Messing with "canon": what do YOU do?

[Rotipher of the FoS]

Some recent comments on the VR/ToUD thread, by Steve, alhoon, Don and others, have got me wondering what other DMs out there have done with Ravenloft's "canon" setting and history in their various campaigns. What things do others change, and why? I've certainly made my own alterations to my campaign's version of the setting -- no time to go into them just now (I have a lab to teach in 15 minutes), but I'll spill the beans on my own variants later -- and I often wonder what other DMs have done with their games.

Just curious. The more ideas we share & swipe, the better!

[Faust]

Well I changed the population of almost all domains. More population mean more monster to hunt. Also I have added a forest haunted by ogres in the south of sithicus(they must come from somewhere right?). Lord Soth is still the darklord of sithicus. Lamordia has a bigger dwarven community.

[Jack of Tears]

Hmmm ... where shall I start?

First, I eliminated all but four of the original lords and replaced them with my own.

I made the setting larger.

I increased the standard technology level to make Ren or Victorian era sciences the norm. A few of the settings are still very undeveloped, however, as I feel the flavor demands. (Barovia, for example)

I removed all the demi-human races from standard play except halflings. Dwarves and Elves are now changelings, none of the others exist.

I added rules for the interaction of magic and technology.

There is much more, but these are the major alterations.

[Ail]

I've made my own domain, essentially for lack of confidence in knowledge about the rest. Since I overcame that, now I regret having made it at all.
Then, I'm 751 but Darkon is still Darkon and not Necropolis, and Azalin is there too. I don't plano to use Sithicus so I'm undefined about Soth. Van Richten is stil alive and well; the twins are not publishing their own books (and they won't be).

I use the map mostly as is, but the Shadow Rift is half-occupied by my domain. I change names here and there and the abilities of some of the people involved. In my current timeline, I've let Samuel Valentin be only second in command in the church at Krezk so I could have a woman at the top (incidentally, the same that is head of the Dawn Slayers (?)).
The Ba'al Verzi are beginning a secretive war with Strahd (who wants to take control of them). Ardonk Szerieza is more of an evil rebel now, although the Gundarakites themselves are not to blame for that. I have my cities be more cosmopolite and less xenophobic than suggested. Souragne is not an Island of Terror. There are no mistways. The Sea of Sorrows and the Nocturnal sea are basically sailable and charteable. Tara Kolyana is not in Hazlan (and for all practical purposes, I forget that land exists). I reduce a lot the ecology and list of possible monsters in domains, making it less fantastic. In particular, vampires do not abound in the Barovian woods. Lycanthropes are much more common, but not that much, and true ones are few. There are still some settlements in Forlorn. The ghosts do not rise from the graveyard of Barovia to Castle Ravenloft. Barovians suspect quite accurately that Strahd IS a vampire (that thing of outsiders knowing that openly but not the locals always hit me as strange. In the movies, they always know the local vampire for a vampire). The Balinoks are still somewhat traversable in winter. Probably, Ivan Dilysnia does not exist (still to consider). And still probably, Dominia will be somewhere in the Core.

Nothing much, in short. I like to go with canon and weave the stories around. For instance, I think I'll make Natalia Vorishkova the true murder of Ubel Ratik, mainly because I had the lead to her be a scarf (one of my PCs is an inffected lycanthrope of her bloodline). I guess I'll be making changes as necessary as my campaign enters a certain domain. Right now, I'm in Barovia so most of the changes concern it.

[Jasper]

A few big changes I made-

-The shadow rift is no longer a large gash in the countryside but now is a huge redwood style forrest with the canopy blocking all but the fainest light.

-I took Keening from is place to the east of the rift and made it a mountain rising from the center of the rift. It is surounded by a constant thunderstorm that shrouds the entire forrest bellow in darkness. A small spire where its darklord was killed juts out just over the storm into the sunlight. (I picture a nighly 'Night on Bald mountain" scene from Fantasia where the undead shadow fey fly up and circle the mountain that can be seen from Tepest

-I rewote my own verson of Strahd sherrif. I made him be the resureccted revenant form of Sergi. I had the GC allow his soul to return to his DP preserved body with the notion that a creature has killed his brother and taken his place. He took the chared armor of a dead paladin who fought Strahd and lost and now hunts down thieves (due to his misspalced honor) and any vistani who stary from thier camp (as he knows they work for Strahd) As he currently has a averson to the castle (it being where he died) he now wanderes across Barovia and tries to flush out Strahd so he can fight him one on one.

-I changed a few of the darklords curses to fit my style better. Azalin no longer is unable to learn spells- it was an ok curse untill every stating of him gave him thirty new spells. I now have him unable to hide his undead form with any ilusionary magic or simple disguise. Only his iron crown allows him to take human form for five hours a day but at the end of those five hours his skin begins to peal away and his eyes start to glow red and become like hot coals.


-Il Aluk is still in my campaigns but it is now a sort of nega-activly charged ghost town. Those who stay in the town for too long at a time or run into a pocket of highly concintrated energy run the risk of turning undead and being drawn into Il Aluks shadow city - Necroplis.


-Falkovina now has become even more of a dangerous place with the introduction of Vlads 'Thought Police'. These secret police infiltrate rebel groups and report all "Unpatriotic thoughts" back to Vlad.


-I replaced the three sisters in Tepest with Gwynn ap Nudd and his hunt. He now hunts any fey with a burning passon as Mauve turned his true love into a white stag when he spurned her love and then forced him to hunt her. Now anyone who meets him the woods must either join the hunt and be trapped forever or be torn apart by his dogs.

[artent]

I like to leave canon the way it is. When I run House of Strahd and the party gets wiped the PC's can look at that event on the time-line and go "OOOhh thats us cool!"..but if they beat it they can look and go "Wow we must be good"


Even if the pc's aren't directly or even indirectly involved with canon events they still give a source for news and events that I don't have to come up with and give the world a more active feel. They can hear about "the hour of screaming shadows". If this gets the pc's more interested in the setting beyond my campaign they can go read about it themselves, which in the end, allows them to make characters that are tied in better with the setting.

But if all there is is plot hooks...with no resolutions or stories, then all I can throw at my pc's ARE adventure hooks, either that or I have to invent details to tell them about whats happening. IF they do get interested in the setting and read the books then there are large spoiler portions that become harder to surprise them with.

Back to "the hour of screaming shadows". If they read the novel they know whats happening in general, I can still use it as an effective adventure by adding portions or having the pc's be instrumental the outcome in a way that is not apperent from the novel. This gives the whole thing a sense of importance, if they fudge up the whole thing then they have broken canon and should feel proud(or perhaps humble if they did so by dying). IF they suceed then they have been important historacle characters that one can infer by reading canon products.

I must say I love the 3.x products for ravenloft. I enjoy all the plot hooks and the myriad of characters and settings. I just feel that there aren't as many complete stories to read for fun or run portions of. We have moderate detail of the conclusion of the "Death Saga" and some vague inferences of somthing important that is going to happen in the future...but not very much happened. It was mostly rap up from 2ed or building up to..presumably 4th edition.

[Boccaccio Barbarossa]

GREAT TOPIC!
---
I really liked this. I don;t know that I would nuke the 3 sisters, but I would definitely add this to the mix.

-I replaced the three sisters in Tepest with Gwynn ap Nudd and his hunt. He now hunts any fey with a burning passon as Mauve turned his true love into a white stag when he spurned her love and then forced him to hunt her. Now anyone who meets him the woods must either join the hunt and be trapped forever or be torn apart by his dogs.

The major changes to our game are largely superficial. We've left most of the major canon plot elements and "darkies" in place. In our previous campaign, we ran "The Evil Eye" and it turns out that my charcter, charnmed by Maloccio, foudn the one loophole in the adventure (no disclosure in case DM want to run it for their PCs.) let's just say that, as a result, my character became an NPC and the NEXT character had a history intimately tied to killing Maloccio. So, in the end, we were successful and the Dukkar was eliminated. We played a little bit after, but when the campaign came to a halt, we essentially pressed "reset" on the whole thing, (i think - we're playing now and some of us are still unsure as to Maloccio's fate ) besdies, Maloccio has nothing to do with our current game.

I think we like the stability of the canon, as somethign in the background we can rely on to build in secret connections into our backgrouds. Somethign all the characters can get and are familiar with, which is often not the case in a game where the main powers of the ealsm are DM creations. (Both have advantage, but this seems to be our thing, I guess.)

I think most of the "changes" if we can call them that, are cosmetic. We like our campaign to have a quasi-historicl feel, so we've made some minor modifications to allow for a diversity of "real-world". A lot of the changes have more to do with flavour than aything else. Point form:

Demihumans: we don't like 'em very much: too much fantasy, I think, spoils the Gothic Horror. We make it an obligation to come up with something STELLAR for a demihuman when it happens. (we've made a great dwarf, a GREAT caliban, an UNBELIEVABLE half-elf, and a cool gnome (NPC I have yet to use). (I think I can make a good case for a street urchin Halfling chimney swep, but...) In most realms, we assume the population mix to resemble 99% human, 1% other. (there are exceptions - Sithicus and others, but it's the norm.) Also, demihumans are CREEPY - we REALLY play that up.

Cultures: Most cultures we've given a 'real-world" analogue to. Not for eveything, but many. Some are obvious (Gundarak is hHungary vs. Romanian Barovia), as indicated by the dark lord's gothic fiction origin / obvious canon clues. Nova vaasa seems to have evolved now into a tzarist early russia, just a little behind the western core due to its isolation, but looking very much to emulate those cultures. Invidia has become a rural italy, with a mini city-state of Carina, where we put our renaissance painters. For much of Darkon, I like to keep a Byzantine feel. Il Aluk is, to my knowledge, still Darkon (but I would lobby my DM to change that back if I thought there was a cool character I needed to make from there.)

CUlture Level: We're a little slippery with that one. We like 17th/18th century dress, so we tend to have 16th century realms with 18th century dress codes. Nothign very major...

Classical False History: This one's not "official" but I've gone with it as a PC. Basically, a lot of the literature of the periods portrayed in Ravenloft was written PACKED with classical allusions to ancient heros from Greek epics. SO, in assume to a large extant that in the false history of Ravenloft, realms of a similar flavour share similar "allusions": basically, references to a common false hostory of defunct myths and heroes. That way, you can go watch an opera about "Hercules" in Dementlieu, say. And you can pick up a book of pastoral poetry... But that's just the nerd in me, I think. I suspect my "mates" don't really care. It also makes for great dramatics - you can "quote" in character of you play that civilized bard...
(Therefore, in MY Ravenloft, if not in our communal Ravenloft, Dementleus end up learning "Latin" (and "Greek") in grammar school, like shakespeare might have in his past. Though, stangely enough, maybe not many can claims to have found any original texts, in recent memory, written in those ancient languages.... )

SO, that's it, I think....[/list]

[Dion of the Fraternity]

What I tweaked:

-- Verbrek is culturally related to the US Deep South.

-- Gabrielle Aderre is Chaotic Neutral.

-- The Church of Ezra controls a large swathe of Borca and Richemulot, proclaiming it as the "Ezran States." Mystically, however, this political land mass is purely superficial, and the darklords still have control over their respective domains.

-- Darkon is culturally related to Imperial Rome.

-- Demise is waaaay bigger.

-- Population of most settlements is at x10 the canon.

-- A crude train-like system connects Port-a-Lucine and Martira Bay.

-- Hot air balloons exist.

-- Humans (along with giomorgo) dominate the land. Elves, dwarves and the little races are dying out. No half-races exist.

[Le Noir Faineant]

Over from my Staunton Bluffs game - more or less result of my several campaigns and my own fantasy...

Yours,

Rafael

Hiya, I just started the last FoS advertisement for the game.

You might want to read this one especially: (Although I'd also recommend you to read the older ones for some more background and atmosphere.)



The Core, 758 BC

In Darkon, the wrath of the newborn king has deserted the eastern shore.

In Falkovnia, Mircea and Viggo wage in the war of princes for their forlorn father’s throne.

In Richemulot, six mighty servants of the darkness siege for the control of their castle against a mad and horrifying nosferatu, and night becomes the day.

From Barovia, the peasants flee the breezing cold winter storms that have deserted the swamps around the Devil Strahd’s castle.

Yet in Valachan, strange figures in the mists have been spotted; long caravans of refugees, men and monsters unseen for over twenty years, seeking shelter from the mists from where they came.

The Mordentish Cartographer Society, leading investigation office since the uneventful disappearance of the Weathermay children has send their best men to seek answers for the recent troubles on the southern Valachan borders. Lead by the famous Ivid the Bowman, a big division of most experienced Mordentish explorers has established a base near the town of Ungrad.

Will you, brave adventurer, be fearless and strong enough to aid them in the mysteries and horrors they are about to confront?

[Rotipher of the FoS]

OK, as promised, here are my chief alterations to the setting (that I can recall off the top of my head). Major changes are as follows:

Geographically, two domains that were just too bizarre (Bluetspur and the Nightmare Lands) were never part of the Core IMC, but always Islands. Historical events that link these locations to the Core, such as the Thaani exodus to Barovia or Dr. Illhousen's explorations, happened via the Mists, not direct overland travel. (Hence the Core wasn't overrun by the illithids hundreds of years ago.)

Daglan became an Island under Radaga instead of vanishing after FoG, and it later merged with G'henna to form a Cluster called the Withered Expanse. Radaga's motives are much more complex and nastier IMC -- honestly, did all female darklords have to be obsessed with their own looks, at the dawn of the game-setting? -- and she and Yagno Petrovna really, really hate each other.

Like most DMs, I've added an Island or two of my own invention. Most distinctive of these is probably Aftermath, a 20th century domain and an homage to early Stephen King; its darklord depopulated his entire planet (!) by unleashing a lethal biological weapon in a botched attempt to murder a romantic rival, and his mind can animate the many abandoned machines throughout his domain, to communicate with intruders from his hidden germ-proof bunker (via any radio or telephone) ... and to attack those same visitors, once he convinces himself that they can't possibly be real "survivors" and he's only imagining their presence (eternal loneliness having driven him to a desperate paranoia).

Population-wise, Ravenloft's always had problems, in that too few people are present to sustain too many man-eating monsters. However, I didn't want to spoil the claustrophobic effect of the setting by making it larger (with some exceptions; Souragne is somewhat bigger than in canon descriptions IMC). To eliminate problems -- which, by my calculations, lead to things like Jacqueline Montarri decapitating her way through fully a third of Barovia's female population in the first 50 years of her curse! -- I made some "native" monsters of Ravenloft that are particularly voracious into Mist-napped imports -- e.g. if my PCs meet a skin-thief, it's probably only been in the setting for a matter of months -- and altered some of the individual villains so they don't have to kill so often ... which, if anything, makes them seem more evil when they choose to do so anyway (Montarri IMC could survive indefinitely without a head, she's just too vain to go without one for long).

If a domain is really, really getting underpopulated, the Dark Powers aren't above slipping an extra village or two onto the map when nobody's looking, and altering the memories of all parties involved to say that it's always been there. This information is NEVER in-character knowledge; so far as PCs know, the monsters really can wipe out whole domains, even if the DPs don't want the victim-supply to run out and the domains' cycle of misery to end.

Historically, events in the Grand Conjunction modules wrapped up a little differently. Instead of the real Material Plane, the darklords "escaped" to yet another construct the Dark Powers had established (complete with look-alikes for Strahd and Tatyana as "royals"; honestly, reincarnation is one thing, but credibility has limits for Pete's sake! ) specifically to mess with the participants. The Holy Symbol of Ravenkind took no part in the storyline -- that was around Sergei's neck, not on an alter, when his murder took place; read your own *%&#@ novels, people! -- leaving the Icon as the PCs' objective in "From the Shadows". The Book of Keeping wasn't retrieved from the Material Plane, but on a second visit to the past, this time to the crypts under Castle Ravenloft. Nathan Timothy was also fortuitously killed by the heroes during this adventure, explaining why Arkandale got absorbed into Verbrek.

I really don't like the concept of "personality fragments", nor the notion that simply wishing to escape a horrible fate can create one -- if it could, wouldn't Ravenloft have more fragments than 'complete' people? -- so IMC the Tatyana who died in Jander Sunstar's arms really was the original one, albeit rendered ageless by having ingested Strahd's blood when she bit his lip to get him off her (a la the Kargatane secret society). All "Tatyanas" we've seen in the centuries since then are fakes: the DPs find it amusing to play off how Strahd's professed "love" for her is entirely superficial, as these copies' personalities are actually overidealized charicatures, not accurate portrayals of Tatyana's nature (she had more depth). It's also their smart-arse way of giving Strahd the very thing -- "someone like Tatyana"; like her, yet certainly not actually her -- which Sergei, himself, had wished for his brother moments before his murderer struck.

Likewise, the man who'd actually built the Apparatus wasn't a calved-off fragment of Strahd von Zarovich, IMC, but a Mordentish "local" named Erik Leede. When Azalin's escape-ritual tried to separate Strahd from his bond to the Land, it formed a link with the Good-from-Evil extractive effect of the Apparatus, and this rebounded to disintegrate Leede, leaving only drifting whisps of his essence (a la VRA's "alchemical philosophy") and no one to be split in two. The Apparatus then sucked Strahd and Azalin through this planar cross-link, and it split the vampire in two. Strahd's resulting "Good" self -- really the inoffensive, albeit introverted scholar he would have become, had he never gone off to war in the first place! -- could not cope with the recollection of having been a vampirish villain, but when he inhaled the lingering essence of Leede which drifted through the lab, he became fixated on Leede's memories and convinced that that had to be his true history, not the terrible vampire he also remembered. The "Evil" Strahd (still a vampire, hence unbreathing) was never exposed to Leede's gasified essence, so it took "the Creature" a while to figure out what had happened and to build up his forces; in the meantime, the "Good" Strahd became convinced his (real) memories of vampirism were the result of some awful darkness within him, so moved to Mordentshire (under the Von Zarovich name) and began living the life of an alchemist (rather, "the" Alchemist).

Madame Eva is far more of an active (albeit behind-the-scenes) "player" IMC, in that she's been secretively fighting a low-intensity 'cold war' with the Dark Powers for centuries, having spurned their attempt to make her Ravenloft's second darklord back in the 5th century (when they still bothered to ASK villains to accept their "heart's desire" ). The DPs wanted to exploit her unprecedented psychic gifts, to predict the outcome of their endeavors -- they weren't as powerful back then; IMC, they've been getting stronger over time, which accounts for why the Land of Mists' growth has been accelerating -- but her Chaotic contrariness led her to set them up, by dropping hints to Jander Sunstar which would let the elf win free of the DPs' manipulations (which he did: he perished in the sunlight as he'd intended, back in 499 BC [and the fact he was such an old vampire made no difference BTW, as aging only makes vampires resist sunlight IMC if they age in Ravenloft]). Eva's severance from time, her murder in 495 BC, and the Zarovans' sterility (no kids since Mikhail, b. 492), all date from the DPs' realization that she'd reneged on their "arrangement"; however, the raunie had already set several events in motion -- some of which my own PCs have contibuted to, though Eva's schemes for revenge won't bear fruit for quite a while -- which might well undermine the Dark Powers' intended goals (!) ... that is, if even Eva's Sight has shown her everything she'd needed to learn, to make this happen.

The ToUD prophecy is just that: a prophecy, not a metaplot device. No actual date is alleged, for the events it foretells. This means that some believe it'll happen countless generations in the future, some believe it's coming next Tuesday, and a heck of a lot believe it's a load of hogwash.

Lyssa von Zarovich didn't become more powerful via a ghost's aging effect , but by spending an extended period amongst the Arak, back when they still lived below the surface. Lyssa has a number of sith allies (who'd found her intriguing as the first vampire their race ever met) back in the Shadow Rift, and could probably get help from them in a pinch if she could find a way to enter that domain; her later visit to Bluetspur, in fact, was something she set out on, because her first attempt to ally with an utterly-nonhuman race from a domain all mortals dreaded had been so productive!

The Malocchio-as-Dukkar subplot has been downplayed. When I do get around to bringing it up, I'm probably going to decide that Malocchio really can't remove darklords from their domains -- if a true fiend can't do it, and a full-blooded Vistani can't do it, why should a hybrid of fiend and quarter-Vistana be able to? -- but that he's been fostering that rumor (and maybe even setting up Azalin himself to believe it; how's that for a reversal? ) in hopes somebody who wants out of the Land of Mists will engineer his own escape from Invidia!

As for Castle Ravenloft, I've eliminated the witches and re-stocked that room with Sergei's original bedroom, complete with MASSIVE ethereal resonance and phantoms which re-enact his murder. OTOH, instead of the spirit of Sergei himself, I put a twist to the "House of Strahd" notion that PCs can ask the ghost in his crypt for help: while a ghost that looks like Sergei is indeed present, it's actually Alek Gwilym's spirit, impersonating Sergei so he can rat out his former commander and killer, Strahd, to such heroes as might avenge their deaths! Unlike Sergei's, Alek's spirit is not Good-aligned, and is perfectly willing to send would-be vampire slayers to their deaths, if there's the slightest chance of getting back at the comrade who'd betrayed their long years of friendship. When he's not masquerading as Sergei for intruders, Alek hides from Strahd in the one crypt the vampire shuns like sunlight ... and takes petty pleasure in using his Ghost Writing salient ability to manifest dreadful puns and insults to the Von Zaroviches on the lesser tombs within the castle's vault.

The Dark Powers IMC, as correctly surmised in my sig, are indeed complete and total bastards. Their actual motives aren't something I can reveal on this board ... but I will say that, from what I find when I look at their actual behavior in those few cases where their direct or covert intervention is acknowledged, they're not always as stolidly mature as is generally believed ("Lord Through Dark"/"Dark Lord Through"/"Through Dark Lord"? What are we, five years old here...? ). Not to say that moral maturity is necessarily equated with chronological development, mind you....

[Nathan of the FoS]

My changes to canon will take a long time to explain properly, but it's 6:30 AM and I can't sleep--so why not?

Let's see...

There are no demihumans who commonly or routinely interact with humans. Elves, dwarves, gnomes and halfings are humans with a dash of fey blood in their ancestry (calibans are calibans). The game mechanics for their creation is the same, and they have the same ORs--it's purely a cosmetic change. (They do look more human than the standard D&D races--but again, that's a purely cosmetic change. )

I've never liked the distinction Ravenloft canon tries to draw between "science" and "magic". In a place where magic by definable rules and has easily visible effects, I think people wouldn't make this distinction easily, if at all. (As with Isaac Newton--a dedicated alchemist, a great believer in the "Bible code", and, of course, the creator or co-creator of modern physics and mathematics.) So everywhere except Lamordia and Hazlan no-one makes the distinction. The Lamordians fear and hate magic as a reflection of Mordenheim's bad experience with magic--the one time he tried to use magical power to animate a golem, he got Adam. In Hazlan the Mulani restrict magical study to their own race (or they have until recently--see Eleni of Toyalis), and they forbid the importation or development of technology for fear it would give the Rashemi ideas.

Everything is bigger; the Core covers a space roughly the size of France, Germany, the Low Countries, and Switzerland, and it's more heavily populated in the cities (roughly x10 for all populations, at least in the western core--the southern core is still relatively unsettled).

The political divisions are very different from the domain boundaries; for example, Strahd von Zarovich is the nominal ruler of a space that covers Barovia, parts of Invidia, Kartakass, and Forlorn. In addition, the domain now known as Verbrek is ruled, not by Alfred Timothy, but by the son of the werewolf lord Bakholis, who carries on a continual low-level guerrilla war with Gabrielle Aderre. Mordent is north of Dementlieu, and the two are united in one political entity, which happens to contain the great city of Paridon. Nosus is located in Nova Vaasa near the Darkon border. The Shadow Rift is not a rift--it's an impassable forest which becomes a gateway into Faerie on moonlit nights (one-way mistway of excellent reliability--other than that it's pretty much as it is in the Guide to the Shadow Fey and Gaz V).

There is a large cluster consisting of Arkandale (as described at the Lonesome Road website) and a few homebrew domains in the Sea of Sorrows, west and south of the Core.

Perhaps the most important conceptual definition (it's not a change, since there is no canon definition!): The Dark Powers are not the jailors of Ravenloft; they're the inmates. They are trying to use those they can draw into Ravenloft to break the bonds placed on them and escape into the Near Ethereal, from where they can roam the planes as it pleases them. The gods who created this prison use (who else?) the Vistani as their jailors. Also, the Dark Powers are actually a set of Darklords from Ravenloft canon--the Nightmare Court.

I'm sure I'm forgetting a few things, but that covers the most important stuff.

[Rotipher of the FoS]

Oh yeah, here's a couple more from IMC:

Because I quite liked "The Enemy Within", I made Tristen Hiregaard's life story more complex, to integrate elements from that novel. His father Romir's curse (inflicted by his murdered wife) did indeed jump to his son, but this, in itself, didn't make his heir the darklord as we know him/them today. Instead, it made young Hiregaard, who was actually Lawful Evil to start with IMC, develop a psychotic, homicidal temper that he just couldn't control. Young Hiregaard did commit several murders of young women -- murders, which the future darklord regreted because they represented a lapse of self-discipline, not because his crimes were evil acts per se -- and covered them up. Intrigued by the contradictory feelings they sensed in this murderer, the DPs (whose actual selection of darklords is a bit experimental and illustrative IMC; they like minds that are wracked by self-loathing and denial, not just by Evil for its own sake) snatched him up, and divided his two sides into separate identities: his Evil impulses which had made him kill and then hide his own misdeeds (Malken, darklord of Nova Vaasa), and his Lawful side that was ashamed by his lapse of self-control (the Tristen we all know... who really isn't any more the "real" Hiregaard than Malken is! ). At first, the two resulting personas were unaware of each other's existence -- each time one "side" went to sleep in one place, the other would awaken elsewhere, their mutual body Teleporting back and forth between their residences -- and Tristen dutifully hunted "the murderer" in his own law-enforcement capacity, while Malken dodged the police, each one in oblivious ignorance of his foe's nature. But when Tristen inadvertantly enraged the Vistana Rozalia, she invoked destruction, vengeance, and suffering upon him via her curse ... and the Dark Powers complied, simply by letting these two halves learn that the other "side" existed. No longer did their body Teleport back and forth; now, Malken could sieze control of it to sabotage Tristen's life, right where his non-Evil foe lived, and Tristen could lay traps and obstacles in his alter-ego's path. Cue "The Enemy Within".

While I was at it, I also salvaged nearly everything from that other version of Malken's umpteen contradictory backstories: the one from the Desmond LaRouche MCRLII entry. Dr. Edmond Hiregaard was a cousin of Tristen's, whose interest in alchemical philosophy Tristen encouraged, in the secret hopes that Edmond would find the way to expunge Malken from his own self. Malken sabotaged these plans by contaminating the holistic purifier Edmond had invented with Evil, causing the doctor to undergo his own Jekyll/Hyde transformations. Unable to recall his actions while under the (addictive) purifier's effects, and misled by incriminating evidence the real Malken had planted, Edmond wrongly deduced that he was the notorious crime lord "Malken" of whom the city's underclass whispered ... a misconception he later passed on to his apprentice Desmond LaRouche, when the latter was horrifically injured by Edmond's own purifier-created alter-ego. While Tristen wasn't fooled, having this false "Malken" running loose in Kantora, every time Edmond succumbs to his addiction and uses the contaminated purifier, helps to decoy adventurers and rivals in crime from Malken's true identity; hence, Malken makes sure the gulled doctor always has an ample supply of bottled Evil at hand.

On a less convoluted note, I re-vamped Castle Tristenoira a bit, to bring it more in line with the 3E concepts of ethereal resonance. Instead of being a site of literal time-shifts/loops, the other Tristen's lair undergoes random phantom shifts that restore its appearance to that of eras long past. Its halls are roamed exclusively by ghosts, but ghosts who take on pseudo-living forms much like the Richten House servants wore in "Bleak House", whenever a phantom shift re-creates a time when they were still alive. Even Brangain apBlanc is a ghost, IMC: rather than being saved from her cell, Tristen's daughter took sick and died in it while her father was too distraught by Isolt's suicide to check up on his captive's welfare (thus, Tristen's accidental killing of his family became complete). Brangain isn't seen in the castle when it phantom-shifts to later eras, because a band of heroes really did once "rescue" her from her cell in Castle A ... which doesn't mean she came back to life, but rather, that it snapped the repetitive cycle that kept her re-enacting her own death, much as the Bleak House servants' reiterative deaths could be averted. Thus, Brangain was freed from having to act out haunting Castles B & C as an unquiet spirit, the way her brothers and mother -- who might, in theory, also be "rescued" if someone could forestall her suicide in Castle A, thus removing her ghost from the later-era Castles, as well! -- still do.

[Undead Cabbage]

It would appear that not a lot of us are a big fan of the demi-human concept.

Well, not that this thread isn't already incredibly long, here are mine:

Zherisia: I don't know where Zherisia is supposed to be, but I keep it relatively close to Lamordia, Dementlieu and Mordent (thus keeping all of the high tech cultures together). However a lot of Dr. Mordenheim's theories are unappreciated in Lamordia, they are a big hit in Paridon, particularily his work on the cell theory and his budding concept of evolution. Zherisia also does not have its own language, and speaks a strange slang of Mordentish.

Cultural Level 10: I've been thinking about writing a 10th cultural level, which would pertain to Paridon and Lamordia. In this cultural level, muskets have been effectively replaced by rifles, steam engines and hot air balloons exist (hence why there would be no trains in dementlieu or Mordent), and religion and the arcane arts play a very diminished role (if they are even present). The exception to this would be the divinity of man kind. Both of these areas just seem too culturally advanced to be thrown into the same category as Mordent or Dementlieu. This is not to imply that Mordent or Dementlieu are backwards societies (however, Richemlot could be considered somewhat of a backward society), its just that both societies put less emphasis on science than Paridon or Lamorida (Dementlieu is more concerned with Art and fashion, Mordent is more concerned with tradition, superstition and religion). The Cultural level 10 would require rejection of Ezra as a 'fundamental religion', something that Mordent and Dementlieu are unwilling to do.

Falkovinia: Cultural level 8. Drakov arms hiw talons with bastard swords and full plate armor, but has conditioned his talons to be able to take a musket shot and simply shrug it off. This tactic becomes effective when his talons finally reach melee combat with a legion of muskateers via horseback. By getting his talon cavalry to flank the enemies army, he is exposing them to an elite melee fighting force. A common tactic is to arm his 'recruits' with ineffective muskets to act as a deversion, and then have his cavalry to swoop into the the enemy and kill them, much like a hawk does. I also paint Falkovnian culture with a lot of Prussian culture, which if you read about is itself a very militaristic society.

The Headless Horseman: I keep him in Mordent. The story is that two weeks before and during the nocturne, one must stay off Mill road. I also change the rule that the Headless horseman can miss; he ALWAYS gets at least one head. Unfortunately for the Mordentish, it's never a matter of them finding mill road, but of mill road finding them.

Bastard Sword: You cannot buy a Bastard sword in any domain except for Falkovnia. This is because all other domains are either not technologically advanced enough to develop them, too technologically advanced to even care about them, or currently at war with Falkovnia, and therefore seeing the Bastard Sword as 'the enemy's weapon'.

Rules for Fire arms: When I went over the rules for fire arms with my players, we all agreed that they are 'too fantasy like'. I rule that muskets require 2 rounds to reload, and you cannot take the rapid reload feat for them. However, when attacking with a musket, your target uses its touch attack AC (a musket bullet will effectively negate any AC bonus granted by armor or natural armor). The Critical range for muskets and pistols is 18-20x2. In the case of rifles, as mentioned above, the reload time is only one round, and the rifle does not need to be masterwork to be water proof.

[Dominique]

My two biggest changes are pretty common--Soth still runs Sithicus and Mordenheim is a co-lord with Adam.

As I mentioned in the "What have you accidentally changed?" thread, I moved the war between Dementlieu and Falkovnia forward so that it only occurred about five years ago because I thought that was what actually happened . . . On a related not, I made Mordent's Bastion a completely different character because I couldn't find any info on him in Gaz III, only to find out that it was bedcause he wasn't mentioned until Gaz IV.

The mastermind behind Van Richten's death wasn't the Gentleman Caller, but a pair of extraordinarily powerful fey created by Gwydion as a means to free himself (Azalin temporarily weakened the fabric of the land as he ripped himself free from dissipated-all-over-Darkon status, not enough for most of the DLs to even notice anything but enough for Gwydion to reach out and tear a couple of new crations from the land before being shut down again). They orchestrated Van Richten's death because they were afraid that he would stop their plot. (The two fey were the main villains IMC, and I wanted to run Bleak House without throwing in a completely new "evil mastermind"-style antagonist.)

I'm working on a way to tweak Necropolis to make it more accessible to PCs--I think it's a very interesting setting that's completely wasted as is--but I don't like the idea of getting rid of the Shroud outright. This isn't set in stone yet, but I think that IMC, the negative energy is going to be dissipated throughout Necropolis, leading to a constant slow energy drain. Visitors to Necropolis will gain a negative level or lose a certain number of hit points every hour or so until they die.

Am I the only one who loves demihumans?

[Rotipher of the FoS]

Am I the only one who loves demihumans?

Hey, I for one kept demihumans about as common IMC as the products suggest! As I see it, even if the DPs are primarily interested in human evil -- including once-humans, pseudohumans, and monstrous human-wannabees in that category -- they wouldn't miss such a clear opportunity to showcase human prejudices as having the likes of elves and halflings around. Of course, since providing innocent targets for humans' bigotry is the chief reason why the Dark Powers included benign nonhumans among Ravenloft's populace, IMC, they'll always be disempowered minority-groups in most of the domains they inhabit (Sithicus, naturally, constituting an exception that showcases bigotry against humans).