Nocturnal Sea Report – in depth (non pun) analysis: Liffe

[Jeremy16]

And finally...

All The Rest

Under the Language section, is Sithican-Liffen a reference to the Lyron’s homeworld of Krynn?

The Church of Thousand Gods was a great idea. Kudos to whoever came up with it. It really highlights the fractured aspect of the domain.

As for the History section, I’ve mentioned elsewhere that I would have liked to seen a more than just a couple of paragraphs. I think just a little more false history would have given us a better context to work with. But considering Liffe’s relatively recent appearance in canon, I can understand the difficulties in working that out.

In the Government segment I would have at least liked to have the names of the baronies, if not who rules them. Maybe that could be something added to the errata.

I liked the return of Nightblood (interesting development) and Tavelia (great curse), as well as the introduction of the Patriots of Liffe. This secret society is a natural fit for the island (much like the Brothers of the Land in Paridon), growing out from its contact with the wider world. Also, it’s nice to detail a group of humans with realistic and relatable goals, instead of just some big bad monsters.

The Land Remembers sidebar was very confusing to me. Are the people’s tall tales manifesting themselves? Does each retelling give more power to their beliefs? Or is this just the domain’s false history that is being slowly uncovered?

And for everyone confused about the powers and privileges of the assorted demilords, I thought the sidebar at the end of this chapter summed up the mechanics pretty well.

And that wraps things up for Liffe. I hope my comments weren't too critical. I enjoyed reading every page and just wanted show my appreciation.

Now, it's time to move on to Vechor...

[Jester of the FoS]

The only thing missing was information about the false history pertaining to Lyron Evensong. Is he a hereditary ruler or an upstart? Who ruled before him? That type of stuff.

False history is nice but there are times when it's just backrgound. It does make for an interesting read but I do have to keep in mind that the books purpose is to expand the land for adventures set there. In a more heavily detailed land delving into the past is permissable (and encouragable) but in a sparsely detailed land the present should be the concern.

I’m on the fence about the Standing Monoliths. Perhaps it’s because I don’t like the idea of giants and trolls in Ravenloft. Maybe if it were revealed to be a Mistway that led to Ravenloft from other worlds it would be more useful as a campaign starter (and further highlight its “collector of dregs” nature as a domain).

Much of that is lifted from folklore from the Shetlands/Oarkney Islands.
I like to throw-in small pieces of real-world legends when possible. 6,000 years of storytellers will alwats come up with more interesting stuff than I can.

Under the Language section, is Sithican-Liffen a reference to the Lyron’s homeworld of Krynn?

Yes. But I believe it was referenced in earlier products.

As for the History section, I’ve mentioned elsewhere that I would have liked to seen a more than just a couple of paragraphs. I think just a little more false history would have given us a better context to work with. But considering Liffe’s relatively recent appearance in canon, I can understand the difficulties in working that out.

I'm poor at coming up with false histories. And I like to set hard page limits and stick to them. Even though the Gazetteers are effectively page-unlimited, unlike the print Gaz, I don't like to write more than would see print. I personally don't feel lands need that much attention to detail.

In the Government segment I would have at least liked to have the names of the baronies, if not who rules them. Maybe that could be something added to the errata.

A barony map would not be a bad idea. I'll have to consider a WE with that...

The Land Remembers sidebar was very confusing to me. Are the people’s tall tales manifesting themselves? Does each retelling give more power to their beliefs? Or is this just the domain’s false history that is being slowly uncovered?

It was a suggestion for a sidebar that I ran with as best as I could.
Basically, the land is remembering its true past as parts of Faerun, Krynn, Oerth, and the like. Its remembering what it was and the tales associated with it.
Having re-tellings fuel Rememberings or warping them is a good interpretation, especially if it works with your game.
And while I personally like more of a folklore/low-fantasy feel sometimes I like fantasy monsters and desire a way to use them. The Land Remembers is that way. And I also respect people's right to use Ravenloft (and even my netbooks) in a way I wouldn't.

[Lord Cyclohexane]

As to the University of Liffe, I wonder if a department of business or even a professor of business is 'historically' accurate. Does anyone know how recently business became a university subject?

The university article was a fan submission that I edited beyond recognition already without hacking out large sections because they were mildly anachronistic.
As a fantasy land who's to say when something can or cannot appear?

As the writer of that fan submission, I have to admit that this was my bad. Trying to create a medieval university when you've not yet ran across the terms "quadrivium," "trivium," and "natural philosophy"? Yeah, not going to produce one's best work.

That said, it looks like it'd be easy to fix/errata. Except for the paragraph on Sulo Boritsi helping out on the College of Business, pretty much everything is one-word references to "Science," "Business," etc which could be replaced with "Geometry" or "Astronomy" or whatever (for the nautical studies) and "Arithmetic" or "Dialectic" or whatever for the business studies.

Regarding the "Professor of Business", I just needed a field to slap onto the end of the name of a hypothetical Il-Alusian professor and wasn't too picky. "Physical Science," though... what was I thinking? Sloppy, sloppy. I guess I was too preoccupied with thoughts of culture clashes between pluralistic Darkonese students and the more xenophobic cultures of the other students.

Anyway, from my look-over, 90% of the anti-anachronistic fixes would be one word substitutions, all of which I give approval for, if there is a desire to fix them.

Then again, it is perhaps nothing more than an attempt to account for the unfortunate and unsensical canonic reference (from Legacy of Blood) to brother Boritsi moving to Liffe.

Spot on. With the proposed nature of Liffe being primarily mercantile, and with the canonical reference in LotB of the Boritsi Trading Company opening an office in Armeikos, I wanted to make Hordum College linked to those points. I still think I did ok, considering the above lack of knowledge of medieval education. As such, I applaud Jester for what he was able to do with it.

[Lord Cyclohexane]

So, I'm finally getting around to reading the Noctural Sea Gaz... Here are my own notes on Liffe!

- (p12) Why the short days in wintertime? Liffe matches with Darkon in terms of lattitude, and I've not heard of Darkon experiencing such... Or are there portions of Northern Darkon (and the Isles of Agony and Demise) that also experience this extreme northern polar effect? Or, alternately, is this just one of the cool examples of odd localized weather patterns for a domain?

- (p12) While I realize that London has had an extensive brickmaking history albeit dealing with its own London Fog, I found the idea of tons of brick houses in Liffe to be a trifle unbelievable. If the weather is constantly rainy and the cloud cover never allows a truly sunny day, to the point that "[t]ypical plants are mostly yellow and brown, straining to find sun in the overcast skies" (p30), when is the weather nice enough to be drying out the clay for bricks? Additionally, with the limited timber resources, is there enough peat and/or coal to be firebaking the bricks to the proper hardness? [Sorry for the lack of suspension of disbelief... Please blame the TV series "The Worst Jobs in History" with Tony Robinson (Baldric) for teaching me too much about brickmaking]

- (p18) Minor quibble, but the Dread Possibility was originally named "Life's Measure" to match Lofgren's research of Life's Measure. The change in title to "One Life's Measure" doesn't really make sense.

- (p20) "... with heavy snowfalls that bar all travel south." Excellent, Jester!!! Turning the ugly railroad effect of the original adventure into a cool environmental detail? Beautiful, absolutely beautiful!

- (p20) "Predators seem drawn to the town were aid is seldom available." I dunno if typos should be pointed out or not, but this one jumped out at me.

- (p24) "... he took it in stride that he had forgotten ever inviting me. (It seems that Claveria's Baron hosts many callers upon first acquaintance.)" Again, excellent! I'd always thought the unsolicited invitation in the original adventure was clumsy, but like with the above, you've made it fit perfectly by being an acknowledged quirk of his personality. Now I wish I was more familiar with the Book of Crypts to see how many other quirks from the original that you've made work well here in the Gazetteer.

- (p26) "... offering minor lessens in Sciences..." While I'd definitely describe some of my own college courses as "lessens", I believe "lessons" is the desired word here.

- (p27) While I may be quibbling because that Dread Possibility was mine and so I may be overly sensitive, I don't feel that the DP retains enough information for people to link it with the CotN:C coin golem, Lucre. Except for the title ("Filthy Lucre"), there's really nothing to indicate it wasn't simply a curse placed on University property to prevent thievery or the like. Additionally, as a question, what is the blade with the ruby hilt? Is that one of the Grim Harvest soul-sucking blades, so as to go with the crystalline skull and cracked glass rod, or is it the domain of Aggarath, somehow taken from Dr. Arcanus? I do absolutely love, by the way, that you added those pieces from the Infernal Machine or Doomsday Device to their list of saved artifacts, though! Brilliant!

- (p27) Again, picky, but a 300 gp application fee? 300 gp seems a touch steep considering that it's nonrefundable and there's no assurance of acceptance. A quick look at the d20 SRD shows 300 gp as being two light warhorses, three carriages, or 150 nights at a good inn. That's a hefty fee considering that you might get absolutely nothing for it... Especially since, on p29, we see that 300 gp also represents half of a Dean's yearly pay...

- (p27) Has anyone else ever looked at graduation gowns and all the weird accoutrements added to the Masters' and Doctors' gowns as being far too similar to the ceremonial dress for secret societies? Or is it just me? How do we commoners know that Professors aren't actually some secret society? (I'm looking at you, Roti!) Thinking about it, the Fraternity of Shadows is based out of Brautslava University...

- (p30) There's a period in "larg.e" that probably shouldn't be there.

- (p37) The last paragraph of the Dread Possibility seems quite out of place. I'm assuming that paragraph was meant to be part of the normal section on Art & Trade and not as part of the Dread Possibility, correct?

- (p38) "Bodies of victims are weighted with rocks and dumped into the sea, or arranged to be found in sensationalistic fashion." Why did that make me think of Roberto Calvi, God's Banker, hanging from the underside of a bridge for having crossed P2?

- (p39) "Things become more coherent after this event - whatever it was - as more villages were discovered when the Mists slowly retreated." Er, what event? There's nothing in the previous paragraphs that indicates any special singular event. OH! WAIT! Take the paragraph which begins with the above sentence and put that at the end of the "History" section on p40, then it makes perfect sense. Like the above problem with p37, I think pieces of the normal text somehow got spliced into this Dread Possibility on accident. So, start with the above quoted sentence and take the entire rest of the DP out and put it at the end of the History section to make this coherent.

- (p39) "Nocturanl Sea" should become "Nocturnal Sea."

- (p40) "As mundane as the reality may be, it would be vastly superiors to the hogwash..." Please remove the "s" from the end of "superiors."

- (p40) "It was frustrating teased fragmentary remains of the past from the fog of legend..." Please change "teased" to "teasing" and add a comma before it.

- (p41) Please correct "colleages" to "colleagues."

- (p41) The last paragraph in the Dread Possibility seems like it should be located as the second paragraph in the "Government" section on p40.

- (p42) "... and have some of them more or less ignorant of their status, like Drakov." Since there may be some readers who aren't as familiar with Ravenloft who might not get the reference, I think that should be changed to "... like Vlad Drakov of Falkovnia." It's your call on whether that's unnecessary, though.

[Rotipher of the FoS]

So, I'm finally getting around to reading the Noctural Sea Gaz... Here are my own notes on Liffe!

Okay, I move that we recruit Lord Cyc to help edit the SoS Gaz, as his fresh eyes keep spotting boo-boos we missed. Anyone second that motion?

- (p24) "... he took it in stride that he had forgotten ever inviting me. (It seems that Claveria's Baron hosts many callers upon first acquaintance.)" Again, excellent! I'd always thought the unsolicited invitation in the original adventure was clumsy, but like with the above, you've made it fit perfectly by being an acknowledged quirk of his personality.

Well, I'm not sure Jester meant it as a personality-quirk, so much as a veiled hint about Evensong's curse. When you have to sit around bored for a hundred years every night, you're hardly going to remember your social schedule from the previous century/day, come morning!

- (p27) Has anyone else ever looked at graduation gowns and all the weird accoutrements added to the Masters' and Doctors' gowns as being far too similar to the ceremonial dress for secret societies? Or is it just me? How do we commoners know that Professors aren't actually some secret society? (I'm looking at you, Roti!) Thinking about it, the Fraternity of Shadows is based out of Brautslava University...

FWIW, I think it's a case of Life-imitating-Academia-imitating-Life. IRL academic robes are mostly a holdover from medieval scholars' dress, but done up with fancy colors and adornments to show off the wearers' school credentials. Secret societies tend to adopt similar robes, either because they actually date back just as far (or want people to believe they do), or because they're trying to look "intellectual" by dressing like professors.

Note that IRL ecclesiastical outfits also descend from medieval clothing styles. Covert groups that are more cult-like than scholarly might really be emulating that sort of clothing, rather than academic garb, yet still wind up dressing a lot like secular secret society members.

AFAIK, the in-game FoS doesn't have its own system of ceremonial robes and so forth, aside from its viper-rings. At most, a senior member such as Lord Balfour might show up for an Initiation ceremony in his academic livery, but maintaining a separate wardrobe just for Frat meetings would be too much of a give-away, IMO.

[whalejudge]

I really liked this. You did a great job. Just a couple of points.

1. Did I miss something? How does Baron Evensong function in a political role on the island given his nightly/century curse and can't leave the mansion curse? Does the senate meet at his place?

2. Real-world universities were originally created to study canon law.

[Rotipher of the FoS]

IIRC, Jester's take on Evensong is that when he became darklord of the whole island, rather than just one dinky town, he was freed to move about the domain during the daytime. He's always drawn back into his Manor by the Mists if he tries to spend the night elsewhere, however, so practically speaking he can't travel very far from Claveria.

[Joël of the FoS]

I move that we recruit Lord Cyc to help edit the SoS Gaz, as his fresh eyes keep spotting boo-boos we missed. Anyone second that motion?

Ditto

Joël

[Lord Cyclohexane]

I move that we recruit Lord Cyc to help edit the SoS Gaz, as his fresh eyes keep spotting boo-boos we missed. Anyone second that motion?

Ditto

So you mean I'd get an early look at the SoS Gaz and all I have to do is something I'd be doing anyway? Sign me up!

[cure]

I believe that there is a mistaken in the Rookhausen section, p. 127. Arak had on its eastern border the Nightmare Lands. Arakians from the 6th century might have memories then of Rookhausen, but not as a "seaport".

[Rotipher of the FoS]

Hey, it's Ravenloft. If a seaport appears at the edge of a country with no coastline, it can darn well bring a chunk of sea along with it.

For that matter, it's the Nightmare Lands. Sometimes, part of it probably is a sea!

Heck, that's one of the reasons why nobody ever believed the Arakans about this mysterious disappearing city of theirs.

[cure]

Joel,

Who is Bill Copperplate? And what is this curious island that he wishes to explore? An island, next to a port filled with fishermen's boats, that has never been explored, cannot but invite curiosity on the part of the reader. Is this campaign material, or from some other source?

[Joël of the FoS]

Joel,

Who is Bill Copperplate? And what is this curious island that he wishes to explore? An island, next to a port filled with fishermen's boats, that has never been explored, cannot but invite curiosity on the part of the reader. Is this campaign material, or from some other source?

It's William Copperplate, from the domain of Locknar Cove (created by Stephen C. Sutton, Book of Sacrifices).

Joël