Lamordia

[Leliel]

Overall, I echo the sentiments of other posters here. I don't like the soulless aspect. I much prefer the Hollow option presented in previous editions. I don't see why the DPs couldn't just grab people to imprison in Ravenloft, instead of going to the trouble to create simulacrums. And it just turns soulless characters into fodder; why should a PC be concerned with saving them?

Yes, please, dismiss the slave caste which is demonstrably self-aware and literally only has one life to live as not worth it.

I'm sure the Dark Powers agree that a person should be hung out to dry because of a circumstance of birth and are totally not on the lookout for "acceptable sacrifices."

I'm not kidding. There's a fairly major character in there who lacks a soul, and it's made clear he's no simulacra. He's a person who happens to lack strong positive emotions, and has even failed a powers check (admittedly, there's no system for checks in the adventure, but the description of how he got that devil's arm happens to sound exactly like one).

I love the idea of the soulless for that exact reason; treating them like pawns is behaving exactly like the darklords, and quickly becomes a slippery slope towards complete sociopathy ("Well, this village seems depressed, they're obviously soulless, might as well burn it to get rid of that vamp..").

I obviously want to rejigger the concept a bit to be less common if Ravenloft is a setting and not a bunch of pocket prisons in the Shadowfell (ie, is not a Weekend in Hell deal), but the concept itself deserves more exploration. And to be frank, in Curse of Strahd it fits him for reincarnation; he is literally stuck in the past, and every other soul is stuck with him (though again, not a thing-or at least only a Dread Possibility-in a full setting).

[tomokaicho]

Not a fan of the idea of the soulless. Where is the pathos in that? If they are just soulless beings created for the entertainment of the darklords then they aren't really victims.

I will concede that the thought has gone through my mind that when a domain is created, the living beings in the domain are created whole cloth. However, I view them as having souls regardless of how they came into existence. An example of created beings is the clones created by darkspawn in the Forgotten Realms setting. They have souls by canon.

[Leliel]

Not a fan of the idea of the soulless. Where is the pathos in that? If they are just soulless beings created for the entertainment of the darklords then they aren't really victims.

[existentialist hat]

I literally do not understand this. In fact, it runs counter to everything I know about consciousness. If a person is created for the express purpose of being a victim, that person is a victim. In fact, the very fact they're lobotomized since birth by lack of a soul is the most total victimization it could be, since it removes all potential to be anything but victims or tools of victimization. It is a profound act of violence (here defined as forced compliance without consent) that exposes just how fundamentally uncaring the Dark Powers are, as they have allowed a glitch or otherwise created a feature by which the land creates people whose only role is to suffer, and cannot do anything except suffer. The very concept indicates just what kind of a world the Land of Mists is, and that it is a land where everyone is fundamentally confined in a way that goes soul (or consciousness, as the case may be) deep.

To exploit the ready source of victims is to fundamentally show you're no better than the darklords who create them, since you're growing fat of a system of abuse that is woven into the Domains' very fabric. To liberate them anyway, perhaps by finding a way to give them souls, is truly noble.

[/existentialist hat]

To get this train back on rails, I think Lamordia is also the place to ask existential questions like what the value of a life is. Given the Enlightenment theme, it's also the domain that is fully aware of how much of what the old ways were ways to deal with a strange world, and they no longer let themselves believe in fairy tales. It's partially willful ignorance, but can you blame them? They increasingly live in a world where they've realized there may not be an inherent order to things, and they know absolutely nothing about it. Having to deal with the exceptions to the rule (As it turns out, paladins do draw power from inherent virtue, sort of like how everyone was supposed to!) is often just too much of them to ask ("We're still grappling with the implications of cell theory and evolution! The former of which only makes sense if you accept some form of the latter!").

[ewancummins]

It seems to me 'Enlightened' characters are either poorly-educated or willfully deluded in a fantasy-horror world like Ravenloft.

Magic and monsters are very real.
Pretending otherwise won't keep you safe.

I like the idea of the Lamordian educated classes being more ignorant and superstitious than the peasants.
By trying to explain metaphysical things in materialist terms, they go astray.

Lamordians are scared. They fear magic, monsters, and most of all--the gods. So they hide behind 'science', huddle in their quaint little towns where everything is kept in strict order, and try not to think too much of the terrifying chaos and witchcraft outside the borders of their 'safe' little country.

[Leliel]

It seems to me 'Enlightened' characters are either poorly-educated or willfully deluded in a fantasy-horror world like Ravenloft.

Magic and monsters are very real.
Pretending otherwise won't keep you safe.

I like the idea of the Lamordian educated classes being more ignorant and superstitious than the peasants.
By trying to explain metaphysical things in materialist terms, they go astray.

Lamordians are scared. They fear magic, monsters, and most of all--the gods. So they hide behind 'science', huddle in their quaint little towns where everything is kept in strict order, and try not to think too much of the terrifying chaos and witchcraft outside the borders of their 'safe' little country.

Quite. The only way the Smothering of Reason makes sense is if the Lamordians really don't buy it themselves, and are so insistent on it because they really don't want to think about a world that's larger than their pet models. They don't have science; they have dogma wrapped in a lab coat.

"Mad" scientists, the ones who examine how magic interacts with electricity and make golems from animated matter, really are saner than any of those fools at the university. They're the ones who are changing their theory to suit the evidence, like, uh, actual scientists.

The growing horror of a Lamordian is not realizing what means Herr Festigkeit (old Lamordian BBEG of mine) is pursuing in his goals to create a cure for vampirism by treating the organism he believes responsible for it. The horror is that Festigkeit has proven beyond a doubt that there is indeed some mechanism that will turn people into the living dead who exist on a diet of blood. All the laws about metabolism in the world cannot explain why dead cells will act as if alive or how a corpse brain thinks.

(For the record, part of the irony in Festigkeit is that he's clinging even deeper to an aspect of materialism; he's long accepted the soul exists and is what is driving the intelligent undead, but he cannot accept the idea that the dead return to animation; there must be another living organism that uses them to breed and find new hosts. To accept that raw energy is capable of doing this is...madness.)

[Mortavius]

Yes, please, dismiss the slave caste which is demonstrably self-aware and literally only has one life to live as not worth it.

I'm sure the Dark Powers agree that a person should be hung out to dry because of a circumstance of birth and are totally not on the lookout for "acceptable sacrifices."

I'm not kidding. There's a fairly major character in there who lacks a soul, and it's made clear he's no simulacra. He's a person who happens to lack strong positive emotions, and has even failed a powers check (admittedly, there's no system for checks in the adventure, but the description of how he got that devil's arm happens to sound exactly like one).

I love the idea of the soulless for that exact reason; treating them like pawns is behaving exactly like the darklords, and quickly becomes a slippery slope towards complete sociopathy ("Well, this village seems depressed, they're obviously soulless, might as well burn it to get rid of that vamp..").

I obviously want to rejigger the concept a bit to be less common if Ravenloft is a setting and not a bunch of pocket prisons in the Shadowfell (ie, is not a Weekend in Hell deal), but the concept itself deserves more exploration. And to be frank, in Curse of Strahd it fits him for reincarnation; he is literally stuck in the past, and every other soul is stuck with him (though again, not a thing-or at least only a Dread Possibility-in a full setting).

When 9 out of 10 people in Barovia the PCs meet and interact with is clinically depressed, I think players will quickly grow tired of the idea, and inured to the concept.

Yes, of course, choosing not to save them is an extreme example...but not every PC is a shining beacon of heroism.

These aren't beings that had a soul and lost it. And if the PCs save them from an attacking zombie, they won't suddenly "grow" a soul. They'll literally just continue on the way they have been, and nothing the players do will change that.

(I haven't read the complete module yet, so I'm not familiar with which NPC you're talking about that doesn't have a soul.)

I'm not advocating that the PCs should throw the Barovians into the meat grinder...but given the choice, I know my players would get a lot more out of saving beings WITH souls rather than without.

I think the idea has merit, if used sparingly. A soulless individual should be a rarity. An uncommon mistake. As you yourself said, creating soulless villagers makes them victims from the start, and that's all they can ever be, as described. A domain where 90% of the population is this way is not compelling to me, and I question why the Dark Powers would ever do that. (But Curse of Strahd really walks away from the concept of the Dark Powers and Strahd being cursed anyways.)

[Leliel]

Yes, please, dismiss the slave caste which is demonstrably self-aware and literally only has one life to live as not worth it.

I'm sure the Dark Powers agree that a person should be hung out to dry because of a circumstance of birth and are totally not on the lookout for "acceptable sacrifices."

I'm not kidding. There's a fairly major character in there who lacks a soul, and it's made clear he's no simulacra. He's a person who happens to lack strong positive emotions, and has even failed a powers check (admittedly, there's no system for checks in the adventure, but the description of how he got that devil's arm happens to sound exactly like one).

I love the idea of the soulless for that exact reason; treating them like pawns is behaving exactly like the darklords, and quickly becomes a slippery slope towards complete sociopathy ("Well, this village seems depressed, they're obviously soulless, might as well burn it to get rid of that vamp..").

I obviously want to rejigger the concept a bit to be less common if Ravenloft is a setting and not a bunch of pocket prisons in the Shadowfell (ie, is not a Weekend in Hell deal), but the concept itself deserves more exploration. And to be frank, in Curse of Strahd it fits him for reincarnation; he is literally stuck in the past, and every other soul is stuck with him (though again, not a thing-or at least only a Dread Possibility-in a full setting).

When 9 out of 10 people in Barovia the PCs meet and interact with is clinically depressed, I think players will quickly grow tired of the idea, and inured to the concept.

Yes, of course, choosing not to save them is an extreme example...but not every PC is a shining beacon of heroism.

These aren't beings that had a soul and lost it. And if the PCs save them from an attacking zombie, they won't suddenly "grow" a soul. They'll literally just continue on the way they have been, and nothing the players do will change that.

(I haven't read the complete module yet, so I'm not familiar with which NPC you're talking about that doesn't have a soul.)

I'm not advocating that the PCs should throw the Barovians into the meat grinder...but given the choice, I know my players would get a lot more out of saving beings WITH souls rather than without.

I think the idea has merit, if used sparingly. A soulless individual should be a rarity. An uncommon mistake. As you yourself said, creating soulless villagers makes them victims from the start, and that's all they can ever be, as described. A domain where 90% of the population is this way is not compelling to me, and I question why the Dark Powers would ever do that. (But Curse of Strahd really walks away from the concept of the Dark Powers and Strahd being cursed anyways.)

I totally get that. Truth is, I think the 90% soulless rate is something that's only in reference to Barovia-the-village. IE, the place nobody wants to live if they can avoid it, so Strahd replaced them.

In a real setting, as opposed to a singular domain that really isn't part of any world and emphasizing confinement and isolation. I agree the rate needs to be lowered a tad. But the problem is execution on a larger scale, not the concept.

[ewancummins]

90% soulless?

Whoa.

GRIMDARK BAROVIA

[Leliel]

90% soulless?

Whoa.

GRIMDARK BAROVIA

Well, it's surrounded by choking fog and is the personal larder of a powerful vampire. That's more of a lateral shift in grimdark, I'd say.

But this derail has gone on long enough.