A gunslinging darklord ?

[Waldi]

Thanks the gunpowder-thread, I wonder if some darklord could be somehow specialized on guns and rifles.
First, I thought about the german opera "Der Freischütz" as inspiration.
You can get a story-synopsis and some further information about it here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_Freisch%C3%BCtz
I think, Samiel the soul-devouring dark ranger would make quite a fine darklord . What would the domain look like, and how would Samiel look like in Ravenloft. And what do you think about this idea ?

[ewancummins]

I like your idea. Maybe use the opera as inspiration, without staying too close to the plot. What if Kaspar had gotten away with his plan? Or what if Max had not repented ? Samiel seems to be a demon, and therefore I don't like him as a darklord[how do you corrupt something that's already 100% evil?]. Of course, a fiend's reality bubble is alot like a pocket domain...

I'd like to see where you go with this idea, Waldi. Once you have the lord worked out, I find making the domain is the easy part. Easy but fun.

[Carcer]

I would make Max the darklord as his story has more scope for tragedy. I would keep Samiel as a fiend with whom Max made a faustian pact, but I would make it so that Max does kill Agatha. Instead of blaming himself for agreeing to the conditions imposed by the fiend Samiel, Max takes to blaming his friends, his family, anyone and everyone who even has the slightest connection with the tragedy. Consumed by vengeance, Max hunts down and kills all those he feels have wronged him. But Samiel is never far behind and any time Max falls in love or forms a bond of friendship with anyone Samiel guides one of Max's bullets into their hearts and the cycle of vengeance and loss begins again.

I would make Max obsessed with getting revenge against people who have done him no wrong. I would make him cold and unapproachable because he's genuinely afraid of what will happen if he does let anyone get close to him. The closest that Max will ever come to having a long term friend is the people he uses and discards to help him gain vengeance against the innocents he accuses for his own crimes. Despite his efforts though, Max always ends up getting close to someone who will eventually kill because of unwillingness to accept responsibility and the interference of Samiel.

Max is Samiel's plaything and he will resurrect Max should anyone ever kill him. To permanently defeat Max, player characters must persuade him that he is responsible, i.e. no one else made him agree with Samiel's pact and they must kill Samiel with Max's gun (Samiel has no power over Max's gun if someone else is using it). After that Max will simply lose the will to live and within a few hours he will be no more.

[Waldi]

Wow !! Great ! I although thought of Max as beeing the darklord. This would be the most "gothic" way !
I would also suggest, that Samiel is in fact without a corporeal form and needs a messenger - and Max suited perfectly. So Max serves as the new "Black Ranger" and tries to collect new innocent souls for his demonic boss.

The domain itself should be covered with wast and dense, dark forrests - trackless and full of wildlife. Maybe, there are even some werewolves...
There are quite a few villages and a small town at the fringes of the domain. The civilized parts of the domain should have a CL of 9 because firearms have to be very common weapon used by every hunter and ranger. The domain is still ruled by a descendant of Duke Ottokar and on the surface a quiet and peacefull duchy. The whole story about the Freischütz happened a long time ago (perhaps 150 years) and to most villagers only one fairytale among a lot other. The Black Ranger is a fairytale-monster, with wich old grandmothers frighten their little grandchildren.
Max became a very distant darklord, because he avoids human settlements and wanders around in the deeper parts of the woods (he does so because of his curse). He only seeks human company, when Samiel wants to steal a new soul.
The "Freikugeln" (the magical bullets) casted by Max (or a person tought by Max to cast them) are plain evil magic artifacts. Using or creating one of them requires a powers-check. It is meaningless, what gun is used to shoot a magical bullet - it will always hit the called aim (or the aim, Samiel or Max want to be hit).

A great source of inspiration for this domain could be the village in "Time of the wolves" or the "Germany" in "Brothers Grimm".

[Carcer]

I like where you're going with this idea. But it might be worth keeping the magic bullets as artifacts that only Max can use and Samiel can create and control. That way the characters of Max and Samiel are dependent on one another. Max needs Samiel to make the magic bullets he uses when seeking revenge against innocents who have done him no harm and Samiel need Max to use the bullets because he can't use the bullets himself.

The problem with letting other characters have these magic bullets is that it waters down the story of Max. If thirty other people have similar stories about making a pact for some magic bullets and each one kills a loved one as a result, it makes Max's background a lot less special. The power check is a good idea in terms of trying to achieve game balance, but it doesn't address the issue of maintaining the unique and tragic qualities of Max's story.

I think the idea of having magical bullets requiring a power check is a good idea, but they shouldn't be the same as the ones Max uses and they shouldn't have the same conditions, i.e. controlled by Samiel. Instead of always hitting their target, maybe the player should always roll twice when using the bullets and always take the best result and maybe instead of one being controlled by Samiel, during the ceremony or ritual of creating them one has to be symbolically offered to their creators most hated enemy who would then have total control of one of the bullets. The ritual of creating the magical bullets would be based on the legend of Max and the bullets might even be named after him in some way, but the truth is that only Max can use the magical bullets created by Samiel and Samiel will create magic bullets for no one else.

By doing this you can keep Max's story unique and you don't have to worry about anyone getting hold of a magical item that may be too powerful. I would also place an upper limit on how many bullets could be created during the ritual. Perhaps an upper limit of six with one randomly selected bullet being controlled by an enemy of the bullets creator (DM secretly rolls 1d6 to find out which one). I would also make it so that each time these bullets are created a power check is made so that any character wishing to create more than six would have to make two power checks, more than eighteen three power checks, and so on.

If you want Max and Samiel to have servants or protection, maybe you could make it so that anyone killed by a magic bullet fired by Max is raised as an incorporal servant of Samiel. The innocents that Max wrongly kills could come back as weaker incorporal undead, e.g rank two ghosts, and the ones that he kills because of Samiels interference could come back as rank three if their close friends of Max and rank four if Max loved them. Because Samiel only has absolute control over one bullet in every set of magical bullets that Max owns it will mean that Samiel will have far more ghostly servants who are rank two than of rank three or higher. This might mean that Samiel tries to influence Max to fall in love because if Samiel can make Max like someone and then if Samiel can make it so that Max kills them, Samiel will have more powerful servants. Which makes me think that Samiel should perhaps have some way of magical influencing max (perhaps a potent suggestion spell).

Another idea that might be worth implementing if you go with having the people killed by Max coming back as incorporal servants of Samiel is that whenever Max is killed all the ghosts who serve Samiel are set free and move on the whatver afterlife they were originally destined for. Samiel needs to have as many incorporal servants as he can because he has some evil plan that necessitates a certain number of ghosts being under his control. But everytime he gets close Max is always killed and Samiel is forced to resurrect him and start his collection of murdered spirits all over again. An idea for the ultimate plan of Samiel is that he is trying to escape Ravenloft through the Border Ethereal and he needs to have a certain number of incorporal servants to make that escape possible.

My last idea would be that Agatha's ghost is the one and only ghost that Samiel cannot control. Agatha's ghost would also not be effected by Max's death, i.e. she does not move on to whatever afterlife she was supposed to go to when Max dies. Instead, her curse is that she will remain trapped in her ghostly existence within Ravenloft until Max loves her once more, but Max has closed his heart to love and only Samiel has the power to make Max fall in love (using the magical influence he has over Max). Samiel will never allow Max to fall in love with Agatha again because if Max falls in love with her again, she will pass onto another afterlife, and Max may be able to find the closure he needs. As long as the ghost of Agatha is around, Max will always be stuck in state of perpetual anger and grief... anger which leads him to kill innocent people in his ever recurring quest for vengeance.

When Agatha ghost is no longer haunting Max, he will be able to come to terms with what happened. He will pass through the anger and the grief and perhaps even come to accept his own responsibility in her death. Once that happens Samiel will vulnerable to Max's magical bullets...

[Kel-nage]

I've seen about "Die Freishultz" quite recently and was formulating an idea to put him into Darkon (don't ask why...)

However, I have one concern. You really, really can't have a darklord(s) of a domain called Sam and Max...

Sam: "Yes... yes... yes... NO! Really? Well the same to you mack."
Max: "Another confused census taker?"
Sam: "No, actually it was the commissioner with another idiotic and baffling assignment."
Max: "Does it involve wanton destruction?"
Sam: "We can only hope."

[Carcer]

I've seen about "Die Freishultz" quite recently and was formulating an idea to put him into Darkon (don't ask why...)

However, I have one concern. You really, really can't have a darklord(s) of a domain called Sam and Max...

Sam: "Yes... yes... yes... NO! Really? Well the same to you mack."
Max: "Another confused census taker?"
Sam: "No, actually it was the commissioner with another idiotic and baffling assignment."
Max: "Does it involve wanton destruction?"
Sam: "We can only hope."

I was thinking the same thing myself.

[Carcer]

Idon't know why but I picture Samiel being a Durzagon Half-fiend with an incorporal body.

[Waldi]

Hmm...I think, that would work quite well !!! I am still busy with writing some details about the domain itself and already created a map for it .
The "Herzogthum Sorbria" is a almost typical CL-9-domain I imagined to have ca. the size of Nova-Vaasa. Most of the population is concentrated in the south of the domain while about two thirds are covered by the "Schwarzforst", a dense and eldritch wood.
Sorbria seems to be recently drawn into the mists and was a former backwater-province of "The Empire", an averange realm on an averange world on the prime-material-plane, and the sorbrians still consider themselves to be citizens of those empire.
Here is the map in a small scale:

And here is the full-scale-map:
http://waldviech.superprovider.de/Sorbria-Map.jpg

More to come....

[Carcer]

I like it.

As a real world comparison, would the Empire that Sorbria was a part of be anything like the Holy Roman Empire under the reign of Maximillian the First?

Have you thought about how the borders will be closed? A few months ago I had an idea for a domain based around the Great Famine. Sadly, I never finished creating the domain. But I did have a few ideas such as when the domains border closes it creates the effect of accelerated starvation (-1 point of constitution and strength for every turn spent leaving the domain with lost points restored by returning to the domain), lots of hungry dead (see Van Richtens guide to the walking dead), food costing ten times its normal price, and an aristocratic social class that is watching the rest of the population slowly starve to death.

I'm not sure if there are rules anywhere that say how famine and starvation work, but I'm sure you could think of something. Perhaps it could work like this: -1 strength and constitution for every three days without food. Eating can slow down the rate of starvation, but only after eating regularly for a whole week will the lost strength and constitution return (at a rate of one point per day of eating a normal amount of food).

I don't know if that would work for the domain of Sorbria. But I thought I would suggest it.

[Waldi]

As a real world comparison, would the Empire that Sorbria was a part of be anything like the Holy Roman Empire under the reign of Maximillian the First?

Hmm..could work . But I thought of some later comparison. I think, Sorbria could be compared to a random german province some years after the 30ty-years-war (means after 1648). But, thanks to the fact, this is a fantasy-system we are not really bound to this. A "earlier settup" would give the domain a certain warhammer-stile-look.....

I am still puzzeling, how your starvation-idea could fit into Sorbria. The idea is quite great, but would it work in Sorbria ?
A possibility would be a "moderate" hungerproblem because of a civil-war, that took place years ago. Sorbria, as a backwater-province, was only concerned little by the most terrible wakes of the great war, but still suffers from the fact, that large parts of fertile soil have been burned by ravaging mercanaries. The outer ring of the Schwarzforst is, today, plagued with robbers (No gothic "german" domain should be without any robbers lurking in a forrest ! "Schinder-Hannes" rules )
This is also the reason, why hunting is so important in Sorbria. Since the half of the fields in the domain are rendered useless for years, the animal wildlife, the Schwarzforst offers can offer a great source of food. Under normal conditions, no sane sorbrian would dare to enter the forest voluntary.
Not all villages in Sorbria would suffer from the starvation in the same way. Eicherode and Pelzbaaden would be somehow better of, while Heydelstein, the capitol, Tupfingen and all those southern settlements would be short on supplys.
In the capitol, the duke tries to manage the problem through fixed food-rations for everyone (not even the nobles are spared, they get what everyone else gets) - a system that works quite well. Outside the dukes direct influence, things go worse. Bad Seelingen for example has to fight with bloody uprisings...

[Carcer]

I think your ideas are probably better than mine.

The famine suggestion was just a way of closing the border and a way of bringing an enemy into the game that requires serious moral choices, e.g. what can and what will the players do to help those who are starving? Do they rob the nobility to feed the poor and the hungry or do they let them starve? Should they help one family because they know they can help them or should they try to help an entire village.

I like the thought of having an enemy that the players can't defeat by conventional means and the famine would be that kind of enemy. With a werewolf you just hit it with silver weapons until it dies, but you can't fight a famine with swords.

Plus it gives a good excuse for normal citizens to turn to crimes like banditry and I could imagine one of the players leading an uprising or a revolt against the Duke.

[Waldi]

Hmm...I like those starvation-idea really !
The indirect reason for the burned fields could be the imperial highway through the domain. Over most parts, the road is paved and makes fast travelling possible. (However, inside the Schwarzforst, the highway isn´t very reliable)
So, during the war, more than one Landsknecht-Army stomped through Sorbria....

Another idea: The people in Sorbria don´t know any common nonhuman races, because the world, Sorbria came from was nearly exclusive dominated by humans. Dwarves and gnomes are known by legends and there are even some fairytales about elves (that differ much from the reality about elves). So, the sorbrians will be more than curious about nonhumans, when they happen to meet one. (Exept dwarves. They will be treated as humans, because they just look like small humans...)
But that does not mean, Sorbria has no nonhuman population. Deep in the Schwarzforst is the home of the "Wichtel", a race of strange, tiny humanoids. The existence of the wichtel is known to the people of Sorbria, but the little people are hardly ever seen and more than one sorbrian thinks the wichtel to just another fairytale. The wichtel themselves avoid humans, because they fear the "giants".

Wichtel are about 15 cm tall and dwell in small caves between roots and crude huts constructed of wood and large (poisenous) mushrooms. They are as intelligent as an averange human, but have a rather primitive lifestile thanks to the fact, that they don´t cast metal themselves, but use goods stolen from human farms.
Wichtel nearly always speak in rhymes and have shrieking, childish voices, that are not overly pleasend to the human ear. Most wichtel are quite peacefull (although they enjoy playing tricks), but there are some spellcasting wichtels, that are extremely evil and try to harm humans where-ever they can. The normal tribal wichtel can become also very nasty when they feel threatened. The culture of the wichtel is very strange for humans and similar races and not much is known about it.
Singing a strange, monotone song and dancing around special mushrooms in circles (at full-moon) seems to be very important for them
The wichtel live in eternal fear of the Black Ranger: The darklord of the domain hates the wichtel, but does not actively hunt them down. In the most cases, Max sees a wichtel, he will shoot at sight - but sometimes he is just satisfied by scaring them.

This is a Wichtel (in original size )

[Carcer]

I like the wichtel and I think you should definately include them.

I had idea regarding the wichtel that I would like to suggest to you. What about making the wichtel and Samiel old enemies? Samiel and his ghostly servants cannot enter any land which has been claimed and is currently occupied by the wichtel, i.e. a wichtel village is completely protected from Samiel and his servants. On the other hand the wichtel are afraid to strike out against Samiel because of Max (perhaps they have to make a fear check in the presence of Max and a horror check if the hear or see Max using his gun).

Samiel has good reason to hate the wichtel... they know one of his major weaknesses and may even know how to permanently destroy him.

I can imagine the player characters trying to get this information from the wichtel who will obviously demand that the player characters remove all metal weapons and metal armour before they can enter into wichtel terrain. Once there, the players must use all their wit , charisma, and ingenuity to get the wichtel to tell the secrets they know about Samiel. But the wichtel are cunning anfd treacherous. They do not trust humans and have no love for the "giant people." (Humans have a basic outcast rating of three when dealing with wichtel).

Moreover the wichtel will probably never help any character they see carrying a gun or anyone that is in in the company of someone carrying a gun. (Humans who are in possession of a gun or who are seen with anyone carrying a gun will have their outcast rating raised from three to five).

Because of this outcast rating any player character who wants to get the wichtel to help him or her will probably need to do something to earn the wichtels' trust, e.g complete a quest for the wichtel or save a wichtel's life.

[ewancummins]

Waldi, the wichtel are very cool. May I have permission to use this material in my own campaign[with proper credit given to you, of course]?