Café de Nuit

Apologizing with CarrionCrown for stealing his trademark title style, I would like to talk about Dominic d'Honaire; While Dementlieu and its political arena is a thoroughtly interesting domain, it's Darklord has always struck me as a lame character; I don't like the idea of badseeds, and I think that the idea of a spoiled kid who turns in a master manipulator for which it's created a perfect playground, with the only drawback of getting rejected by women he fancies, struck me as conceptally weak; First of all, d'Honaire's fall happened when he was still a child, and he didn't fancied women then; second, even if he can't dominate the women he fancy he can manipulate them in other ways; So, his curse actually gives him what he wants, and that's is not what should have happened. Here is my take:
Dominic d'Honaire was born in Dementlieu (not a big fan of false history either), and his mother died during the delivery; His father spoiled him rotten, until he remarried; Forced to cohoperate with a situation where he couldn't simply demand things anymore, Dominic learned to ask; He developed his curtesy, and the art of negoziation; He was so skilled, that soon he was spoiled once again, only this time no one managed to figure it.
He became greed of phraise, fame and prestige;
He made a quick career in Dementlieuse political bureaus, but, his arrogance grew with his influence; One day, he developed a crush for the daughter of a member of The Council of Brilliance; He tried every trick he knew to manage to woe her, but she simply was not interested; Then he started to play dirty, destroying the girl reputation; she took her own life and Dominic gained Darklordship.
Now, he has developed enormous power of persuasion, but, no matter what, he can never get what he wants; He will never get elect Lord-Governor, nor will he manage to conditionate the whole of the Council; He will never get reckognized for the success he obtains; He is forced to stay in rhe background; he decides, but other get the phraise; he resolves problems, but other get the fame; He has power, but no prestige. No matter how grandiose his schemes are, he shall always be seen as a skilled but obscure burocrat.

d'honaire's curse doesn't stem necessarily from being rejected by women (as you say, he wasn't romantically interested at the age he started acting out), but from a lack of love. d'honaire never knew his mother, and this lack of maternal attention is the void he's trying to fill (a tale as old as the serial killer archetype itself). That's why he acts out: he simultaneously feels a desire and a need for female attention (which has become romantic as he has grown older, but is rooted in a maternal desire) but also feels a resentment born of feelings of abandonment, which is easily turned towards cruelty.

As to being a "bad seed:" I always took this to be poetic license on the part of the authors. Dominic wasn't BORN bad, he was just malevolent from a very young age (as a result of the neglectful upbringing common to the very wealthy in fantasy literature).

In addition, the murder of his nanny is what brought him to the attention of the DPs, but not what caused him to become a Darklord. He didn't even kill her on purpose. (Rather, she was driven to suicide as she went made from the mental manipulation, as I understand it.) It wasn't so much the action that brought him to the attention of the DPs, I think, as his reaction (a selfish concern for being discovered, as opposed to a horrified understanding of what he'd caused).

Hope this helps.

Wanted to clear up a few things on the canon before we get to talking about making revisions. (Note that I'm not saying this is how you should play or extrapolate from them, I'm just saying what I see there in canon.)

Mistmaster wrote: First of all, d'Honaire's fall happened when he was still a child, and he didn't fancied women then

No, according to canon, he was quite precocious and did have a thing for women.
Black Box, red box box, and Domains of Dread all say "He was a handsome child and especially flirtatious with the ladies, whom found his behavior harmless and charming, so they lavished their affection on the poor motherless boy. They did not suspect how twisted and advanced his mind really was"

Gaz III says, "Deprived of his mother at birth, has an insatiable need for female attraction and attention. The women in his early life [with the exception of the nanny] spoiled him relentlessly. He still needs this constant devotion.

second, even if he can't dominate the women he fancy he can manipulate them in other ways; So, his curse actually gives him what he wants, and that's is not what should have happened.

It's not just the point of manipulating them; it's the point of getting them to find him him attractive. He can't do that because he becomes inherently repulsive in the eyes of any woman he find attractive. So yes he could manipulate them to do something else, but not to get them to behave the way he craves

Jimsolo wrote:d'honaire's curse doesn't stem necessarily from being rejected by women (as you say, he wasn't romantically interested at the age he started acting out), but from a lack of love. d'honaire never knew his mother, and this lack of maternal attention is the void he's trying to fill (a tale as old as the serial killer archetype itself). That's why he acts out: he simultaneously feels a desire and a need for female attention (which has become romantic as he has grown older, but is rooted in a maternal desire) but also feels a resentment born of feelings of abandonment, which is easily turned towards cruelty.

This is sort of correct. D'Honaire actually got plenty of female attention and was romantically interested in it (see above.) He was never rejected until his curse went through. While Gaz III does seem to indicate some trauma at the loss of his mother, he was not left wanting for female attention. (Perhaps not the right motherly attention he needed, but he got plenty of attention. And with the one woman who might have given him proper motherly attention, well it didn't work out too well.)

As to being a "bad seed:" I always took this to be poetic license on the part of the authors. Dominic wasn't BORN bad, he was just malevolent from a very young age (as a result of the neglectful upbringing common to the very wealthy in fantasy literature).

The earliest sources (black/red boxed sets) were pretty unequivocal about his inborn evil:
Dominic's mother died in childbirth. He was the proverbial bad seed, born with an evil core that was no doubt the cause of her death.

That second sentence was taken out in DoD, and his past was rewritten in Gaz III to make him more a product of his upbringing and personal choices. Something of a Freudian complex mixed with the spoiled brat archetype.

In addition, the murder of his nanny is what brought him to the attention of the DPs, but not what caused him to become a Darklord. He didn't even kill her on purpose. (Rather, she was driven to suicide as she went made from the mental manipulation, as I understand it.) It wasn't so much the action that brought him to the attention of the DPs, I think, as his reaction (a selfish concern for being discovered, as opposed to a horrified understanding of what he'd caused).

To me it was pretty cut and dry in Gaz III, where the bit about the nanny comes from. He gaslighted the nanny because she was the only one that didn't indulge all his spoiled whims. He was very systematic in his gaslighting, and then he specifically planted the suggestion to kill herself.

Gaz III p. 123:
Finding his new nanny overly strict and inflexible, he used his talents to affect his nanny's mind and destroy her relationships... The woman became distraught with a deep despair. Only a slight suggestion was necessary to cause her to take her own life

That did throw me initially, as I was thinking "i don't remember starting a thread on Dementlieu..."

However, if I do log onto this Forum and see a thread under my name which I don't remember starting and it only has one post saying;

"Greetings from Ejrik Spellbender."

I will freak out...

Thanks all for your hopinions; I still find the whole concept not of my liking, and I will use my revised version, thought.

Mistmaster wrote:Thanks all for your hopinions; I still find the whole concept not of my liking, and I will use my revised version, thought.

I don't think anybody here (or at least, I wasn't) was trying to get you to revert back to the original one. At least that wasn't my purpose; I was merely wanting to be on a common playing ground on how things were like "by default" before getting to the revisions.

With that out of the way, I'm curious on your revisions as far as how, if he is great at persuasion and manipulation (which would imply he's great at getting people to go along with his schemes), how do things never go the way he wants them to. Is it something external that always happens to render his plans invalid/moot in the end?

What he doesn't achieve is reckognizing of his merit; If, for example he negotiates succesfully a treaty, someone other shall get the phraise for it. It's the only thing he can't force, reckognization for himself.

Okay, gotcha. That makes sense.

One of the best ret-cons for Dementlieu (in my opinion) came from Ryan Naylor: Dominic's mother did not die in childbirth, but when he gained his darklordship, she became the 1st victim of his curse (and is now secretly locked away in an asylum somewhere for her "delusional" insistence that her child is evil and repulsive, which suddenly came about after the family moved to their new home...) After she was locked away, the curse seemed to go dormant for a few years... and then puberty happened.

Mmm, this scenario would need a rehelaboration of Dominic start of Darkness, thought;

Pardon board necromancy, but I'm glad I found this thread. While going through the Bloodlines in the black box I found something disturbing. Dominic was born in 700, and his mother Ernestine was born in 689. She was 11 when she died in childbirth. Even more disturbing, his father sired two more children starting a year later with Babette, born in 690, and birthing her first child at the age of...eleven. Babette then had Julienne at 13.

The Lesser Evil pointed out that Dominic was precocious as a child, but what if that was because his home was a place where kids were left to their own devices and were discovering things about their bodies at an early age? What if Dominic is not so much a "bad seed" but more born in a very unhealthy environment.

Claude, his father, was married to both Ernestine and Babette (according to the = symbol on the bloodline). He was a decade older than both, and they were YOUNG. With a modern eye, it points to one thing: Claude d'Honaire was a predator of children. He was most likely shunned by his family for his activities, and the "marriages" were granted retroactively once Dominic, as darklord, went about altering records (or the records appeared with the new domain.) Germain's death in the same year as Dementleiu's formation further points to Claude's predations being discovered and disapproved of, and Dominic convinced his father to move north after the murder to make a fresh start. Dominic's first job would be to rectify Claude's reputation so he could join his Aunt Bernadette and Uncle Maurice at court.

Finally, Ernestien and Babette may have even been with Claude at the same time. Unable to get away, and gaslit into beleiving his every word, they may have all been sharing a bed. Or, more unpleasantly, they were most likely raped over the same period, and may have even been pregnant simultaneously (Dominic born in late 700, and his half-sibling in early 701.

Babette was 19 when Dementlieu formed. She may not have been the only young person still ensnared by Claude at the time. And the "nanny" that Dominic convinced to kill herself could have just as easily been another teen being manipulated into protecting Claude's victims. The Bloodlines have been questioned in the past, but remember the introduction they get on page 120: they should be used to jog the DM's brain and fill in backstory...even if it takes the DM to topics best left unvisited. It shows that Claude d'Honaire was most likely a monster without equal.

You mean 689?
Beside, I prefer to think that is a simple typo, and she was at least 16 when she married. But if you want to make Dementlieu a legacy domain, then Claude might have been Dominic precursor.

Indeed, mine was a typo (now fixed). There are plenty of typos in the bloodlines (Cain Timothy dying before he can sire children sticks out) and I was all set to chalk this up to shoddy editing until I saw it happen twice. And certainly I think we would all RATHER not think about these sorts of horors, in-game and in our lives. But It does add a layer to the story that hadn't existed before. Two more CLues to Claude's nature appear in the Black box. First in the portrait of the family: Dominic is shown to the rear, watching as his father boistrously puts his arms around his siblings. For their part, Maurice and Bernadette look less than pleased to have their brother between them.

Second is back on the bloodlines. Bernadette and her husband Hugues Mousel die in the same year as Gerard d'Honaire, Claude's 13 year old grandson by Julienne. That kind of conicidence is exactly what the Bloodliens are for: what killed them all in the same year? Or on the same day? Was Claude caught in a compromising position with the boy by his sister, and all the mind-domination Dominic could muster wouldn't let her unsee somethign so horrendous? Claude (or Dominic) staged an accient and put the loose lips out of the way to keep from bringing down the political resurrection Dominic had worked so hard to create for his deviant father.

I agree it is a terrible topic, and it definitely doesn't suit everyone's game (probably not even mine) but it shows the most basic truth about Dementlieu: the most monstrous residents are regular humans.

Never liked Claude... but Dominic's uncle Maurice (the guy with the hat) looks really shrewd...
I can imagine Claude being a controlling psychopath though, look at the way he touches his brother in a dominative way and also check their body posture too, Maurice kind of bows to his brother, while Dominic looks from a distance in an assertive seemingly relaxed way... but his arm crossing his body and his left hand holding the right arm holding the glass shows insecurity.

On the other hand, bloodlines could be a product of a typo (one of many in Bloodlines)
(Art by Ken Frank from Realm of Terror box set)

Mistmaster wrote:While Dementlieu and its political arena is a thoroughtly interesting domain, it's Darklord has always struck me as a lame character;

Totally why the brain was shoved in there.

Mistmaster wrote:I don't like the idea of badseeds,

Same same.

and I think that the idea of a spoiled kid who turns in a master manipulator for which it's created a perfect playground, with the only drawback of getting rejected by women he fancies, struck me as conceptually weak;

On one hand it's nice to have the gender inversion of Borca/Richemulot's Darklord can't find love, but it also duplicates those domains.

Mistmaster wrote: First of all, d'Honaire's fall happened when he was still a child, and he didn't fancied women then; second, even if he can't dominate the women he fancy he can manipulate them in other ways; So, his curse actually gives him what he wants, and that's is not what should have happened. Here is my take:
Dominic d'Honaire was born in Dementlieu (not a big fan of false history either), and his mother died during the delivery; His father spoiled him rotten, until he remarried; Forced to cooperate with a situation where he couldn't simply demand things anymore, Dominic learned to ask; He developed his courtesy, and the art of negotiation; He was so skilled, that soon he was spoiled once again, only this time no one managed to figure it.
He became greedy for praise, fame and prestige;
He made a quick career in Dementlieuse political bureaus, but, his arrogance grew with his influence; One day, he developed a crush on the daughter of a member of The Council of Brilliance; He tried every trick he knew to manage to woo her, but she simply was not interested; Then he started to play dirty, destroying the girl's reputation; she took her own life and Dominic gained Darklordship.
Now, he has developed enormous power of persuasion, but, no matter what, he can never get what he wants; He will never get elect Lord-Governor, nor will he manage to conditionate the whole of the Council; He will never get recognized for the success he obtains; He is forced to stay in the background; he decides, but other get the praise; he resolves problems, but other get the fame; He has power, but no prestige. No matter how grandiose his schemes are, he shall always be seen as a skilled but obscure bureaucrat.

This was the same idea I had penned for a small democracy next door. My formulation was...
A charismatic politician and businessperson who can't get popular. S/he has a faction but is not the star of it. The domain is democratic and runs on an elections or moot system.

I honestly think this better fits with how the Dementlieu is run. The change is simple. d'Honaire does exactly what he does ... but he is seen as the socialite equivalent of poop stuck to a goldfish. He wants to set fashion trends, but his ideas never work. The plays he likes are never the popular ones that get the best actors. He always has to use a darn puppet to get anything the way he wants. And occasionally some random humiliation befalls him. He can't own a proper mansion, that be obscene for someone of his rank, so he has a nice rowhouse (and more property he owns by proxy), but some clerk messes up and pastes an eviction sign to his front door for tax non-payment and then the whole town gossips.
Richemulot's Jacqueline and Azalin know what's up (Jacqueline may not understand Darklords metaphysically but she knows the flow of power like she knows her cheeses) and they exploit Dominic's greed for recognition ruthlessly.

Strahdsbuddy wrote:Pardon board necromancy, but I'm glad I found this thread. While going through the Bloodlines in the black box I found something disturbing. Dominic was born in 700, and his mother Ernestine was born in 689. She was 11 when she died in childbirth. Even more disturbing, his father sired two more children starting a year later with Babette, born in 690, and birthing her first child at the age of...eleven. Babette then had Julienne at 13.

The Lesser Evil pointed out that Dominic was precocious as a child, but what if that was because his home was a place where kids were left to their own devices and were discovering things about their bodies at an early age? What if Dominic is not so much a "bad seed" but more born in a very unhealthy environment.

Claude, his father, was married to both Ernestine and Babette (according to the = symbol on the bloodline). He was a decade older than both, and they were YOUNG. With a modern eye, it points to one thing: Claude d'Honaire was a predator of children. He was most likely shunned by his family for his activities, and the "marriages" were granted retroactively once Dominic, as darklord, went about altering records (or the records appeared with the new domain.) Germain's death in the same year as Dementlieu's formation further points to Claude's depredations being discovered and disapproved of, and Dominic convinced his father to move north after the murder to make a fresh start. Dominic's first job would be to rectify Claude's reputation so he could join his Aunt Bernadette and Uncle Maurice at court.

Finally, Ernestien and Babette may have even been with Claude at the same time. Unable to get away, and gaslit into believing his every word, they may have all been sharing a bed. Or, more unpleasantly, they were most likely raped over the same period, and may have even been pregnant simultaneously (Dominic born in late 700, and his half-sibling in early 701.

Babette was 19 when Dementlieu formed. She may not have been the only young person still ensnared by Claude at the time. And the "nanny" that Dominic convinced to kill herself could have just as easily been another teen being manipulated into protecting Claude's victims. The Bloodlines have been questioned in the past, but remember the introduction they get on page 120: they should be used to jog the DM's brain and fill in backstory...even if it takes the DM to topics best left unvisited. It shows that Claude d'Honaire was most likely a monster without equal.

Nicely researched and the backstory you told is compelling and heartbreaking. That would crush a kid's soul.

I can't make heads or tails of that family tree though.
Honestly the whole Mousel/d'Honaire timeline is confusing, so I never really pieced it together. It needs its own wiki page.

Mistmaster wrote:You mean 689?
Beside, I prefer to think that is a simple typo, and she was at least 16 when she married. But if you want to make Dementlieu a legacy domain, then Claude might have been Dominic precursor.

I wonder if you could snare Claude somehow into current Mordent/Dementlieu, or his own pit of hell. In the telling above, he deserves both barrels. I really would like to push Dementlieu's date of formation back though. It's an obstacle to backstory writing and false history doesn't help.
So we have two Germain d'Honaire's (which needs to be sorted somehow):
#1 Dr. Germain d'Honaire the mesmerist who appeared in the Gryphon Hill module in BC 579. He already has thinning white hair.
#2 Dr. Germain d'Honaire, also a mesmerist, father of Claude, who was born in BC 634 according to the Realm of Terror according to the wiki. He is probably the great(+?)-grandson of the original.

I like the idea of having Dementlieu's land appear adjacent to Mordent but without its own Darklord, so it is metaphysically part of Mordent, until the separation event. The echoes of what will come from Germain #2's desire to marry into nobility proper/Claude's evil could have prompted the Dark Powers to roll the land out much earlier than 707. Dominic might have become the first Darklord of Dementlieu by wishing to escape and triggering the metaphysical split, but he wasn't the one to doom it: the others before him had set the stage, evidenced by the land already being there waiting.

As for Claude... maybe his soul belongs to his manor house because of the evil he committed there? Chalk it up to a long-running Wilfred Godefroy plot: bind souls to houses = more power/desire for Godefroy somehow, as if Godefroy was crowned as a wee little dark power. And let's be honest, shoving every-ghost into Gryphon Manor is a waste of a whole domain of crumbly houses. Claude knows what is coming and not even being in a separate domain can save him, so he is desperately researching occult stuff to try to get out of it.

Strahdsbuddy wrote:Indeed, mine was a typo (now fixed). There are plenty of typos in the bloodlines (Cain Timothy dying before he can sire children sticks out) and I was all set to chalk this up to shoddy editing until I saw it happen twice. And certainly I think we would all RATHER not think about these sorts of horors, in-game and in our lives.

If it is what you are worried about, Claude would hardly be the first canon predator of children. Erasmus van Richten was taken at the age of 14 by Baron Metus. That storyline was preserved in 5e. "Defeating the monsters that walk among us" is one of the core Ravenloft themes and why so many of the darklords blend supernatural horror with human vice. In the other DnD settings, you are banishing an evil dragon god, or a motley collection of abyssal demons, and stopping archliches from stealing the souls of everyone dead or who was ever revived to feed to an undead soul-eating god fetus. Ravenloft is the only DnD setting where you're not in it to just save the world in a big explosion of heroism, but heal the scars of evil, even on the scale of a single victim. If there is ever a tabletop setting where you could weave a dark tale and ask your players to pull the bucket of hope up out of the well of gloom, Ravenloft is it.