Café de Nuit

This was inspired by the "The "Talk about what Kargatane said" thread" and where they talked about Sithicus.

Image that you could rewrite and part of Ravenloft cannon history and change or alter any darklord, adventure or location. What would you change and why?


First off for me I would change Azalins curse. The developers from day one seemed to be unable to work with his curse. He was suppota be cursed to never learn new spells but every time he was stated up for a new adventure or new book of darklords he seemed to have a whole new spell list.
Even the effects of the curse seemed to be merely a "HA HA you were cheated' kind of curse. Fustrating but not repentince encouraging.

I would change it like this-

Due to his mad desire to become the perfict iron handed leader Azalin sacrificed both his son and his very humanity. As a result the Dark powers gave him what he wanted, the largest domain in the core with the most people.
This came at a price however- No mater how powerfull the magic or good the disguise he was unable to hide his undead nature. Illusions would melt away upon being cast and makeup and powers flaked off and disolved.

They left him with a small repreave- When wearing his iron crown he would appear human to all Darkonians but for only five hours a day. As the fifth hour passed he would turn more skelital by the passin moment untill he was a liche once more.

He is forced now to only keep the most villianus and untrustworthy nobles in his court, those with secretes so dark they would never tell of Azalins nature for fear of these secretes comming out.



So...what would you change?

I wouldn't change Azalin's curse for it was well explained in Gaz II why his spellbook had more spells. Azalin need not have only spells that were in the PHB.

Anyhow, one change I would definitively make is that Mordenheim is the lord of Lamordia and not Adam. Adam seems to have been slaped with the maiming of Elyse cause the writer had no idea why he would have earned his domain. But when you look at the mad experiements the doctor made, he's earned his domain. And Lamordia seems more fitting for Mordenheim's personnality and not Adam's.

IMO, Mordenheim *is* the Lord of Lamordia ... but his curse is that all of the *powers* of lordship are Adam's to control, not his creator's. Call it the price of his blindness to the supernatural, combined with payback for denying his own moral responsibility for Adam's and Elise's suffering.

Echoing Charney on Mordenheim, although I think I would probably make him and Adam co-lords since the stories of their damnation are so intimately connected. They essentially created each other as monsters, so co-lordship seems fitting.

Soth would still be DL of Sithicus, not just because I dislike Inza (which I do) but also because he was created for Dragonlance with all kinds of tasty self-induced tragedy and falling from grace, so he's been a perfect candidate for darklordship from the start.

Those are the only ones I can think of off the top of my head.

I'd keep Soth as DL of Sithicus. Inza isn't very interesting, Azrael seems to have no purpose anymore, and Soth was just cool. Plus the story of his departure seemed very forced.

I'd erase all record of Lyssa von Zarovich or vampire illithids from existence, because the idea of a vampire illithid seems very stupid to me.

I'd also expand the two seas and place the Clusters in them, still far from the Core but at least geographically fixed relative to the mainland. I'd leave the Islands of Terror out in the Mists though.

I'd agree that Adam and Victor are both darklords. They are initimately tied together, and neither can be killed unless the other is also.

I would say that Victor's rejection of everything but science has blinded him not only to the fact that he is a darklord, but also to any powers he has over his domain. Perhaps unconciously his will can battle with Adam over closing or raising the borders (say and opposed will check with -4 to Mordenheim because he's doing it unconciously). But as far as knowing the location of paladins, outsiders, any people of note in his domain, he is so self absorbed he can't even see what's in front of him - his wife, screaming in agony for the release of death.

I ran the Grand Conjunction a few years back and found the adventure "touch of death" to be quite horrible in terms of writing, pacing and story.

My major gripe is firstly the back story which if know can help the PC understand what is happening around them and actually plan something out. However the only 2 people in the whole domain who know the back story are the 2 villians and thier not about to let everyone know. The end result is that tenious links are used to join a series of events that make perfect sense to the Gm (who actually gets to the read the 2+ pages of history) but confuses the players. As it stands the adventure requests a narrator (for the lack of a better description), a ghost or eldar the PC can meet to let them know the history of the domain and hint at the actions of the villians.

Lyssa von Zarovich acquiring power by having a ghost age her is just wrong.

The Mountains of Misery should have been called the Mountains of Madness, in a tribute to Lovecraft, and been home not to Ebb, who is cool but was just fine shacked up with Azalin, but rather abberations.

cure wrote:Lyssa von Zarovich acquiring power by having a ghost age her is just wrong.

Yeah-- they did a passable workaround in Gaz1, though.

The Mountains of Misery should have been called the Mountains of Madness, in a tribute to Lovecraft....

Sadly, I bet there were copyright issues involved.

Passable, but still pretty lame. IMC, Lyssa aged because she took an extended "vacation" in the Shadow Rift ... where she still has some sith contacts her dear old uncle doesn't know about.

Considering the plastic nature of time and space in the demiplane, they could always have claimed that Lyssa took an unexpected detoure into someone's pocket domain.
Perhaps they could even have explained her transformation into undeath that way?
Lyssa began as a vain and spoiled brat, sort of a medieval Paris Hilton. After the wedding disaster, she and a couple retainers fled Barovia into the mists, only to fall prey to a minor vampire in a pocket domain. Lyssa spent many centuries as the creature's consort - and was groomed to be a suitable bride. The vampire lord broadened her horizons and taught her arcane secrets, so that she might serve him better. But though the creature may have cured her of her vapid stupidity, he only sharpened her vanity.
In the end, Lyssa betrayed her master and charmed a powerful warrior to slay her master. Once free, she turned on the warrior, only to discover that not only was her champion was far more powerful than even she - he still wanted to possess her. Rather than be enslaved again, she fled into the mists and arrived in Barovia.
Back in her native land, she found little had changed. Now bolstered by her advanced years, Lyssa wants the power and prestige she deserves. Slightly traumatized by her captivity, Strahd's attempts to restrain her have driven Lyssa into a fury.

i personaly have kept Il Aluk alive so to say. i never really found a 25,000+ city filled with pathatic and powerful undead, (in my eyes)a "safe zone" for other undead, ruled by Death and a field of unstopable-undeadiness surrounding it that..gothic. maybe goth, but not so gothic. but thats just me.

- I have changed Azalin's curse slightly.
- I have changed the Core's size and population
- Inza and Soth are co-Darklords
- I have changed Tristessa stats (giving her a more powerful wail)
- I have added spells to all the darklord wizards.

These from the top of my mind. I usually change too much

mindflayer,
how have you changed the cores pop. and size? i have also done this.

vipera aspis wrote:mindflayer,

I'm an alhoon! Not a mind flayer for a looong time. Ie. I'm a mind flayer lich.

vipera aspis wrote: how have you changed the cores pop. and size? i have also done this.

Oh, nothing increadibly dramatic. I made 1"=50 miles instead of 1"=25 miles. That means I quadrappled the area of the core. So, to keep the population density about the same, I quadrappled the population also. I increased the population of many towns and cities, but didn't quadrappled them as the Core already has too many people cramped in the cities.

I decreased the pop density of Falkovia, Richemulot and of a few more domains
and I increased the pop density of Darkon, Verbek, Nova Vaasa and a few more domains.

Here are some domains' population from my list.
(Listed in thousands)

Barovia: 200
Borca: 110
Darkon: 620
Dementlieu: 97
Falkovia: 102
Hazlan: 60
Invidia: 28
Kartakass: 17
Lamordia: 48
Mordent: 60
Nova Vaasa: 520
Richemulot: 61
Sithicus: 56
Tepest: 48
Valachan: 40
Vechor: 42
Verbek: 10

All these were done before the Gaz's were out. So I didn't know at the time that Richemulot was the Powerful while Mordent was the little sister.

I used the following index with a few modifications:

At 1 BC the average pop density was 4 people/Sq.Km
At 800 BC it was 8 people/Sq.Km
At 1500 BC it was 16/sq.Km
At 1850 it was 32/sq.Km

Also I use Richemulot as a CL 9 domain, Dementlieu and Mordent as a CL 10 domain and Lamordia as a CL 11 domain.