroids. But if you go off of an existing crystal sphere, you could kind of copy what Forgotten Realms did with Evernight (the dismal echo of Neverwinter). Having said that, doing something directly with Realmspace would be a tripple-crossover so there would be a lot more potential to "get something wrong". Maybe a brand new crystal sphere (which can be a relatively small crystal sphere, instead of a stupidly large one) would be a good choice for you.

doctornecrotic wrote: Wed Sep 10, 2025 2:56 pmOr rather, the black clouds as referenced in CGR1 (how the mists manifest in Wildspace)

You need to be a little bit careful here as there is something else called The Black Clouds in Krynnspace. They occupy a lot of the orbit of one of the planets there, and burn people who lean over the edge of the ship. They also cause memory loss (which might actually be useful if you want to allow people to escape from your domain back into the Spelljammer setting...and go for the "you do not remember what you did" angle).

In CGR1 The Mists of Ravenloft (innnnnn Space) are described like this:

CGR1 The Complete Spacefarer's Handbook page 14 wrote:The Mists of Ravenloft can appear even in wildspace, where they take the form of a jet-black cloud that arises before the victim vessel. Ships that sail into Ravenloft through the Mists are as trapped as any other entrant to the demiplane.

(I'm going to have to put a disambiguation page on Spelljammer Wiki, to let people know there are different types of black clouds. )

Another option is you mix together both types of "black cloud" and have a powerful wizard in Krynnspace rise to Netherese-levels of power (long before the time of the Wizards of High Sorcery and the "Test" they make spellcasters take to be allowed to cast high-level spells) and try to cast a spell on the entire crystal sphere. There is actually a world called Zivilyn that is currently an airworld with boulders in and is said to have once been a terrestrial world that "blew up in it's own cataclysm". Those Black Clouds of Krynnspace are around the next world out (a world called Nehzmyth which only appears in Spelljammer lore and not Dragonlance lore - Dragonlance has a different world called "Shinare").

So if you were to go into ancient Dragonlance times and have some rival spacefaring wizards clash and one lot of wizards suck the world Zivilyn out of another crystal sphere and drop it in Krynnspace (where it does not belong) and the other group of wizards try to summon a big "black cloud" to consume Zivilyn and "get rid of it" that could actually be some sort of epic spell that is "modifying the Mists of Ravenloft" and causing them to be a permanent thing in Krynnspace. And then, of course the gods (or the spellcasters of Nehzmyth) zap Zivilyn and blow it up...but when Zivilyn passes through the black clouds the "victors" loose any memories they had of being spellcasters and devolve into talentless humans. (And eventually both civilisations are gone from memory and Krynnspace settles down into what it is today.)

Something like that could give you a number of hooks to work off of...and could also be "older than most of Ravenloft" and left forgotten in the wildspace paraphernalia in the "Antisolar Institute" in Blutespur. "An amazing orrery of what seems to be Lord Soth's crystal sphere." (Again, you do get the tripple-crossover problem. But there is far less Dragonlance canon that interacts with Spelljammer.)

doctornecrotic wrote: Wed Sep 10, 2025 2:56 pmNow, what's the central linchpin for such a cluster? I'd imagine some manner of port/hub akin to the Rock of Bral, Tarvin, Dragon Rock, etc. But, its twist would be sailors and travelers slowly abandoning it to economic failure. I'm imagining a Darklord that would have wanted market domination, destroying rivals to promote his own company, resulting in a failing hub area within a sphere that doesn't see much travel anymore.

Back in the day, when real-world Cornwall was not making a lot of money from legal seafaring, there was talk of "wreckers" who would put out light-houses and put up false lights to intentionally cause ships to crash, so they could steal cargo. And there was a lot of talk of "pirates" and "smugglers". I think some of that is Parlament in Westminster wanting to squeeze more money out of people than they want to pay. But this is the general sort of thing that happens when ports start to collapse.

There is also the "Custom of the Sea", where people have no food and are all going to starve and choose to have a lottery to pick someone to be killed and eaten. Again the Parliament in Westminster tried to bring murder charges against sailors doing that.

I would be a little bit careful about both of those things, especially Cornwall, which has an independence movement. I don't know how much said about Cornwall is "fair" and how much might be kind of negative propaganda designed to make Cornish people look like bad people a few hundred years back to justify tax hikes. So don't pile on too much of the real-world stuff.

doctornecrotic wrote: Wed Sep 10, 2025 2:56 pmMaybe he exploited folk tales of horrible monsters, now made real through a curse... and thus the starry shores are now actually dangerous. Perhaps, taking from Bloodborne, an "Insight" mechanic allows one to better see the monsters at the cost of one's sanity.

You can easily ramp up the threat of wildspace monsters in Spelljammer. There is an adventure called The Sea of Sorrows, that features a that is causing havoc for local people.

And, if an asteroid was not as careful as The Rock of Bral, there could be large numbers of scavvers that come in and try to eat spacefarers on the docks and on the ships that come to dock at the asteroid. You could even take inspiration from the Sharknado movies and have a new type of scavver (a "mist scavver" maybe) that has a bit of a fog cloud effect and that is brazen enough to swim up into the streets of the asteroid city at night, looking for drunks and people sleeping rough, that it can grab hold of in it's jaws and drag off the edge of the asteroid, to eat outside the port's air envelope.

A plague of doppelgangers, who "replace" spacefarers and then arrive at asteroid ports attempting to "replace" the people living in the ports is another option (where things might play out a bit like in the remake of The Thing.

You have plenty of options for horror without the obvious neglect of the ruler of the city-port needing to happen.

doctornecrotic wrote: Wed Sep 10, 2025 2:56 pmHelmsight exists in SJ already, so why not "Helm Insight"? Use of this special helm could warrant saving throws (perhaps Madness), resulting in the double edged sword of damaging knowledge.

Helmsight kind of lets you see through the ship, as if the ship is your body. And helmsmen feel flashes of pain when the ship is damaged, as if they have been hurt.

If you want to take it further than that, there is The Batship (a bespoke ship where the helmsman is locked in a box and deprived of their sense of self). Personally, I think The Batship jumps the shark a bit and you should not go that far.

But let's pretend that the "sympathetic magic" element of Spelljammer means that the helmsman of a hammership is kind of thinking of flying through space like a hammerhead space creature. And if that effect is ramped up for your Mistspace Domain, then maybe they slowly loose a bit of their humanity as the long periods on them helm have them seeing themself as a gigantic space creature being periodically attacked by other space creatures.

doctornecrotic wrote: Wed Sep 10, 2025 2:56 pmThis begs a question, if the central hub is surrounded by danger, would that leave the rest of the cluster pretty cut off too? What other "worlds" may exist that would have "traded" with this hub at one point (even if it's probably False History)? I'm not certain if this is a project of its own yet, but perhaps it has potential... and if it does, it would be cool to see FoS and Piazza crossover.

You can not really have "Spelljammer in Ravenloft" with just one port. You need ships to go out and do stuff and come back later with trade goods. You do not have to show it all in a single article, but a lot of the horror needs to be fighting against undead pirates and getting caught in sargassos and being surrounded by scavver who want to eat you. That is why, if you really need to keep things on the small scale, I would say to go with a miniaturised crystal sphere.

And, if planets are a problem, you can either just have asteroid clusters...or you could have a planetary system where all the planets and moons have fouled air and the asteroid communities are trying to hang on. Try to think about the basis premise that makes the Mistspace concept easy enough for Ravenloft, but that also allows you to have people use spelljamming ships to go from one Ravenloft-like environment to a number of different Ravenloft-like environments.

The Dark wrote: Thu Sep 11, 2025 5:16 pmAfter reading this, my first thought is to make the Darklord someone who already has a history of unwarranted overkill, a history of being trapped in a limited area, and a history of trying to break the rules only to fail. The Darklord of Mistspace should be The Fool, trapped on a Dread Spelljammer that preys on ships traveling the domain. The Spelljammer already functions similar to a domain in how it traps people aboard ship, and the Legend of Spelljammer boxed set (along with the end of the novel series) can be used to partially populate the Ravenloft version. There can certainly be subdomains within Mistspace like there are islands in the Sea of Sorrows, but like the Flying Dutchman, the lord of the space between those specks of land is the captain of the Dread Spelljammer.

That sounds interesting. I don't think that The Spelljammer itself would get trapped in Ravenloft, but if you had The Fool and the three imprisoned former captains of The Spelljammer escape after a new captain had arrived on the ship (maybe or maybe not Teldin Moore) you could have The Fool and anyone dead or alive helping him break into the Gardens and fight through the lizardmen to seize control of a newly grown Smalljammer, just before it launches.

Smalljammers are able to take on the desires of their captains (to influence the style of the buildings on the back of them) so if The Fool escaped on a Smalljammer and it read his dark thoughts and the Mists of Ravenloft appeared before it, it might embrace the dark desires of The Fool and fly into The Mists to grow into "The Mistjammer." The Fool could go back to his appearance of Romar (at least openly) and the "crew" of The Mistjammer could be influenced by Romar's homeworld or homesphere, so that Romar truely believes that he has full command of The Spelljammer and is not being imprisoned by a stolen Smalljammer that has grown to become a Spelljammer-sized prison.

In the false history of Mistspace, something would have happened that would have sealed all the portals of the crystal sphere and Romar could have the power to get The Mistjammer out of Ravenloft if he openly resigns his position as captain and willingly goes off to be imprisoned in the place where former captain's go. (And of course that is something it is impossible for him to do.)

If Doctor Necrotic wants to go with a bespoke crystal sphere, then maybe that crystal sphere could be a dark echo of Romar's home sphere that has false history where war came to the sphere (not necessarily the First Unhuman War or an invasion by the Vodoni Empire) and Romar and his crew came to assume control of The Spelljammer in order to win that war. The real Spelljammer hates war, but in the false history of The Mistjammer, it could have willingly bonded with Romar and agreed with his military strategy and the weapon of The Spelljammer (which is a gigantic sphere of annihilation) could have been used to destroy fleets of enemy ships and entire military bases on asteroids and maybe even groundling cities.

Maybe in The Mistjammer's false history it dropped spheres of annihilation onto planets that didn't just cancel out an equal amount of matter, but instead at the seas and the air envelopes and slowly destroyed all life.

Maybe the population of The Mistjammer has embraced "total warfare" and think that all other spacefarers could be remaining enemies out to destroy them.

A lot could be done with this idea. It sounds pretty cool!

IanFordam wrote: Thu Sep 11, 2025 6:32 pmI do like the idea of a Dread Spelljammer being the prison-lair of the "main" darklord of Mistspace. The trick might be finding a way to distinguish them sufficiently from Pieter/Pietra van Reise. I've never read "The Legend of the Spelljammer" to know whether there are any good hooks to twist there.

Unfortunately, The Legend of Spelljammer boxed set is not enough. The Cloakmaster Cycle novels, especially the last two novels (The Broken Sphere and The Ultimate Helm) actually tell you the story of The Spelljammer, the reason why it seems to have lasted forever and the reason why it sends out ultimate helms and searches for captains.
You do not get all of that from the boxed set. It is in the novels.

The Fool is a rejected captain. He did not want to be imprisoned, so he chose undeath, so that he could become invisible to The Spelljammer. So The Dark's really good "Dread Spelljammer" idea has to build that in somewhere. Furthermore, The Fool knows he failed as captain. And he knows why. So that's why I would suggest to The Dark to tweak the idea and have a Smalljammer offer The Fool an escape route and then willingly fly into The Mists of Ravenloft. It's the best way to get him off of it's parent ship and give that parent ship a chance to fulfil it's destiny, without being sabotaged by a former captain. And - if The Fool thinks he has finally one - he will not realise he is in a prison.

IanFordam wrote: Thu Sep 11, 2025 6:32 pmHowever, having a Ravenloftized version of the Rock of Bral also makes sense. Of course, if I recall correctly, there are strong implications that Prince Andru himself may have committed some Acts of Apparently-Not-Quite-Ultimate Darkness himself. What did this darklord do that warranted a domain when Prince Andru did not? Maybe there's something in the history of Bral that could be leveraged. (Unless, of course, you're not actually leaning into this domain as Dark Bral.)

Prince Andru murdered his elder brother (or hired people to murder him) and then had a show trial where people were convicted of the murder and jettisoned. But if you are going to make a "Dark Bral" you could just go back to Captain Bral, the pirate that the asteroid takes it's name from. You would need a few hundred years more of false history, as he did not die recently, but that would allow you to get rid of factions (like the Imperial Elven Navy, Company of the Challace and Pragmatic Order of Thought) and run a "Dark Bral" as a struggling pirate port.

IanFordam wrote: Thu Sep 11, 2025 6:32 pmAt any rate, I feel that each domain within Mistspace should have something about it which is uniquely Spelljammerish. For example, you propose that the darklord exploited monstrous folk tales made real. However, maybe there was no Vistani-style curse but instead a smoky glass bottle sold by the arcane for their usual inexplicable reasons.

If you want to have multiple darklords in what appears to be a single crystal sphere, I would suggest looking at the various evil factions and monsters of Spelljammer to make customised darklords for each of them. Each of those factions has it's own backstory (sometimes not too much of a backstory) and each of those backstories can give you some sort of failed plan the darklord is obsessed with, along with a way for them to escape (if they reject that plan and work to overturn it).

IanFordam wrote: Thu Sep 11, 2025 6:32 pmHow is Mistspace tied to the rest of the Domains of Dread? Although I wouldn't mind a mistway or two, I would not want a spelljamming vessel touching down in Barovia. Perhaps part of the torment behind Mistspace is that it is NOT connected to the larger world, unlike the traditional crystal spheres bobbing in the Phlogiston.

The whole thing with connectivity is a key part of Spelljammer. You could do a "Mistspace" that does not have it, but you would essentially be creating an isolated system.

That is not "impossible" though. Astromundi Cluster is pretty much a closed system. And Paizo's reboot of Spelljammer (Spelljammer: Shadow of the Spider Moon) does not even mention the phlogiston.

You would essentially end up with a standalone Spelljammer/Ravenloft hybrid. In some ways it would be like Ravenloft: Masque of the Red Death. Both Ravenloft and not Ravenloft at the same time.

doctornecrotic wrote: Sat Sep 13, 2025 10:07 pmThe Spelljammer can THEORETICALLY pierce the mists. It would be an amazing twist if the Fool was literally a Darklord. Making him a Van Reisse like figure is always a cool interpretation.

The Spelljammer could probably escape, if it wanted to. That is why I suggested a Smalljammer sacrificing itself to The Mists to act as a prison for The Fool, as an alternative. If you have "grown up early Smalljammer" that is pretending to be The Spelljammer, it can play along with the plot to keep The Fool in Mistspace.

One way to stop people from wanting to leave Mistspace would be to have some False History that gives you a "Great Phlogiston Disaster", where someone did something that set the Flow on fire and attempting to open portals into The Phlogiston now results in gigantic jets of fire or fireball-like effect flooding into the sphere, until the spell wears off and the portal closes again.

You probably also need a name for the local people to have for their crystal sphere. If they do not know they are inside Ravenloft, they are not going to call it Mistspace. They would have their own name for the sphere.

doctornecrotic wrote: Sat Sep 13, 2025 10:07 pmThough, I considered a Bral homage as the center point as it does seem kinda expected, but such a thing feels so iconic to Spelljammer. Plus, having a Van Reise nod feels like stepping on the Sea of Sorrows. Besides, Spelljammer literally has its own sea of sorrows, which is just confusing and is proof that TSR writers never talked to each other much.

There are plenty of things other than The Rock of Bral in Spelljammer canon. And several of them have a horror theme to them.

I would recommend that rather than trying to just grab Bral and then reboot it into a "Broken Bral" you have a look at some of the other places, that area already a bit broken to start with, and see if you can gather some "real history" (extrapolate more real-history) and then make some False History that brings that place forward and makes it work in a Ravenloft impersonation of a crystal sphere.

Maybe take a look at Category:Crystal_spheres on Spelljammer Wiki to see if there is something there that is grim enough to serve as a place that The Fool could realistically have been trapped in, if he somehow won back the captaincy of The Spelljammer just before one of the factions he wanted to use the big ship to attack, found a way to explode The Phlogiston.

Bralspace is an option. But it is not your only option. And if you do not want to feature a number of large planets and moons, you might want to look for a canon crystal sphere that is more on the simple side of things and add new fanon to that.

And there is always the option of building a new fanon crystal sphere that is believably smaller than average and that is believably is mostly asteroids. Build the "real crystal sphere" first and then layer on the "False History" that isolates that sphere.

IanFordam wrote: Sun Sep 14, 2025 7:06 amTo be clear, I was not advocating for stealing Andru directly. He's needed on the Rock of Bral! I was pondering whether Spelljammer canon features some historical rival (named or otherwise) who might have gone even further than Andru in their bid for power and thus been claimed by the Mists.

I concur with you on not stealing Andru.

If you want to go down that route the history of Bral gives us some interesting options (depending on how far back you want to go):

• 800 years ago, Bral seems to have been a mind-flayer outpost. (The current illithid embassy might actually have the secret task of searching in the Underbral to find some sort of lost illithid artifact or lore.)
• After that it looks like a beholder nation killed off the illithids and took over Bral and then were killed off themselves by another - unknown - faction
• 400 years ago, Bral's underdark was home to a clan of about 200 dwarves. One day they all vanished, leaving uneaten meals on tables in their homes and half-finished swords in their workshops. Whatever killed them, or made them fled got them to abandon everything.
• 170 years ago is the time of Captain Bral. Captain Bral hid his ship in the caves, but seeded trees and plants on the topside and underside. Eventually he built up a pirate fleet called the Black Brotherhood. Captain Bral and the Black Brotherhood were ambushed by the Imperial Elven Navy just after they lifted off after making a raid on a groundling city. His ship, the Starwind, caught fire after taking damage and falling back into the atmosphere of the planet.
• 100 years ago, is the time when a pirate called Cozar (Prince Andru's ancestor) decided to kick out the other pirates on the Rock of Bral and turn it into a legitimate port. Captain Gadar Skullbreaker fought against Cozar and was killed in a fight in the Broken Lantern (which I'm guessing is a pub, but don't quote me on that).
• After Prince Frun died and Prince Calar took the throne and was murdered (probably by Prince Andru) one of the Underbarons of Bral was accused of collaborating with illithids to murder Prince Calar. He and some of his closest allies were executed.

I've considered doing something with the dwarves, but really nobody would recognise them as something to do with Bral.

It would be possible for Captain Bral to survive the crash of his vipership. If there was a Black Brotherhood ship in reserve, it could arrive late and land and rescue survivors. But then you would probably need to have the group abandon (what was not yet named The Rock of Bral) and go somewhere else.

Captain Gadar Skullbreaker and the executed Underbarron could both also make good darklord-like figures. You would need 100 years worth of history to do something with Skullbreaker. The Underbarron doesn't even have a name.

I'm not sure which of Bral's three Underbarrons got framed for Prince Calar's murder, but it might be possible to figure that out from the write-ups of the current Underbarrons.

LeMaxul wrote: Sat Sep 20, 2025 1:49 amFor the Darklord, I'd suggest that you check the lore/story of the original four Phantasy Star games for inspiration. I think the idea of a darklord that is basically a (imprisoned) star/sun or black hole may solve the issues of having a typical humanoid darklord who could just escape with a Spelljammer. The imprisoned cosmic force acts through a powerful proxy (such as a ruler, pirate, mystic, etc), who would be the "effective" darklord. Perhaps the imprisoned force can affect how spelljamming works in its vicinity, trapping people and ships (almost like being caught in the gravitic pull of a black hole).

That's a very unusual idea. Interesting.

Spelljammer has something called "liveworlds". The Shou Lung Dragonships actually go on expeditions to hunt for liveworlds.

There is actually a sentient sun called I which creates Spelljammer monsters called blazozoids as it's avatars, to go and find other sentient suns.

LeMaxul wrote: Sat Sep 20, 2025 1:49 amI believe classic stories that take place on a ship would be awesome inspiration. Jason & the Argonauts, Moby Dick, etc.

I think sci-fi fantasy settings can be useful inspiration too, although you'd have to re-skin some things. I'm thinking of stuff like Thundercats, the DOOM games universe, perhaps even the poems in "Return to the Rat Planet" (by Hilton and Woessner).

You can't have Spelljammer without ship action. You do need some ports of call too though...unless you had some sort of memory-wipe thing going on, where people didn't realise they had been sailing for an eternity.

Big Mac wrote: Thu Dec 04, 2025 5:59 am The whole thing with connectivity is a key part of Spelljammer. You could do a "Mistspace" that does not have it, but you would essentially be creating an isolated system.

I think that this is one of the fundamental tensions that would need to be addressed in any coordinated crossover: Just as connectivity is a key part of Spelljammer, isolation is a key part of Ravenloft. That haunted house isn't scary if you can just leave. Darklords can close the borders of their domains. Escape from the Land of Mists itself is almost impossible.

As a long-time Ravenloft DM who has only dabbled in Spelljammer, creating an isolated system feels to me like an advantage, not a drawback. Others' mileage, of course, may vary.

IanFordam wrote: Fri Dec 12, 2025 1:11 pm

Big Mac wrote: Thu Dec 04, 2025 5:59 am The whole thing with connectivity is a key part of Spelljammer. You could do a "Mistspace" that does not have it, but you would essentially be creating an isolated system.

I think that this is one of the fundamental tensions that would need to be addressed in any coordinated crossover: Just as connectivity is a key part of Spelljammer, isolation is a key part of Ravenloft. That haunted house isn't scary if you can just leave. Darklords can close the borders of their domains. Escape from the Land of Mists itself is almost impossible.

As a long-time Ravenloft DM who has only dabbled in Spelljammer, creating an isolated system feels to me like an advantage, not a drawback. Others' mileage, of course, may vary.

By nature of RL, any "connectivity" in a SJ cluster would have to be fake... just like the rules of spelljammer would be simulations at best, fascimilies to trick you into thinking you aren't in the Demiplane of Dread. Though, as with this whole Matrix analogy, quirks would eventually happen and this "crystal sphere" would gradually feel more and more off the more you pried. I think it can work though.