Ravallah & the lunaset

[cure]

I just finished reading To Sleep With Evil and was impressed. Moreover it sheds considerable light upon the Vistani.

In particular, I believe it gives the only canon account of what happens under the full moon in the Vistani lunaset ritual.

Is this indeed unique or is there anything else explicit some place else?

Equally, it gives us the name Ravallah and suggests that whoever or whatever he/she/it is, the way home is to be shown to the Vistani by this being. Hardly less curious, the godess of the moon is begged to send this Ravallah to the Vistani, perhaps implying that Ravallah is not a god, but maybe the one who led the Vistani into Ravenloft . . .

Again is this a unique reference or is something explicit given somewhere else in or even out of the 'canon'?

[Ail]

I just finished reading To Sleep With Evil and was impressed. Moreover it sheds considerable light upon the Vistani.

In particular, I believe it gives the only canon account of what happens under the full moon in the Vistani lunaset ritual.

Is this indeed unique or is there anything else explicit some place else?

Equally, it gives us the name Ravallah and suggests that whoever or whatever he/she/it is, the way home is to be shown to the Vistani by this being. Hardly less curious, the godess of the moon is begged to send this Ravallah to the Vistani, perhaps implying that Ravallah is not a god, but maybe the one who led the Vistani into Ravenloft . . .

Again is this a unique reference or is something explicit given somewhere else in or even out of the 'canon'?

It's been way too long when I read it, but judging from the fact that it is a novel and it has invented a domain (which iirc is never named) and a darklord (Lord Donskoy, I guess), I'd figure those references to Ravallah are unique. At least, I've never heard of them anywhere else. I can say for sure Jacqueline Montarri is not original from that book, nor Barovia .
Regarding the Lunaset, I can't really tell.

I found the idea of Vistani magic music intriguing and at a time developed some rules for that that I never came to use (nor submit anywhere ).

[Tobias Blackburn]

Depending on how the Tome of Magic (released this March) turns out, it might make sense to turn Ravallah into a Vestige, the remains of a soul that a Binder can create a pact with for power, sort of like Faust. Maybe Ravallah is the one that made the inital pact with the Mists to allow the Vistani to travel them. Perhaps lunaset is about performing a series of rituals to keep their powers from slipping away, and minor binding rituals to certain spirits are involved.

Of course, it all depends on what the exact purpose of the lunaset rituals are and what happens during that period. That, like the dark powers and the true history of the Vistani, has been left open for the DM to decide.

[DeepShadow of FoS]

In particular, I believe it gives the only canon account of what happens under the full moon in the Vistani lunaset ritual.

For those of us who haven't read the book, would you mind giving details, after a sufficient spoiler space?

[cure]

The first curious detail is that Vistani men are excluded and if their job is merely to serve as guards at a discrete distance they (untypically) failed miserably to do so in the novel. The ritual involved four Vistani women, three naked but for a coat of dried, cracking mud and the fourth naked but for her long tresses. The three beat upon drums while the fourth danced and called out to the Godess of the moon to send them Ravallah, who could show the Vistani the way home. As the fourth called out she held a living chicken aloft, plucked out its black feathers, and finally ripped out its heart, covering herself in blood. Whereupon the ritual was interrupted by a giorgo interloper who falsely claimed to be Ravallah and who killed the drummers, drummers who seemed to be caught between a trance and stupification that Ravallah had come. The interloper reported that he could feel an intoxicating power coming from the full moon, a power of transformation, a power that he could use to make himself a god.

Note that the author is one of the people who fleshed out the Domains of Dread and is far more authoritative than most.

[DeepShadow of FoS]

Thanks! First let me say that I firmly believe that Lunaset ought to be the province of a DM, just like the nature of the Dark Powers. That being said, I have no problem with this ritual as part of Lunaset. While the Vistani are said to scorn gods and divine spellcasting, I think it makes perfect sense to say that they actually spurn such worship in front of gorgios. Your example gives excellent reasons for such measures: tin addition to the extremely intimate nature that might set gorgio tongues a-wagging, overhearing gorgios could be mistaken for messengers.

I might make this Ravallah and the moon goddess part of a small pantheon; this month they were appealing to the moon for Ravallah, but nest month they might appeal to "Vistan" or "Manusa" to send Kulchek the Wanderer back to them. After that it may be time for them to appeal to Granfather Raven or whoever.

[Brandi]

Hm-- the ritual sounds more like something I'd associate with the Voodan.

[Ail]

The first curious detail is that Vistani men are excluded and if their job is merely to serve as guards at a discrete distance they (untypically) failed miserably to do so in the novel. The ritual involved four Vistani women, three naked but for a coat of dried, cracking mud and the fourth naked but for her long tresses. The three beat upon drums while the fourth danced and called out to the Godess of the moon to send them Ravallah, who could show the Vistani the way home. As the fourth called out she held a living chicken aloft, plucked out its black feathers, and finally ripped out its heart, covering herself in blood. Whereupon the ritual was interrupted by a giorgo interloper who falsely claimed to be Ravallah and who killed the drummers, drummers who seemed to be caught between a trance and stupification that Ravallah had come. The interloper reported that he could feel an intoxicating power coming from the full moon, a power of transformation, a power that he could use to make himself a god.

Note that the author is one of the people who fleshed out the Domains of Dread and is far more authoritative than most.

I don't think men should be excluded. Van Richten says, I believe, that Lunaset affects the whole tribe. It might be lived individually or in small groups, like described here, but we should not assume that the other people are out of it just because they're not in the scene.

For me, I'd make the lunaset slightly different. Borrowing from an idea in Quest for Glory 4 (?), I'd make the Vistani some kind of shapeshifters. That is, their human nature is something they've conquered through time, but they have to recharge it periodically to maintain it. During Lunaset, they give in to their basic nature, which must be something intimately connected to nature or even the mists, being as they are so close to the land. On those nights, they should strip off of every possession they have, let go all their material wealth while the ritual lasts, and walk unseen from every non-vistana because either the secret must be kept at all costs or because they are vulnerable.....

This is how I would begin it. Perhaps they are wolves, mist beings or somethign else. Perhaps they run alone in the forests giving lee-way to their bestialness (in one possibility) or recharging energies somewhere with blood rituals; they should probably not have to kill sentient creatures for this (otherwise Lunasets would have been assocaited a long time ago with massacres) but they may have need to sacrifice some part of nature to do it.

Well.... these are just ideas... comment if you will.

Ail