Café de Nuit

I've been doing the Ravenloft scene for a while now, but recently my players asked to take a shot at a Planescape campaign. I don't really want to just toss the Demiplane of Dread into oblivion, so I thought I'd add a few anecdotes to Planescape that refer to it. As my title suggests, I was aiming to create an 'overlook' of Ravenloft as seen through the eyes of:
A- a Sigilian visitor
B- an escaped Native
Problem is, I can't think of how either of those conversations would go. Could people please post suggestions? To those of you who are still confused, at the Planescape website I'm sure there's a kind of 'Guide to the Seven Hells' written as a conversation with a Plane-Traveller who's been there.

If I'm doning something wrong, I apologise in advance.

The problem here is, to my mind, is that people who escape Ravenloft must be so rare as just to run into them in a bar seems just strange without an ongoing adventure. That person would also seem to fall into two categories: Really powerful to have survived Ravenloft and escaped when so many others can't, or for some sinister reason the mists let them go. But why have this sinister purpose when your players seem intent on taking a break from Ravenloft?

Plus who would believe the NPC about this 'void' in the planes where no one entering can ever leave? Perhaps that is something that could happen -the person being mistaken for being drunk or crazy.

Anyway I imagine what the traveller says would depend on how much detail they know about Ravenloft (and therefore how much you wanted your players to get the hint). A dark land where one's soul and mind are twisted and turned so much by the extremities of despair and life that they seem to have lost part of themself -yet dare not go back. Or a plane of existance created for some purpose far greater than maybe even the Lady knows.

Going to all this trouble (and dodging plot holes) you could tie in Ravenloft into the campaign some more (which kind of defeats the purpose of doing something different). Ravenloft, afterall, is an enigma, a quandry most travellers never want to know about. Only those planars of the most vast knowledge would really know about its inner workings -afterall you have to study what is inside and what is inside keeps you there.

Most planewalkers talk of the Demiplane of Dread in hushed tones. They would never refer to it as Ravenloft, simply because that's the name of Strahd's castle in game and nothing else.

Only a select few might have an idea what the DoD is. Many planewalkers would imagine its a place filled with evil, they probably would be shocked if they knew what it actually was. The thing that scares planewalkers more than anything about Ravenloft is that once in, they can't leave. I'd play up that aspect more than anything.

My question is why is it necesary to bring Ravenloft up at all? I know you have a love for the setting (it's a wonderful setting) but if the player's want a break I say just give it to them. I know that on occasion I have had to let them be in something else.

my two cents

A native whohad somehow found himself outside the mists would probably have no useful information. After living in a world where planar travel is nonexistant, they would probably be ignorant of the imprisioning nature of their world. In fact, they might very well encourage people to help them find their home - perhaps even join them there for a weekened?

Well, when I started this topic, I'd just read the 'cutter's guide to the seven hells' thing I'd mentioned above and was wondering what an equivalent for Ravenloft would be. As to the native's viewpoint- I envisioned that the native is/was a high-level adventurer (say, one that reached level 15?) in Ravenloft who subsequently found himself off-plane after trying to mist-walk to a new domain. Since then, he's been to other planes and is frankly confused and/or astonished about the way things work outside Ravenloft. No Powers Checks, Darklords or Dread Familiars, no 'Cloak of Evil' around the land, there's a lot of difference a native would notice if he/she jumped from Ravenloft to say, Faerun. Though he/she may well indeed be attempting to return there...

But again, those are mostly features that are not obvious to natives - even very experienced ones.
Darklords, the aura of evil, sinkholes, power checks (especially power checks) are not things that natives should be familiar with. It takes an extrordinary scholar like the late Van Richten, or someone very old and powerful like Azalin or Strahd to see enought and research enough to put 2 and 2 together and see the demiplane for what it is.

A high level adventurer would probably notice some differences; the sun, for example, is explicitly described as being brighter and more vital outside the mists. Druides, paladins, and clerics would definitly feel a powerful changes, though it wouldn't be exactly obvious how or why their new location seems more vital, more healthy than their home.

I think the best chance for someone in Sigil to know about the power checks and the rest would be for that person to be a former darklord. Adventures like Circle of Darkness show how darklords can be redeamed, and thus released from the Mists. Surely a long lived darklord might see enough to learn the dread secrets of the dark realms.

Possibilities:

1) Recall the Wishing Imp and imagine someone clever enough to force it to 'free' him from the long reach of the Mists, but unwise enough to boast of the success. The NPC would know quite a bit and would perhaps either unwittingly (when the imp engineers his return to Ravenloft) or wittingly (sending the party in his steed to take possession of the imp) draw the party into the demiplane.

2) If the light from the Ile de Tempête can reach into other planes then perhaps so can messages in bottles, whether as lures written by the Captain himself or written by those threatened by extinction at his claws or those of other island or coastal menaces. The letters could give not a few insignificant details.

3) The planar technologies in the Rift Spanner being built by the Night Hag in Darkon might promise the lifting of banishment from the heads of lowerplane beings. Stealing it and escaping Ravenloft with it would be the challenge. Although the real goal may be just to keep the particular Night Hag out of circulation. A discussion with a survivor of the mission would be highly educational.

4) A well informed wizard engaged in rites to tap into netherworld power might suffer transposition and escape Ravenloft into the lower planes. He is certain to mouth many interesting things as he is endlessly tortured never quite to death.

Darn, you're right cure, I never thought of that!

Transposition, by definition, transports evil beings from Ravenloft into the LowerPlanes. Normally this is the end, but from a Planescape point of view this is merely the begining. A savy cutter could possibly negotiate something with his fiendish captors and make his way to a local ginmill to brag about how he outsmarted the mists.

Thinking about it, this could be a lot of fun...a Ravenloft native would be an even bigger "Clueless" than Primes.