Café de Nuit

I'm now in the buisness of explaining continunity gaps between 3e and 5e Raveloft lore in-world and giving folks a plot hook about it.
I accidentally started it in a thread about Saidra's VS Dominic's Dementlieu (Breaking News: it's all Dominic's conspiracy: he manipulated Saidra into replacing him as a darklord, intending to use your party to overthrow her within a few months - just enough time to show the locals that as evil as he is, life could be a lot worse without him, thus strengthening his status.)

From now on I think I'll do it as its own topic, in this thread. Sometimes I'll post a short story demonstrating my theory, sometimes I'll post a few questions and start a discussion.

Follow for updates!

My personal theory is that it was Azalin. Again. Third time was not the charm. Unfortunately, my theory takes the path of sidestepping continuity issues rather than explaining them. There's a thread somewhere on the board about it, but the 3e story plot was leading toward Azalin trying to break free with the help of the reality ripples of the various offspring of the Gentleman Caller.

Because I like being able to use all the various versions of domains, my theory holds that this attempt did the metaphysical equivalent of jamming the Domain of Dread through a series of funhouse mirrors. Multiple versions of most domains exist, some as individual locations like the 4e/5e domains and some as parts of a larger whole like the 2e/3e Core.

The Core is still out there somewhere, but 4e and 5e characters haven't found it yet (or at least haven't come back to tell any tales...heh heh heh). This also allows use of the 2e adventures that ended with the Darklord defeated and the domain collapsing (such as Circle of Darkness) by having them be an isolated reflection of the domain.

Lamordia

Ez D'Avenir had an unfortunate habit of accidentally stumbling into sinkholes of evil. Maybe she was cursed, maybe just dumb - the end result was that she'd already been to five of the damned things only this month. She couldn't just sail straight to Lamordia, oh no - She had to get shipwrecked on this... Whatever this island is... And she had to explore her surroundings and enter the dark cave... She could feel the doom and gloom all around her, like the stench of someone slicing open a clementine inside a caravan!
Silly of me to think I could pull of this quest. She sighed. The Doc would probably escape on his own then have to save me! Or we'll both just die alone - but let's be positive.
So she tried her best to stay positive while walking down the filthy tunnel. She stayed positive while tripping and almost falling down the disrepaired staircase stupid prosthetic..., and while avoiding the arrow trap Isn't this one a bit cliché by now? and while fighting off the animated skeleton, and while petting the cute little gremishkas and feeding them with her used Scroll of Comprehending Languages (she loved the silly little monsters. She almost gave The Doc a heart attack once when she asked if they could adopt one.). Then, she stumbled upon... A Golem? Crying? Aren't these supposed to be emotionless? Unless it's... Holy **** I'm ******!
This was a Dread Golem.
Had The Doc been here with her, he'd probably kill the poor thing right on spot.
But with all the respect - and Ez had respect, otherwise she wouldn't be trying to save the ol' man - She wasn't Rudolph. She was Ez. She was the type that pets gremishkas, and someday this would probably get her killed, but hopefully not today.

"Hi," She carefully approached the golem. "What happened? Are you okay?"
"Who are you?" The construct raised his head. "What are you doing here?"
"Just a traveler. I come in peace." She raised her hands. "I... I need help fixing my boat. But nevermind. Are you sad?"
"Of course I am! What else would I be?"
"Terrified of my might?" Ez suggested cheek-in-tounge. The joke didn't land.
"I fear nothing you could do to me. Nothing could be worse than my life as it is." He shrugged. "But why would you care? Nobody does. Nobody ever cares about Adam."
Ez wanted to say 'I care', but that would be a stretch - she was just a stranger, who hopes to leave this place ASAP.
So she sat by his side, and said
"Sounds rough. Wanna talk it out?"

Ez took a tissue out of her pocket and offered it to Adam. His story was heartbreaking! Abandoned by its own creator, taken with him into the mists, alone in this domain all these years... She took out a second tissue, for herself.
"Do you want a hug?" She asked.
"A... Hug?"
"It's when people... Like... It's meant to make you feel better. I'll just show you, if you're okay with touching."
He nodded, and she awkwardly embraced him.
This is officially the weirdest day I had in my entire life. She thought as the stitch between two corpse-pieces rubbed against her skin, scratchy. When Doc hears about that... Right, Doc!
"I... I gotta go." She suddenly stepped backwards. "It's not personal. You're very huggable. The most huggable golem I've ever hugged. But my friend is in trouble, and I have to rescue him, and my boat still needs fixing - "
" - Your friend?"
"Yeah. Tall, grey haired, a tad balding, an absolute nerd - he came to Lamordia a month ago and no one I know had heard from him ever since. Have you seen him?"
"Your... friend happens to be Dr. Rudolph Van Richten?"
"Yep."
"How do you know him?"
"Long story. He killed my mom once." Ez realised how this sounds, and added: "It's fine, she was almost as much of a jerk as your dad. Good riddance. Parents are awful, hah?"
He nodded.
"The thing is," he explained, "Mr. Van Richten is imprisoned by my dad. I've seen him there, last time I snuck in."
"Wait, you can sneak in?" She stared at him wide-eyed. "Can you sneak me in too?"
"I can... But it would be dangerous."
"I laugh in the face of danger! Meow!"
"What?"
"Nevermind."

The dark powers were confused.
A darklord... Helping someone? Without asking for return?
"Bah! He's just trying to get back at Mordenheim!" Osybus rolled his eyes. "It's not like he suddenly turned nice!"
"I'm not sure." Zhudun disagreed. "This sets a dangerous precedent."
"Should we stop them?" Asked Shadow.
"Boring." Osybus shook his head. "I say we do nothing and see what happens. I can't wait to see the old doctor's face they they show up out of the blue."
"Which one of them?" Asked Zhudun.
"Whoever's the funniest."

Rudolph Van Richten was no longer sure whether he was still trying to by time for drafting an escape plan or just to piss Dr. Mordenheim off.
"Guys like you are the worst." He spat at him, chaffing against the straps that tied him to the surgery table. "You were given intelligence by the gods and knowledge by one teacher or another so you can help people, save their lives or at least ease their suffering. Instead, you choose to use it all to turn them into abominations against their will! You've made an oath to do no harm, and you violate it!"
The mad scientist loomed over him, uncaring as ever. But was that a glimpse of offence in his eyes? Of regret?
"How many times have you violated your oath, doctor?" He asked. Rudolf blushed. "I've read those books of yours. You know more than I thought can be learned about the anatomy of non-humans, and you use that knowledge to kill them. Brutally."
Rudolf sighed. There was a point to that. He had developed a disturbing but useful habit of finding combatant uses for his medical knowledge. It was simply efficient, and Rudolph needed efficiency. He was a bit too old for taking out werewolves bare-handed these days, so he had to use his brain instead.
Unfortunately, other people were also intent on using it.
"I kill monsters. To protect the innocents from them." He answered. "I give people justice and safety in a realm where the wicked are used to have their will. I have a grim way of doing so, but this is a grim world. I wish there was another way, but in three decades of travel I have yet to find one. We are not the same, Viktor, and don't you dare imply so - for I at least seek a solution, while you are nothing but part of the problem!"
"So quick witted..." Dr. Mordenheim clucked.
"Alas, I admit it."
"That's my point!" He exclaimed. "What a shame would that be, if that wit would be lost to the world when you pass away?"
"I know, that's why I'd written these books in the first place." Rudolph sighed. Mordenheim opened his mouth to speak, but Rudolph was quicker. "I told you sixty-nine times by now - and yes, I counted: I have no interest in immortality as a sentient pickle!"
This must be the single most peculiar sentence I have uttered in the entire span of my existence.
Mordenheim was about to pick up his tools so he can start working on turning our beloved monster hunter into a brain-in-a-jar, but a second too soon for proper drama, the laboratory was invaded by a one-legged woman in adventuring gear and a dread flesh Golem.

"Stay away from my mentor, ya stinky clementine!" Ez waved her sword at the villain. She then turned to Adam. "You keep him busy fighting, I free the Doc, we run for our lives. Understood?"
The golem nodded.
She ran towards Rudolph, untying the straps.
"Thanks." He got up, gasping, then noticed her companion. "Is that Mordenheim's Monster?!"
"He has a name - Adam." Ez remarked. "And he's currently helping to save you butt, so be respectful."
"But - "
" - We sneaked past half a dozen Doom Guards on the way. My plan for the way back was so far just 'survive and not get caught', do you have a better one?"
"Ez - "
She turned her head to the scientist and the golem, who were fighting tooth and nail. The latter was larger and stronger, but the former had a laser gun.
"I should help him."
"Ez," Rudolph caught her arm. "Adam is the darklord."
"What?!" She struggled to break free. "Mordenheim's the son-of-an-orc, Adam just had the misfortune of being created by him!"
"Ez, this golem has blood on his hands - "
" - He was abandoned, while basically a child, by the one who intentionally created him - "
" - And had he taken his revenge directly on the guilty, I would've cheered from the crowd. But he hadn't. Did he tell you what he's done?"
"No." Ez admitted. Adam skipped right to the part when he was dragged into the mists.
"He - " There was fury in the old man's eyes, fury Ez knew well - the fury of one obsessed with an ancient wrong. The fury she'd ran away from. "He killed Mordenheim's daughter. A poor girl whose only sin was to be beloved while he wasn't. Her name was Eva. And her mother, Mordenheim's wife? She's still alive, injured. She's been in coma all these years, Mordenheim keeps trying to wake her up, but he never manages - cause Adam keeps sabotaging his research. That must be how he found out I'm here."
"No, it can't be! This whole domain is designed for Mordenheim!"
"That's the point! Adam's torment is to never be accepted, even by the very land! You told me not to call him 'Mordenheim's Monster', but that's how he views himself - he blames Victor for everything, refuses to acknowledge his part of the tragedy, so The Powers repay him with the same coin!"
"But what if he starts taking responsibility?" Asked Ez hopefully.
"And what if one morning Strahd will wake up and think 'hey, Tatanya did say 'no', maybe I should respect her wishes?'!" Rudolph facepalmed. "That's the first lesson I taught you about the nature of Ravenloft: Every. Darklord. Is. Irredeemable. Otherwise they wouldn't be here."
"And all generalisations are bad."
"Including this one." Rudolph sighed. "Listen, maybe somewhere in the world there's a domain with an undeserving darklord. But Lamordia isn't this domain by any means. Taking out your anger at someone on their completely uninvolved family - "
" - Oh, so this is about Ingrid?" She didn't mention Eresmus for the simple reason he was very much still around, though incorporeal and currently invisible. Rudolph paled. "I heard you mock Mordenheim earlier, screaming you're nothing like him. But you ARE. Deep down, you're just as obsessive. You know you can't bring back your lost love, but everything you had done over the last thirty years was to avenge her death!"
He was... Crying? She didn't think he was capable of that. Though she rationally knew it to be wrong, Dr. Van Richten was often so distant she felt like he was as emotionless as a construct.
"Sorry..." She muttered. "What I mean is... We've all gone through traumatic stuff. I had grown up in an abusive, criminal family then watched them all as they were killed by an evil wizard and a weird doctor; You lost your wife and son to my abusive, criminal family; Adam was abandoned by his dad. All very sad. But what sets us apart from a certain freak who turns people into pickles - "
" - I was joking about the pickles - "
" - Is that we don't have to let our past define our future. We don't have to inflict our pain onto others. We can be better than those who hurt us. We can choose life. We can't always do that on our own, but together - "
" - With the power of friendship?" He sighed.
"With the power of listening." She corrected. "To ourselves, and to eachother. Wanna prove you're better than Mordenheim? For once in your life, listen to your heart rather than to your past."
There was a moment of silence, disturbed only by the rattle of metal.
"Right now," Dr. Van Richten turned his gaze to the six animated armours standing at the door, "I think we should have listened to the doom guards approaching."

Adam Mordenheim stared down at the dead body of his father and foe.
He did it.
He actually did it.
It's not like he was all hollow now. There was satisfaction in revenge. But following the satisfaction, came the question:
What do I do with my life now?
Victor Mordenheim is dead. He can't harm me anymore. I'm my own man now.
And then he realised:
I was always my own man. Nobody forced me to do what I did. Yes, I was wronged, but this is not an excuse. I... With Father gone, I have no one to blame now but myself for who I became. But... This also mean I can - always could, just didn't realise it - choose what to become next.
Outside the realm of his mind, he could hear - as if very distant - the racket of swords clashing and spells cast and machinery exploding.
And as he turn his back to his past, Adam chose to become the kind of person who fights off half a dozen automatons to save a couple of strangers.
"There's a trap door next to the orange cabinet. I'll hold them off. Run!"

The Dark Powers were surprised.
This was a rare emotion for them, so they were surprised at being surprised, which made them even more surprised than a normal person would have been, which is surprising.
"He just... Turned from evil to good?" Zhudun tried to wrap his head around the idea. "Is that something people do?"
"I think they do it all the time." Osybus, recalling his distant past, answered. "But not the ones we choose. This had never happened before."
"So what do we do now?" Asked Zhudun.
"I think we should gather the others for council. This is an important decision. But until we decide the fate of Adam and Lamordia, no one goes in or out of the domain."

Rudolph Van Richten was tired.
Not just 'I just fought a bunch of animated armours then ran down the stairs, out of the mansion and off to the nearest patch of mist I could find' tired.
Not just 'I was held imprisoned for week' tired either: Mordenheim wanted him alive, in a jar, so he couldn't risk starving or physically abusing him and ruining the experiment - and as for the horror itself, Rudolph was used to it by now. He's been in tougher situations than this, and rarely felt this stunned. He was barely standing. Every step was a little harder. Part of him just wanted to lie down and rest. He... He felt like the mists were filling his head just as much as they filled the air around him.
Well, he was older now. He couldn't expect to stay as sturdy as he was last time he was in a 'tougher situation'. It was unbelievable, how quickly the years passed - he still thought of Esmeralda as of the child he'd spared, barely halting from taking his vengeance too far, or as of the short-haired youth he'd found on his doorstep on one dark and stormy night few years later, begging him to teach her the meaning of family - something he-himself had forgotten - but she must've been in her late thirties by now. Eresmus would've turned forty-five last spring had he been alive. Back home, in Mordentshire (Was there an etymological connection? Is it possible that the Mordenheim family originated in the material-plane original Mordent?), he'd seen before departing on this quest a girl young enough to be his granddaughter walking down the street, holding a copy of his 'Guide to Ghosts' and explaining to her sister that she's going to be a monster hunter when she's older. "Like him?" Asked the sister in awe. "Yeah," answered the girl, "but not as grumpy - Sorry sir, didn't mean to call you - " She added the last few words when she noticed he was there. He was a thing of history to these girls, a thing of legends; there were worse things to be, he supposed, but it made him feel unreal. A legend was something people told eachother over and over again, something everyone had something to say about, something anyone could decide that it means whatever they wanted it to mean. A legend wasn't supposed to walk around in your neighborhood and say what it thinks about itself.
"Doc, wake up!" Ez shook him. He didn't even notice he was sitting, half asleep.
"Let me rest, Ez..." He muttered. "I am the past. I shouldn't define your future. This world is changing, what I once held truth is now proven wrong. And the future... It needs a new kind of heroes, people who can add light rather than just fight back against the darkness... I could never do what you did today..."
"Doc, listen!" She tried to pull him up. "I know you're exhausted, so am I, but that's exactly why you gotta get up! The borders are closed, every moment we stay in the mists - "
" - drains a little more of our life force." He sighed, and stood up "We have to find our way back."
"I don't understand! Did Adam betray us - I know what you'd say, but ten minutes ago he pretty much sacrificed his life so we can flee safely. Was he plotting something?"
"Or maybe," Rudolph found himself smiling. "He no longer has a hand in this."
"You mean - "
" - He'd started to redeem himself. He's no longer 'dark' enough to be called 'darklord'." He kept going. No matter which direction - the mists will lead them back to Lamordia anyway - just to move. To spend here as little time as possible. Part of him still felt like collapsing, but he willed himself to walk one more step, then one more, and so on. I can figure it out, He thought. Just because I didn't know it could happen before doesn't mean I can't learn. "I don't think this ever happened before in the history of Ravenloft, and I am among the few who know the truth of it. But I know what the options are when a darklord is overthrown: Either the domain lands in the material plane - which doesn't seem to be what happens now - or they find some new bastard to run it, or - " Or it just dissolves into the mists. " - Let's stay positive."

To be continued. (The rest was accidentally erased and I'm too tired to rewrite it all now. I promise to try later, but you can guess what happened next...)

Eva was never killed and Adam never meant to kill her.

Mistmaster wrote: Sun Oct 26, 2025 3:28 pm Eva was never killed and Adam never meant to kill her.

What? Sorry, I'm kinda new to the fandom, this was my first Ravenloft fic ever and I pretty much improvised on the few, random pieces of information I could find on Mistipedia, according to which

Adam reduced the doctor's wife Elise to a vegative state and apparently murdered their adopted daughter Eva.

I don't know what 'apparently' means in this case. It could mean 'he probably had but we don't know for sure what happened to it', it could mean 'he hadn't but everyone thinks he had', it could mean 'You can decide as a DM whether or not he killed her in your campaign'. I just saw this one, badly-phrased line. And I thought 'I have no clue what happened to the poor girl, but if people think - rightly or wrongly - that Adam killed her, I could use it to re-enforce the parallelization I'm trying to create between Van Richten and Mordenheim and the theme of trauma and revenge in the story'.
I was really trying to create something beautiful here, but I was working without the actual source material because at the time I didn't have it, so sorry if I screwed it up.
Did you at least enjoy part of it?
Would you be interested in the ending of the Lamordia fic, or should I give it up and jump to other domains? I have some good ideas for Falkovania and Nova Vassa.

Yes, sorry, I was too blunt, and I did not articulated, and it came out wrong: You did a very nice job, and I liked it. Only, in my headcanon, it is Mordenheim the Darklord. And the murder of Eva being not certain makes that even more likely. I think it works better if Mordenheim is the Darklord and Adam is his curse. So do not worry about my opinion.

Mistmaster wrote: Sun Nov 02, 2025 4:28 pm Yes, sorry, I was too blunt, and I did not articulated, and it came out wrong: You did a very nice job, and I liked it. Only, in my headcanon, it is Mordenheim the Darklord. And the murder of Eva being not certain makes that even more likely. I think it works better if Mordenheim is the Darklord and Adam is his curse. So do not worry about my opinion.

Ah. Mr. Dungeons and Mr. Dragons must be thinking like you, with the changes they made in 5e. Now the darklord is Viktra Mordenheim (who's basically Viktor but a sociopathic lesbian teenage girl), and her curse is to never find her girlfriend, Elise (which she'd turned into something like a flesh golem in order to save her life) nor recreate the device she invented and used to transform her.
I personally like Adam as the darklord, simply because it's such a good twist to dump on unsuspecting readers/players like I did in the Ez/Rudolph dialogue. But I think he's a very weird darklord cause he isn't really irredeemable. He's, like, one therapy session away from redemption.
And... I felt like Ez D'Avenir needed a story. She's kinda the 5e version of Arturi Radanavich, IDK if she's mentioned anywhere other than in VRGtR, and I felt like she has potential. So I looked at what I have: VRGtR says she'd studied with Rudolph for some time but left because their personalities clashed and they didn't get along. What personality would clash with that of a hero yet still be heroic in its own way? Maybe Ez is the type that thinks some monsters are cute, that sees a three-headed hound and decides to adopt and call it Fluffy, that desparately wants to believe some villains 'just need a hug' and would be the first to give that hug, cause she grew up unloved and feels like if someone could love all those unlovable, freakish, abominable anathemas, maybe she has hope too! It's the cutest thing ever, but a veteran monster hunter would probably see it as impractical, dangerous and sometimes outrageous (how dare you imply that this wretched thing that killed dozens of innocents deserve anything better than the hottest corner of hell?!).
And Arturi's original role in the plot is to lift the Van Richten Curse by forgiving Rudolph on his family's behalf. Ez isn't mentioned to have done this because the 5e take on Dr. van Richten is the conflict of Rudolph knowing he works under a curse and thus trying to distance himself from his allies and protect them from it, but she still has the potential to do it. A big part of her drive is also aspiring to break the metaphorical 'generational curse' of the evil family she was born to and start a better one. Her overall theme is 'Cursebreaker', and that's what her story needs to be about. Ez. Breaks. Curses. Starting with her own, then moving on to others'. It's not a magical ability, at least not an obvious one - She just has this uncanny instinct to put people on the path toward breaking their curses. She can't do it for someone who doesn't choose to actively do what it takes - had Adam not chosen to take responsibility for his actions he'd still be the darklord - but she can help those who want to. That's the first plot hook I'm giving here - Maybe your party needs to consult with Ez about removing a curse they're having trouble with? I'm thinking about even making 'Cursebreaker' a feat players can aquire through a suitable background story or in-game arc of overcoming a literal or metaphorical curse.
So our monster-hugging cursebreaker randomly stumbles into Adam's Lair, cause she's even more of a menace than the mentor she's trying to rescue, and accidentally takes Adam on the redemption arc he needs.
I... I'm not gonna finish it in prose. Lost the muse.
Let's just say the dark powers were left with a darklord-less domain designed for an amoral scientist, panicked a bit, found in a hurry a new amoral scientist and gave her a version of the old one's name so no one will notice the difference ("You're Victoria Mordenheim now!" "What? I'm not Victoria! My name is - what's my name? Crap... Anyway, it's absolutely not 'Victoria'. I ain't some stupid quee - " "Fine. So... Viktra?" "Fine..."). Doom guards suddenly disappearing, Adam escaped and joined the two adventurers on the border, where Rudolph treated his injuries (which took some improvising on his part cause normal healing doesn't work on constructs) and the three had a conversation about the nature of redemption (Adam asks whether he really deserves redemption after what he'd done, Rudolph admits he had little faith in this but is starting to change his mind, Ez answers that in her opinion, redemption isn't a right or privilege to deserve but a duty to perform - everyone has to try and become better people, and having done horrible things only makes you more entitled to this - you owe it to everyone you've hurt.). They camp for the night, and the next morning, when the two humans enter the now-open mists on the way to their next domain, Adam waves his hand for goodbye and is then surprised to find out he can put it in the mists - and Ez takes it and drags him in.
Skip to the present, we have a friendly dread flesh golem out in the wild looking for new friends and trying to figure out how society works and what kind of a person he wants to be. Maybe he's still traveling with Ez and the Doc, maybe he's on his own now. You can randomly show him standing in the line for a shop in Martira Bay or sitting among a bunch of kids and listening to a storytime in the Grande Bibliothéque as an Easter Egg, you can include him as a helpful NPC, you can even play him as a PC with the stats of a Reborn.
I thought about a third plot hook (Viktra can be redeemed too), but I'm not sure about that one. She's the opposite of 'just needs a hug' - she needs a slap in the face. She needs to be taught the hard way that her genius doesn't give her a pass on treating people as things. And maybe that's not enough either, IDK.

So for Falkovnia I had an idea that kinda contradicts VRGtR in some ways to fit it in other ways.

Like, on the surface, Vladeska is just a genderflipped Vlad. But if you read the section about roleplaying her you realise she's very different. She cares about her people, though in a twisted, tyrannical way. She impales people to set an example, not out of sadistic pleasure, and likewise views all the cruel decisions she's making as necessary evil. She dreams of ruling as a queen rather than a conqueror. It's not like she isn't evil, but she's more complex.
So I thought - maybe she's Vlad's daughter or granddaughter. She was raised on propaganda, and grew up to genuinly believe in Falkovnia and dream about turning it into a truly great nation. She never questioned Vlad's authority, but deep down thought that a true kingdom should allow a little more librety: The difference between a monarch and a tyrant is that a monarch doesn't need to constantly prove everyone he's the one in charge. Thinking a good victory could unite her people well enough so they would no longer need to be controlled by fear, she conscripted to the millitary and quickly got up the ranks, leading her soldiers out of patriotism and ambition rather than sheer bloodlust - which didn't matter too much to the foes she'd slain mercilessly with no distinction between soldiers and non-combatants.

By the time of The Requiem, Vladeska was a general, and one of Vlad's best strategic counselors. She'd calculated that as the former invasion attempts to Darkon were foiled by Azalin's undead hordes, the wizard king's disappearance will leave the domain volunrable: these fools had been relying on magic to save them, what are they gonna do without it?
Terrible mistake.
She'd taken down the first settlements almost too easily: these folks weren't prepared for war. After conquering Rivalis, she and her battalion made camp inside a large house that seemed to have been already abandoned.
Vladeska dismissed rumours among her troops about the house being haunted as silly superstitions, until she met the ghost herself.
"What are you doing here, child?" The ghost asked. It was a woman, dressed simply but elegantly, in her late thirties or early forties. She had a slight Lamordian accent. Her gaze was mournful, but also curious.
"We're here to conquer your land, ma'am." Vladeska stated the obvious, thinking undeath must have dulled the ghost's mind. "And don't call me 'child'."
"You've been trying to since I before I died, which was when you were a little babe." The ghost noted in amusement. "I always say that the definition of stupidity is to try the same thing over and over again and expect a different result."
"This time is different." Vladeska smiled smugly. "Your king has abanodoned his people, woman! A coward and a traitor, like all those who hide behind charms and jinxes. What are you gonna do without your precious necromancer?"
The ghost laughed.
"Azalin?" She rolled her eyes. "This has nothing to do with him, child. The dead defend what's theirs. We own this land. You, the living, are merely occupying it - and not for long. Now, Get. Off. My. Proprety."
Windows started opening and slamming again, the beautiful old-fashioned furniture floated, and Vladeska was struck with such sensation of unwelcomedness that fighting the ghost didn't even occur to her: She had to get out of this bloody place while her spirit still resided inside her body.
She quickly evacuated the house, put a subordinate officer in charge of Rivalis, and took her troops straight to Nartok. Nartok had given the invaders a good fight, but eventually fell as well, to Vladeska's joy and relief. And then, from the city's ashes, the undead rose once more.
These... These weren't just the fallen Nartokese soldiers. Vladeska recognised a boy she'd beheaded in one of the first villages to set an example after he spat in her face in the middle of the suddender nagotiations, comrades she'd lost a few years earlier during The Great Upheaval, even... Yeah, she'd never forget that face. it was a dorvinian guard, one of the first men she'd ever killed in combat - he seemed young, even younger than Vladeska was at the time, but had a stark white hair. That hair haunted Vladeska's nightmares for months back then. She was so soft in those days, an idealist starting to realise the harsh reality of war. How the heck could he be here?
Horrified, she realised every single zombie and wight was a foul memesis of a life she took or failed to save. Was this a conspiracy against her? Was this in the Wizard King's power?
"My comrades!" She said with a heavy heart, "As far as I hate to admit this, it really would be foolish to try the same thing and expect a different result! If we cannot defeat the dead, let us at least not join their ranks today!" And orchestrated a tactical retreat from Nartok. Then from Rivalis. Then from the villages. When they finally gave up the last acre of Darkonian land, the inconcivable happened:
The undead chased them into Falkovnia.

Vlad had not taken this well.
He was furious at Vladeska for retreating so quickly, blaming her for 'letting the undead in'. When she explained she did the rational thing to save her troops from a certain, useless death and couldn't anticipated what ensued, he ansered that it was better to die bravely than live as a coward - But he would not impale her, though he threatened to do so every new moon with every new attack, for he knew Vladeska had the people's hearts, and feared of provoking a rebellion.
Under the strain of the repeated invasions, the intangible force that seemed to maintain Vlad's youth had apparently faltered. As he fell ill, his authority gradually passed to Vladeska - not because she was the declared heir, but because she was popular (though less since the tale of her part in the catastrophe had spread) and because it was her tactical brilliance that saved Lekar time after time. Vladeska, abandoning the last remains of her past idealism, discovered that she had to be ruthless: She had to occasionally sacrifice a town, leaving it to fend for herself to save forces for protecting a more strategically important one; She had to execute Vlad's older sons before they assassinate her to ursurp her reign; She had to continue the public impalings as punishment for even minor crimes, to keep the population discplined in face of the disaster. At least she'd managed to cancel the right of the first night, which she'd aways considered unnecessary and humiliating.
She traveled and sent messangers all around the core, begging the rulers of other domains for aid, but quickly discovered that her preceedor's expentionist policy had ruined any chance of diplomacy for Falkovnia - As Ivana wrote in her official response: "When you spend decades over decades trying to take everyone down, darling, you can't just expect them to help you up."
In some places, folks were openly rooting for the zombies! At first she understood these people, and tried to reconcile with them, but slowly lost hope of changing anyone's mind. It was easier to sink back into hatred, to convince herself this was fate's design. This was what being Falkovnian meant: we fight everyone and everyone fights us. We stand alone, but we stand tall. We don't need any stupid perfium-obssessed noblewomen or stupid incel vampires or stupid supernaturally-preserved brains or stupid... People called Jules... (she was starting to run out of insults) to survive! She even stopped the existing trade with Lamordia and forbade any Falkovnian citizen to exit the domain without her explicit permission, just to prove her point.
When a party of adventurers she'd hired to discover the source of the zombie invasions had returned claiming it was a divine punishment for her and Vlad's atrocities, she broke into a fit of rage and personally impaled them one by one.
That night, Vlad Drakov finally died, and Vladeska took his place as a darklord.
Falkovnia was turned into an island of terror, truly standing alone.
Only time will tell for how long it will stand tall.

I just will it as some mad vision of the Nightmare Lands and carry on as such.

There's a lot to go over in this list, so kudos to you for being so prolific in your writing and ideas! I've seen quite a few ideas for reconciliation between the different continuities since I first showed up here, so I'll make sure to take my time reading this list and also mention that you can find lots more ideas on reconciliation both within the Cafe de Nuit boards (just by searching up terms like "reconciliation" or "2021" or "Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft/VRGTR" and so on) and within QtR Issue #28!

Hazlan

I kinda scared myself with this one. TW: genocide.

So my theory is, that Hazlik simply succeeded.
He couldn't wipe out the MUlan from the entire multiverse, but he could do something just as good: to wipe out from his domain not only the Mulan's existence, but also their memory.
Nobody is Hazlan, including Hazlik himself, remembers the Mulan ever existed. Even their language is extinct - every Vassi speaker who enters Hazlan nowadays starts to forget it (similarly to how immigrants in Darkon forget their homelands), and every text written in Vassi inside the domain or taken into it turns blurry and then erased - this also solves his issues with The Church of the Lawgiver, who can no longer act in the domain even if they sent new missionaries, due to their refusal to use another language. Unopposed, Hazlik was finally free to redesign the entire social order in order to facilitate his magical experiments.
Very few remain who remember Hazlan's real past, (many of which idealize the nearly just as horrible former situation) and they are considered insane or attention-seeking liars - if someone even remembers they said something.
But.
As Hazlik couldn't remember the cultural background of his transgressions, the dark powers gave him false memories of worse ones. They made up for him an alternate past where he was accepted, where he was loved, and he threw it all away for his ambitions. A past for which he had no one to blame. He could not remember and regret what he had done, so they let him drown in shame of what he hadn't.
And - as he'd copied Azalin's means of magical censureship, the powers repayed him with the same coin, giving him Azalin's old curse as well.

Erasing Vaasi might be problematic, given it is also spoken in Nova Vaasa, which is quite active in the area of trade.

Rock of the Fraternity wrote: Tue Nov 04, 2025 7:26 am Erasing Vaasi might be problematic, given it is also spoken in Nova Vaasa, which is quite active in the area of trade.

I know. (Clarification: it's erased only in Hazlan. Nova Vasa is fine (until I get there). Yes, it will isolate Hazlan a bit, but what does Hazlik care? He got the revenge he always wanted. In fact, he wants to separate Hazlan from Nova Vasa, cause it means the Church of the Lawgiver will have a harder time acting against him.

Rock of the Fraternity wrote: Tue Nov 04, 2025 7:26 am Erasing Vaasi might be problematic, given it is also spoken in Nova Vaasa, which is quite active in the area of trade.

Kartakass and Valachan too.

TheArcaneWeirdo wrote: Tue Nov 04, 2025 6:55 am Hazlan

I kinda scared myself with this one. TW: genocide.

So my theory is, that Hazlik simply succeeded.
He couldn't wipe out the MUlan from the entire multiverse, but he could do something just as good: to wipe out from his domain not only the Mulan's existence, but also their memory.
Nobody is Hazlan, including Hazlik himself, remembers the Mulan ever existed. Even their language is extinct - every Vassi speaker who enters Hazlan nowadays starts to forget it (similarly to how immigrants in Darkon forget their homelands), and every text written in Vassi inside the domain or taken into it turns blurry and then erased - this also solves his issues with The Church of the Lawgiver, who can no longer act in the domain even if they sent new missionaries, due to their refusal to use another language. Unopposed, Hazlik was finally free to redesign the entire social order in order to facilitate his magical experiments.
Very few remain who remember Hazlan's real past, (many of which idealize the nearly just as horrible former situation) and they are considered insane or attention-seeking liars - if someone even remembers they said something.
But.
As Hazlik couldn't remember the cultural background of his transgressions, the dark powers gave him false memories of worse ones. They made up for him an alternate past where he was accepted, where he was loved, and he threw it all away for his ambitions. A past for which he had no one to blame. He could not remember and regret what he had done, so they let him drown in shame of what he hadn't.
And - as he'd copied Azalin's means of magical censureship, the powers repayed him with the same coin, giving him Azalin's old curse as well.

I think using "amnesia" is a lazy fix. If you were so inclined, that excuse could be used to explain away the differences in ALL the "new" domains. Valachan? People forgot Kharkov. Tepest? People forgot the hag coven and the shadow fey.

I'm not saying that's your fault, btw.

As I see it that's the main problem with bad storytelling in general and something that I see in all kinds of serialized fiction. When a new writer comes on board and wants to "fix" what came before, they most often resort to the easiest tool they have to reset the status quo; in effect, stacking one bad cliche on top of another. So the whole scenario gets more convoluted and further and further away from the original premise.

I've seen it at least a half dozen times with my favorite comic book herovSpider-Man, and each iteration just makes me, a diehard fan, like the character less and less. VRGtR feels the same way or me. It's Ravenloft, but needlessly re-imagined and more bland.

At least that's my 2 cents.