Lamest Dark Lord, and Possible Fixes...

[WolfKook]

I just replied to the "Favourite Dark Lord" thread. As Wiccy said when he opened it, there had to be a thread like that. I also think there should be a thread like this one, based on this simple question:

Who is, in your oppinion, the lamest Darklord?

This question may be followed by another one:

If there is a way in which this DL could be fixed, what would it be?

Perhaps you may also tell what you have walked your way through the lamest details of otherwise great DLs.

[Spiteful Crow]

Easan.

He can be fixed by removing Vechor from Ravenloft and pretending he didn't happen.

[Sylaire]

This could easily turn into a long list, but if I had to pick one single darklord, I'd say Hazlan.

EDIT: *ahem* Hazlik, I mean...which I suppose kind of plays into the concept I'm working with here. When I get the man and his domain confused in my head, it really doesn't mark him out as memorable.

Why Hazlan? What's his great character concept? He's an evil wizard from the Forgotten Realms, from a nation of evil wizards (most of whom would make much better darklords in any event). Hazlik gets to be a major Core domain, as opposed to being banished to a Island where he might get overlooked or shrunk down into his own story instead of trying to have to support a basically faceless domain which is supposed to be part of the same "world" as Barovia, Darkon, Dementlieu, Mordent, Valachan, Forlorn, etc., etc., etc.

Heck, he's basically the same character concept as Azalin, only lower level, without the cool vibe of lichdom, and without the actually-interesting-for-a-power-mad-evil-wizard curse. Heck, Meredoth is a more powerful evil wizard (from a nation of powerful neutral wizards, making it more likely that Meredoth would get plucked out of Alphatia than Hazlan would from Thay) with a more interesting domain. We all know what happens to duplicative character concepts (Duke Gundar, and let's not forget Ladislav Mircea's temporary vanishing act until he reappeared with a vaguely interesting variation on the vampire theme).

Death would dramatically improve Hazlan, but fixing him really requires a complete retcon of his personality and origins. He's the "evil fantasy wizard" generic villain, and while he'd actually be interesting as a character in the FR because of his unusual background, there's nothing Gothic about him. He'd play better as a kind of magical Mordenheim, a character from a low-magic, Renaissance-or-beyond world whose reaction to being abused for being weak and effeminate (to say nothing of homosexual...by the way, does it say something that the only openly gay guy in Ravenloft is a darklord?) was to seek out a source of power alien from the brute physicality of "sporting" country noble society...only to have his revenge thwarted by being pulled into a fantasy world where magic is everywhere. If nothing else, it would move him into a different horror archetype altogether ("Carrie").

[Rotipher of the FoS]

by the way, does it say something that the only openly gay guy in Ravenloft is a darklord?

Not when he'd been an established NPC darklord for more than a decade before anyone even implied he was gay, it doesn't. Considering how darklords are the Ravenloft NPCs we know the most personal information about, it's hardly a surprise that we'd find that out about one of them, before one of the non-darklord characters.

(FWIW, I kinda like how Hazlik isn't a near-epic powerhouse, like Meredoth or the 'Ravenloft Superstars' (Strahd & Azalin). He's a villain whom PCs have a plausible chance of outmaneuvering and/or fighting to a standstill, which puts his metagame function into a different category from theirs.)

For "lamest darklord", I'd probably say a bunch of the 'pocket' lords are tied for the booby-prize, IMO. Plenty of them were never developed beyond a one-shot appearance in "Darklords" or the "Book of Crypts", because TSR's Kargat knew they were pretty hopeless as written.

I'm honestly not sure if many of those are salvagable, except by making them something other than darklords. For example, the House of Lament would be way cool as an oubliette or phantasmagora IMO, but what kind of sense is it, to call the place a "darklord"? The house hadn't done anything wrong; the jerk who sealed a girl up in its walls alive did!

[HuManBing]

My familiar hobby-horse (which should be easily recognizable by anybody who discussed this with me in the previous thread) is Vlad Drakov.

This could easily turn into a rant, so I'll be brief and outline in broad strokes.

Vlad Drakov fails:

* to understand he is cursed
* to understand why he's cursed
* to show any sign of moral redemption
* arguably, to show any sign of stylistic redemption (i.e. anything that would make PCs/DMs actually respect him)

Militarily, he's a failure, fighting with outdated weapons against gunpowder weapons. Worse still, there appears to be no need behind his war campaigns. They're utterly pointless, unlike the motivations of Azalin or Strahd.

Politically, his domain is entirely, utterly, and pathetically self-serving.

Emotionally, his character shows little signs of suffering that an average human could compare to. (I fail entirely to buy the "despotic mass-murderer... who only wants a little respect" argument.)

Fixes: (these proved unpopular with the visitors to this forum, so be warned)

Change Vlad's curse so that his ageing process is slowed/reversed by spilling blood. This won't make him any more likeable, but it would explain why he is bent on warfare - too long a protracted peace would literally kill him.

Say he regains a certain amount of lifespan for every wound inflicted by a Falkovnian weapon. This would explain why he tortures and maims, but also why it's worth his while to raise an army and send it into the next domain to attack and pillage.

So now we have a darklord who's afraid of dying (which the average human can probably empathize with) and his only way out of the curse is to cause more bloodshed.

As opposed to his badly-thought-out current curse, which is a longing for the respect of his fellow darklords. You know, some leaders build monuments or Wonders of the World, rather than torturing their own people and sending them on murderous rampages.

Edit: I had written "Worst darklord design ever, in my opinion" but then I thought about it and realized that there are actually even worse darklord designs out there.

Tsien Chiang, the unbelievably racist and stereotypical Chinese "Dragon Lady" darklord of I'Cath (which resembles no known Chinese word, Cantonese or Mandarin) easily trounces Vlad Drakov in a competition for "most badly designed darklord".

I apologize for this oversight.

[cure]

I'll give Easen a second vote.

Baron Evensong would also be a candidate. Lemot Sedium Juste always seemed a better execution of the same idea.

Althea comes to mind too. Her abode has always seemed to me to be sticking out like a sore thumb. And I can't recall for the life of me her back story, which testifies to its weakness. She could be good, but is not.

Davion the Mad certainly deserves a dishonourable mention.

As to Hazlik, his will to genocide always struck me as being his strongest suit qua Darklord and, of course ironically, his chief impotence since those he wants dead are mostly beyond the Mists. He has the merit of being a darklord trying to do something, whereas I can never recall what Meredock off on his island is up to besides experimenting. Hazlik's presence also nicely messes up the Iron Faith of neighbouring Nova Vaasa and gives Strahd's minions something to spy on. But yes, his domain, especially as treated in the Gazetteer, is very much a mish mash and that ultimately reflects back upon the lack of a clear and powerful idea of what he is supposed to be. (Wheras Barovia is very much a reflection of its ruler and his history.)

As to Drakov, I always found him to be an amusing foil to Azalin, useful for demonstrating the latter's relative humanity. But Drakov qua Drakov is a testiment to the ultimate senselessness of war. Wars, of course, are never lacking for reasons, but they end up being absolutely pointless exercises for all too many of their participants, the more so when they are in no way necessary, which describes Drakov's invasions perfectly. The brute stupidity of man, stupidity that no animal brute could equal, is on display in Drakov, and that of course is lost utterly upon him, even though he is a thinking beast.

[Isabella]

I actually had an idea to fix Easan that didn't involve pretending he never existed. Unfortuantely, I sent it to Dion via Joel (theoretically) as a Dread Possibility for the Nocturnal Sea Netbook, and I don't know what happened to it. So until the Fraternity emails me telling me they hated it and didn't use it, I can't post it.

I've heard that Baron Evensong was pretty bad, but no one's willing to explain him to me. Whenever I ask my brother he just tells me that he's a waste of ink and space. Personally, other than already mentioned pocket lords, I don't care for von Kharkov very much.

[Sylaire]

by the way, does it say something that the only openly gay guy in Ravenloft is a darklord?

Not when he'd been an established NPC darklord for more than a decade before anyone even implied he was gay, it doesn't. Considering how darklords are the Ravenloft NPCs we know the most personal information about, it's hardly a surprise that we'd find that out about one of them, before one of the non-darklord characters.

Oh, good, then I'm not going completely crazy. I didn't remember anything like that from the Black Box (though I suppose it's a logical extension, since forcibly tattooing a man with an external sign of femininity is exactly the kind of thing a homophobic twit with a gender-role complex would do).

[HuManBing]

The Black Box does say his tattoos are feminine, but it's not until the Red Box (I think) that the veiled references to his sexuality are mentioned. (I don't have my sources with me but I'm sure it's either the Red Box, circa 1995, or the Domains of Dread sourcebook, circa 1998, which mentions this.)

I remember being very confused by the paragraph where Hazlik, back on Thay, ambushes his "rival" (whom I thought was male) and kills her lover, forcing her to drink his blood. I think there was an insinuation that he desired the lover as well, but that insinuation is kept apart, textually, from the bit where the lover is revealed to be a man.

Plus, I agree that Hazlik's behavior in Hazlan is evil. However, it's not as though his darklordship could be said to rely on it. He became a darklord before committing purges and ethnic cleansings. He became a darklord after killing one woman and one man.

Meanwhile, characters like Iuz slaughter away in the Flanaess with gleeful abandon and don't get absorbed into Ravenloft.

[Sylaire]

Reading the various responses in this thread (including my own), it becomes evident that not every darklord is created equal: they fill widely varying roles in defining the world, and which ones you'll like or dislike will largely depend on what you expect out of or enjoy doing in your Ravenloft.

There's a handful of darklords that basically define Ravenloft. Not surprisingly, they're essentially unkillable: Strahd, Azalin, Mordenheim/Adam, Harkon Lukas, Tristen Hiregaard. They're movers and shakers, active and dominant players in their domains and outside them. They are iconic; you set foot in their domain and you know that you're on their home ground.

The next set of darklords are almost as active and pervasive, but they're weaker and possibly killable: Drakov, Hazlik, Jacqueline Renier, Easan, Yagno Petrovna, Frantisek Markov. Alfred and Nathan Timothy. They vary widely in personality and character; some are well-defined Gothic characters and some aren't, but their domains are essentially defined by them.

Then you have what I think of as the passive darklords, the ones who don't "leave their mark" on their domain, as it were. Again, they vary widely in appeal and this group also varies broadly in power, but they don't exert that all-controlling influence over their own land: Lord Godefroy, Dominic d'Honaire (who kind of bridges the last two groups), the hags of Tepest, Gabrielle Aderre, Elena Faith-Hold, Sodo, Urik von Kharkov, Meredoth.

(This third group I essentially define by the question of, "If my adventure takes place in Domain X, will experienced Ravenloft players expect to brush against Darklord X therein?" Mordent adventures almost never involve Godefroy or Gryphon Hill; there's almost a cottage industry in them, especially driven by Godefroy's pre-Gaz III passivity. Conversely, if you go to Souragne you're probably going to encounter zombies or voudan or both, wererats in Richemulot, jackbooted medieval stormtroopers in Falkovnia, wolves of one sort or another in Kartakass and Verbrek, and so on.)

Lastly, there's the lords of the pocket domains, such as the House of Lament, Monette, Juste, and Dr. Dominiani. Tristen ApBlanc almost falls into this category. Essentially, these characters have a domain that's so small and limited that you have no choice but to deal with the darklord if you enter it, because that's the only point for the domain's existence at all; there's nothing else to do there. The problem with these are, as Rotipher pointed out, they're not really "lords" at all, but more in the way of encounters. Some of these lend themselves to interesting adventures and some don't, but calling them "darklords" is really more a function of Ravenloft's unique geography and metaphysics than any real descriptive label.

[Spiteful Crow]

Althea comes to mind too. Her abode has always seemed to me to be sticking out like a sore thumb. And I can't recall for the life of me her back story, which testifies to its weakness. She could be good, but is not.

... because she doesn't have a backstory.

[Ail]

Well, I can't say any DL is lame, but I can say which ones I dislike to the point of ignoring them and which ones I appreciate the most. So, on my negative list, I have to put springing immediately to mind:

Easan, Hazlik, von Karkhov and Davaeon.

Then, there are those I simply ignore because I don't see them too often, but I don't feel any visceral hate towards them as witht the last ones:

- Tristessa, Harkon Lukas
and anyone not from the core to the exclusion of the following ones:
- Anton Misroi
- Zolnik
- Elena Faith-Hold
- Ebonbane
- Ankthepot and the one from Sebua (forgot her name, sorry) (I do include Diamabel in the ignore list)
- Lemot Sediam Juste (cool idea, although I haven't played with him yet)
- Isolde (she's sort of a DL, is she not?)

Those I ignore because I simply hate their domains:
- anything that has to do with Timor, Paridon, Zherisia and Odiare.

There are lords and places I still find interesting, despite the above:
- Forlorn
- Verbrek
- The Headless Horseman
- The Phantom Lover, although with some changes.
- The House of Lament (sort of)
- The Wildlands (although a crocodile king does not appeal to me, and I'd rather have it as a place for primeval human cultures and the appropriate clash of civilizations with would-be explorers and colonizers. In a way, primitive humans are part of nature and live in harmony with the jungle, it's those from outside that are subject to its hatred)

I'm undecided towards Azrael Dak (I found Soth with some interest, but Sithicus doesn't really appeal to me), I prefer Nathan Timothy to Alfred, and though I find his domain interesting, Harkon Lukas hasn't yet appealed to me. I may be forgetting a lot of things, though. I don't particularly like Mallochio, but he's not the official darklord either, so...

And by the way, cool characters that have the potential to become darklords:
- the GC
- Jacqueline Montarri




Alex

[Brandi]

Oh, good, then I'm not going completely crazy. I didn't remember anything like that from the Black Box (though I suppose it's a logical extension, since forcibly tattooing a man with an external sign of femininity is exactly the kind of thing a homophobic twit with a gender-role complex would do).

I would correct your last clause to "the kind of thing a patriarchal society with rigid, stratified gender roles would do." (Which makes me wonder if Hazlik was the bottom in the affair, as that would be seen even more as the "female" role.)

[WolfKook]

Say he regains a certain amount of lifespan for every wound inflicted by a Falkovnian weapon. This would explain why he tortures and maims, but also why it's worth his while to raise an army and send it into the next domain to attack and pillage.

Mmmmmm... Say he regains a certain amount of lifespan for every wound inflicted in Falkovnian soil "by anyone who bears the sign of the Falcon upon his head"...

For me, the least interesting DLs are those who seem to be there only to fill an archetype, with little development beyond that. Tristessa and the hags from Tepest (Perhaps Maligno) come to mind. The former is just a banshee, who reminds me of the (Mexican, I think) legend of "La Llorona" (And the name "Tristessa" would acknowledge this tie), and many similar myths about a mother who killed her own son out of desperation. "La Llorona" was an active "boogeywoman", walking through populated towns and abductin children while looking for her son, something Tristessa just can't do. I think that her entire domain would have to be reshaped for her to be interesting.

The hags, for their part, are so lame that they have allowed something else (i.e. The Inquisition) to caught the spotlight in their domain. I guess the archetype (Which was interesting in greek myth and folktales all over Europe and North-America, and was very well developed by Shakespeare) could have been better used. The three crones in "Expedition to Castle Ravenloft" are certainly more interesting than the three "Ls" of Tepest.

Other archetypes are repeated by several DLs, and the better-developed one tends to outshadow the others. The Vampire (Strahd, Gundar, Mircea). The Werewolf (Nathan and Alfred). The Pirate (Draga, Van Riese, Bl**beard). The Evil Wizard (Hazlik, Meredoth), The guy with personality problems (Sir Tristen, Davion, Easan), etc.

There are some others that seem to be so unimportant that, as Isabella pointed out, some of us don't even know anything about them. Who is Althea? I guess she is the medusa... Or is she the harpy? Either case, there seems to be nothing memorable about her. Who is Baron Evensong? He sure has a... mmm... "cute" name. He is from Liffe, right?

Finally, there are some others that appeal to me as just plain stupid. The crocodile king is one of them. The house of lament (As a DL) is another one. The Wildlands, however, are an interesting concept. Perhaps a primal fey that bends nature to her whims and does not like humans disrupting her precious forest (The "Madremonte" of colombian legend) would be a more interesting DL there. As Rotipher said, the real bad guy in the House of Lament isn't the house per se (And the guy seems to have gotten away with it).

[Rotipher of the FoS]

The Black Box does say his tattoos are feminine, but it's not until the Red Box (I think) that the veiled references to his sexuality are mentioned. (I don't have my sources with me but I'm sure it's either the Red Box, circa 1995, or the Domains of Dread sourcebook, circa 1998, which mentions this.)

I checked both sources, and DoD introduced the scene when he kills the lover and has his (female) rival drink the lover's blood. In the Black and Red boxes, he simply walked into the Mists one day by accident, after years of having plotted vengeance against those who humiliated him. Most likely, he had been wishing to commit genocide against his fellow Red Wizards at this point; he just didn't find the means to achieve it until decades into his darklordship.

The notion that Hazlik desired the rival's lover does not appear until the Arthaus description in Gaz I. Indeed, the tattoos don't seem to have had anything to do with his perceived sexual orientation; as Brandi said, it was just a way of making him socially unacceptable in an intolerant, caste-based society.

Plus, I agree that Hazlik's behavior in Hazlan is evil. However, it's not as though his darklordship could be said to rely on it. He became a darklord before committing purges and ethnic cleansings. He became a darklord after killing one woman and one man.

So? Strahd did essentially the same thing, and without the decades of dreaming of wiping out a nation's-worth of enemies, to precede his fall. It's clear that it's not the magnitude of one's crimes that make you a darklord, but the motivations and character-flaws that drive you to commit them. Iuz was born irredeemably evil, so no amount of atrocities he carries out will spark the Dark Powers' interest in the ways that people become evil.