Border Closures

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ewancummins
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Border Closures

Post by ewancummins »

What are your favorite border closures?

Which ones would you perhaps change?

Why?
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Re: Border Closures

Post by Five »

None.

Too much fantasy, redundant given the nature of the Mists (remember, every domain is evil, so the PCs aren't really escaping), and it gives these so-called prisoners more control than a doomed individual should have. The DPs hold the keys, not the DLs.

I understand it as a possible enabler for the individual DLs and their control of evil (if only to prevent the PCs from skinning out, turning, and giving the one finger salute with a curse that might be a Powers check in and of itself), but still. Meh. I say evil minds carry evil grudges against such people. That and all roads lead to the Mists...;)
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Re: Border Closures

Post by ewancummins »

I think I might have used a border closure only once, and that was an Island of Terror sealed by the Mists.
Try to leave and you just wander back in.

I think that no border closures would make for a much more dangerous Falkovnia. And Darkon.

And more wars in general, I think. Darklords who are rulers are likely to use border closures to stop invasions, but if that is not an option...
Delight is to him- a far, far upward, and inward delight- who against the proud gods and commodores of this earth, ever stands forth his own inexorable self.

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Re: Border Closures

Post by Five »

ewancummins wrote:
I think that no border closures would make for a much more dangerous Falkovnia. And Darkon.

And more wars in general, I think. Darklords who are rulers are likely to use border closures to stop invasions, but if that is not an option...
You know, now that you said that it got me thinking. Border closures are, in a sense, a built-in way to keep RL gothic at its core. If there were no border closures then hell yes, Falkovnia would up its ante and bring war again and again to its neighbours...and in a much more one-sided manner, IMO.

So to prevent the setting from becoming another Forgotten Realms, say, then are border closures necessary?

War is, arguably, anti-gothic...not that it has to be (just look at the intro to Mike Mignola's Baltimore series). But traditionally-speaking.

Is it (border control) designed to contain gothic(ish) sensibilities?

Interesting.

However, that said, I wouldn't mind seeing a few domains get crushed under the hooves of a War Pig. Evil can temporarily band together for a greater good (and then fall back into self delusion/pity/hate)...
"A very piteous thing it was to see such a quantity of dead bodies, and such an outpouring of blood - that is, if they had not been enemies of the Christian faith."

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Re: Border Closures

Post by jamesfirecat »

ewancummins wrote:I think I might have used a border closure only once, and that was an Island of Terror sealed by the Mists.
Try to leave and you just wander back in.

I think that no border closures would make for a much more dangerous Falkovnia. And Darkon.

And more wars in general, I think. Darklords who are rulers are likely to use border closures to stop invasions, but if that is not an option...
Darkon wouldn't be any more dangerous in my opinion because aside from that one "tiff" with Strhad which was more about settling a personal issue (and there's no real chance to properly finish the mater now that Tepest is between their nations) than actual territorial concerns, Azalin is too busy focusing on leaving/resurrecting his son to worry about mundane things like invading people.

Basically, if you imagine Ravenloft as a prison, except for that one time when Azalin had to at least try and shank the jerk who who made him do... several degrading things when he was a new inmate and didn't have his own gang yet, Azalin is now unquestionably the biggest most dangerous dude in the pen, and he's much more interested in digging a tunnel out than trying to knock down the adjoining walls of his cell (the one that lead into other prisons cells) just so that he could have a little bit more room to himself.

If you need proof, just consider the fact that Vlad insists on invading Darkon every decade or so, can't close his own domain, but Azalin has never bothered to send a retaliatory strike of his own... or at least a retaliatory strike of such magnitude/nature that it would be obvious enough that people would notice. (Azalin may have slipped some agents of the Kargat into Falkovnia to help the rebels, but he never tried to unleash an undead army against them the way he did against Barovia...)
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Re: Border Closures

Post by ewancummins »

True, Azalin may simply not care about the petty feuds of his neighbors.
Last edited by ewancummins on Thu Aug 25, 2016 10:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Border Closures

Post by ewancummins »

But would ambitious Darkonese barons be a threat?

Maybe they are kept on too short a leash for that. All those parties where Azalin makes them debase themselves...


Falkovnia would become a much more dangerous country.
Not necessarily to Darkon, but definitely to the smaller domains.

Maybe Nova Vaasa would try to expand, if Prince Othmar thought adding territory would bolster his position or keep restive nobles busy.
Delight is to him- a far, far upward, and inward delight- who against the proud gods and commodores of this earth, ever stands forth his own inexorable self.

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Re: Border Closures

Post by Five »

jamesfirecat wrote:
Darkon wouldn't be any more dangerous in my opinion because aside from that one "tiff" with Strhad which was more about settling a personal issue (and there's no real chance to properly finish the mater now that Tepest is between their nations) than actual territorial concerns, Azalin is too busy focusing on leaving/resurrecting his son to worry about mundane things like invading people.

Basically, if you imagine Ravenloft as a prison, except for that one time when Azalin had to at least try and shank the jerk who who made him do... several degrading things when he was a new inmate and didn't have his own gang yet, Azalin is now unquestionably the biggest most dangerous dude in the pen, and he's much more interested in digging a tunnel out than trying to knock down the adjoining walls of his cell (the one that lead into other prisons cells) just so that he could have a little bit more room to himself.

If you need proof, just consider the fact that Vlad insists on invading Darkon every decade or so, can't close his own domain, but Azalin has never bothered to send a retaliatory strike of his own... or at least a retaliatory strike of such magnitude/nature that it would be obvious enough that people would notice. (Azalin may have slipped some agents of the Kargat into Falkovnia to help the rebels, but he never tried to unleash an undead army against them the way he did against Barovia...)
Or, could it be that Azalin would be an absolutely useless tactician when it comes to the matter of war? His army, as far as I know, specializes in intel and wetwork, not invasion. Shadows, not trenches. Azalin is wholly dependant on others to assume command, similar to Drakov when his forces are deployed beyond Falkovnia, but I mean dependant in an ignorant sense.

What are Azalin's capabilities when it comes to total war? Does he even have any experience outside of "tradecraft"? I honestly don't know...

Thread drift again, I know...haha...and I apologize for it. Seriously. I'm laughing only because it's become my MO, it seems.
Last edited by Five on Thu Aug 25, 2016 10:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.
"A very piteous thing it was to see such a quantity of dead bodies, and such an outpouring of blood - that is, if they had not been enemies of the Christian faith."

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Re: Border Closures

Post by jamesfirecat »

ewancummins wrote:But would ambitious Darkonese barons be a threat?

Maybe they are kept on too short a leash for that. All those parties where Azalin makes them debase themselves...


Falkovnia would become a much more dangerous country.
Not necessarily to Darkon, but definitely to the smaller domains.

Maybe Nova Vaasa would try to expand, if Prince Othmar thought adding territory would bolster his position or keep restive nobles busy.

Azalin has spies everywhere among both the living and the dead, the human and the animal. People he appoints to rule in his stead who decide to go gavalanting off upsetting things by starting wars/creating international incidents either don't actually live long enough to carry out their plans, or live much longer than they would ever possibly desire to.

In my mind, Azalin rules Darkon in much the same way that Doctor Doom rules Latveria, I can't imagine anyone would think they could get away with something like that and not pay for it quite soon after.

Given that Nova Vassa never closes it's borders, what proof do we have that Prince Othmar has ever even seen a border closure/is aware of that particular quirk of Ravenloft?

In my mind it makes much more sense to argue that Othmar hasn't have Nova Vassa invade Tepest, because he wants to completely get his own house in order/make him being king of Nova Vassa a fact not just in practice but in name also, and probably squish the two families that don't agree with him, then possibly the two that have aligned with him as well eventually so that he can eliminate all others who might possibly ascend to his throne.
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Re: Border Closures

Post by jamesfirecat »

Five wrote:
Or, could it be that Azalin would be an absolutely useless tactician when it comes to the matter of war? His army, as far as I know, specializes in intel and wetwork, not invasion. Shadows, not trenches. Azalin is wholly dependant on others to assume command (similar to Drakov when his forces are deployed beyond Falkovnia, but I mean dependant in an ignorant sense), and his magic is...AoE. If you're close enough to him, then he's close enough to you. But I digress.

What are Azalin's capabilities when it comes to total war? Does he even have any experience outside of "tradecraft"? I honestly don't know...

Thread drift again, I know...haha...and I apologize for it. Seriously. I'm laughing only because it's become my MO, it seems.
My suggestion is go reread/go find a copy (it's on Auidable if that helps) of I Strhad the War Against Azalin, since I think it covers the one war that Azalin was ever the attacker in better than any other source I know that has.

To give you the short version of it.

Azalin is relatively medicore when it comes to warfare. His plan against Strhad is predictable, and simple, but also effective/without needless flourishes and most likely going to succeed simply because of the vast amount of resources that Azalin has at his command to throw into the effort of squashing Barovia due to the entire "I have population roughly six times your size" thing. (I just checked Mistipedia, Barovia is 27,700, Darkon is 120,000 also no idea how much of Barovia's numbers are from land that originally belonged to Gundark and thus would not have been applicable at the time).

It was a plan that was going to work if given enough time to execute it, but Strhad managed to pull off a desperate do or die commando raid that ended up kidnapping the main Darkon general, brainwashing him (in a manner that really shouldn't have worked since he's a vampire) and then using him to lure the other main officers of Darkon's army into an ambush where they all get whipped out, forcing Azalin to pull his army back and call off the invasion since he has no one left to properly lead it.

Prior to that, Azalin had also managed to effectively delegate running his army to someone who he trusted and who actually did know more about martial maters than he did/does. Now Strhad argues that given Azalin's nature he was lucky that such a man existed when Darkon came into being, since Azalin's iron fisted approach to ruling Darkon would supposedly never allow such a man to naturally grow up/occur there, and instead he'd just wind up with a nation of docile sheep, with a few scattered sheepdogs to keep them in line. Strhad's not the best judge of character of course so take his opinion with a grain of salt.


In short if you piss Azalin off enough,he'll probably put someone else in charge of running the army that he tasks with crushing you into the ground... which is probably another reason why he so angers Vlad Drakov, Azalin is another rich son of a jerk who doesn't care enough to fight his own wars and instead hires/finds someone else to do it for him.



That said, the important thing to remember from that book was... we saw that Azalin could control Darkon's undead outside the borders of Darkon itself....

Now how many (maybe only as many as an epic lich normally can?) and to what extent is never fully explained, but that fact alone, should be enough to send shivers up the spines of all who are aware of it....
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Re: Border Closures

Post by ewancummins »

How does Tew Yssup figure in to all that?

:azalin:
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Re: Border Closures

Post by ewancummins »

jamesfirecat wrote:
ewancummins wrote:But would ambitious Darkonese barons be a threat?

Maybe they are kept on too short a leash for that. All those parties where Azalin makes them debase themselves...


Falkovnia would become a much more dangerous country.
Not necessarily to Darkon, but definitely to the smaller domains.

Maybe Nova Vaasa would try to expand, if Prince Othmar thought adding territory would bolster his position or keep restive nobles busy.

Azalin has spies everywhere among both the living and the dead, the human and the animal. People he appoints to rule in his stead who decide to go gavalanting off upsetting things by starting wars/creating international incidents either don't actually live long enough to carry out their plans, or live much longer than they would ever possibly desire to.

In my mind, Azalin rules Darkon in much the same way that Doctor Doom rules Latveria, I can't imagine anyone would think they could get away with something like that and not pay for it quite soon after.

Given that Nova Vassa never closes it's borders, what proof do we have that Prince Othmar has ever even seen a border closure/is aware of that particular quirk of Ravenloft?

In my mind it makes much more sense to argue that Othmar hasn't have Nova Vassa invade Tepest, because he wants to completely get his own house in order/make him being king of Nova Vassa a fact not just in practice but in name also, and probably squish the two families that don't agree with him, then possibly the two that have aligned with him as well eventually so that he can eliminate all others who might possibly ascend to his throne.

Right, I'm not suggesting anybody but Drakov is trying to invade Darkon.

Tepest not only looks like a good target for an ambitious neighbor, it might be invaded even with border closures as part or the setting.

The Three Sisters may not care who rules. Tasty foreign humans enter in force? So what. More meat for the pot.
Delight is to him- a far, far upward, and inward delight- who against the proud gods and commodores of this earth, ever stands forth his own inexorable self.

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Re: Border Closures

Post by Five »

jamesfirecat wrote:
My suggestion is go reread/go find a copy (it's on Auidable if that helps) of I Strhad the War Against Azalin, since I think it covers the one war that Azalin was ever the attacker in better than any other source I know that has.

To give you the short version of it.
Thanks for the recap. I own the book, but it's been...geez, years since I read it. Probably was a new release at the time. I vaguely remember that general you mentioned and some scrying/remote viewing, but that's it man. heh Blank.

The Black Box mentioned that a band of mercenaries, hired by his neighbors, overthrew Azalin in his pre-RL (yet height of his power) days so that's why I assumed he was a bit of a gimp when it came to war tactics. I guess his obsession with the nature of his prison, and his escape from it, is his one potentially fatal flaw. He has seemingly yet to invest his intellect in the reason(s) behind his first topple from power: his arrogant ignorance of martial matters. Ironically, the complete opposite of Drakov...

And speaking of hired/forced/created help, if the bulk of his command is undead by nature then that's another potentially fatal flaw for his army, by nature of night cycles. Obviously Azalin would have a contingency for a nightshift-only army, but it's still a bit of a gamble to have to rely on a human host and mindless undead (I guess he wipes the memories from the human minds after the war?), even if only during the day...especially given the nature of Talon super-soldiers/primal serum schizfreaks! Nights would be brutal for any invading army (I think of the movie Dog Soldiers myself, only worse), but if that storm could be survived then progressive ground control by fresh troops during the day can be more than possible...in a Walking Dead/Sgt Rock kinda way.

Honestly, after so many campaigns, I can't see why Drakov hasn't gotten any further than he did. Automatic failure aside.
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Re: Border Closures

Post by Five »

one more thought and I'll leave this thread for others to get it back on track...promise!

If my assumptions are even remotely in the ball park and Azalin and Drakov are two sides of the same coin (one pure focus on magic, the other pure focus on martial), then just imagine an alliance between the two: together they would make Vecna and Kas look like Mork and Mindy! Well, maybe not that bad. But it would be something else.

I know, I know, the chances of that happening are less likely than to have Drizzt twinkle toes his way through the Core's rulers during his weekend in hell, but still...it's a fun thought. :)
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Re: Border Closures

Post by jamesfirecat »

Five wrote:
Thanks for the recap. I own the book, but it's been...geez, years since I read it. Probably was a new release at the time. I vaguely remember that general you mentioned and some scrying/remote viewing, but that's it man. heh Blank.

The Black Box mentioned that a band of mercenaries, hired by his neighbors, overthrew Azalin in his pre-RL (yet height of his power) days so that's why I assumed he was a bit of a gimp when it came to war tactics. I guess his obsession with the nature of his prison, and his escape from it, is his one potentially fatal flaw. He has seemingly yet to invest his intellect in the reason(s) behind his first topple from power: his arrogant ignorance of martial matters. Ironically, the complete opposite of Drakov...

And speaking of hired/forced/created help, if the bulk of his command is undead by nature then that's another potentially fatal flaw for his army, by nature of night cycles. Obviously Azalin would have a contingency for a nightshift-only army, but it's still a bit of a gamble to have to rely on a human host and mindless undead (I guess he wipes the memories from the human minds after the war?), even if only during the day...especially given the nature of Talon super-soldiers/primal serum schizfreaks! Nights would be brutal for any invading army (I think of the movie Dog Soldiers myself, only worse), but if that storm could be survived then progressive ground control by fresh troops during the day can be more than possible...in a Walking Dead/Sgt Rock kinda way.

Honestly, after so many campaigns, I can't see why Drakov hasn't gotten any further than he did. Automatic failure aside.
It is open to interpretation but I always took the way Azalin was overthrown as more of a coup than an invasion, basically a bunch of guys with antimagic artifacts kick down the door, put a sword to his throat and say "leave now forever or die and we've already murdered all your servants" that or better yet, they actually did "kill" Azalin, in the sense of since he was a Lich even back then, they destroyed his physical body, forcing him to pull himself back together through his phylactery which he had hidden somewhere safe.

So by the time Azalin had a body again, he saw that the writing was on the wall most of his servants had been killed, fled or in hiding, his methods of control dismantled, and decided that given he'd already gotten killed by the invaders once, he might as well get while the getting was good, grabbed a horse and fled into the mists...

In short, I am of the opinion that his defeat was not through some long grinding war, but a sudden shocking revolution that was over in a few hours.

Thus the lesson he ended up taking away from it was less "It is better to be loved than to be feared" and more "If you give your subjects an inch they'll take a mile, clearly I need to do a better job oppressing/controlling them" which is the policy he's been living by ever since he came to Darkon.
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