Prince of Persia

[Bloody Morgan]

Finding inspiration in the oddest places these days...

I was playing Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time the other day, fighting a host of monstrosities through a swirling, malicious sandstorm in a ruined palace, and I thought ... "Ravenloft".

For those of you who haven't played it, the myth of the game goes like this. The Prince is fighting in his father's army, laying siege to the palace of the Maharajah of India. He has no taste for killing, so instead resolves to bring back glory in the form of treasure. Aided by the Maharajah's treacherous Vizier, the Persians triumph and Prince finds both a dagger that allows him to rewind time, and a titanic hourglass filled with golden sands.

The loot & captives are brought back to the Persian King's impossibly huge palace. The Vizier causes Prince to open the hourglass with his dagger, unleashing the malcious and destructive Sands of Time. The Sands tear through the palace, turning almost all living things into undead sand-monsters. Prince is forced to kill his father but is seperated from the hourglass. He spends the rest of the game fighting his way through the palace until he gets back to them, rescuing the Maharajah's daughter on the way, before using his new powers to rewind time to before the hourglass was opened - at which point he kills the Vizier and retroactively saves his family.

The followup game, which I have just started, adds to this. Prince is being pursued by a creature called the Dahaka, a manifestation of Fate and guardian of the timeline. All who call on the Sands die from it - Prince cheated this. He tries to escape this fate by travelling so far back in time that the Sands will never be created, but I don't yet know how this works out. The fact that there is a third in the series suggests that Prince survives however.

But twisted a little, I see a lot of potential in this. It's known that the Mists take on different forms in different Domains, forming sandstorms in desert domains. They can also rewrite time as they need. The malicious Sands of Time seem like a natural interpretation on them for this strange new Domain.

The Prince has certainly sinned - he kills in battle, and loots the Indian palace to win his father's favour. The Vizier also sins, betraying all he allies with as he seeks to master to Sands - he is old and dying, and belives that he can use them to become immortal. Immortal like so many Darklords, preserved by the Mists. As the game progresses, the Prince acquires new powers which allow him to control time itself in more and more dramatic ways - add in a few downsides and we have a nice set of failed Powers Checks right there.

And the settings, hot and blasted, inhabited by the remains of those who were consumed by the sands... plenty of creepy ideas there.

But that's about as far as I got. Other than the image of the madman trapped in his huge, haunted palace, I'm not sure what to do with this. Castle Forlorn already has a hook on a castle slipping through time - perhaps this might be more like groundhog day, with time looping on itself? I don't know. But it's in my head making noise, so I thought I'd write it up in case it inspires anyone else.

[Le Noir Faineant]

Yeah, P-E-R-F-E-C-T darklord couple, here:



Rivaled in vileness only by Cinderella and Snow White...

Seriously, good idea. I usually think of Pharazia as the prince's Babylon.

[Isabella]

You might want to play the third game before you try anything - it has the most potential.

[Bloody Morgan]

May well hold off on this then. My FLGS had both Warrior Within & Two Thrones going second hand when I went in there - I bought the first with the plan to grab the second once I clear it.

The whole Empress of Time bit from WW doesn't really fit Ravenloft, so I hadn't thought of going farther afield for inspiration. Despite the Dahaka being an nice example of a Mist / Sand Horror.

Alternatly, one could view it as something quite divorced from the Powers, trying to maintain it's own concern (the timeline) at any cost. It's policy that all who call upon the Sands must die could be interpreted as wiping out whoever the Powers get a claw into. But that would open up a whole new can of worms.


And they seems pretty suspicious to me Rafael. I don't trust anyone who looks that happy...

[Dupin]

hey great idea! I'd like to give you a hand, so if you're up to something let me know it; as I'm kind of newby, well in fact newby hehe, I'm trying to get into some project so as to see how things are.

See you,

[Sorti]

The Darklord is the Princess.

Discuss.

[Isabella]

I really think that's making things more complicated than they need to be.

[Bloody Morgan]

Based purely on completing the first game, you'd have to add a huge amount to make her into a deserving Dark Lord - far more than anyone else. Not that it can't work, or mightn't be nifty, but it's more than my thoughtmeats are up to at the moment.

[Le Noir Faineant]

The old games look really more usable for such an experiment. About the world of the new games, there are far too mayn details fixed already.

The DL being the Princess would be cool, however. (Otherwise, one really ends up with a powered-down Pharazia.)

[Sorti]

The DL Princess conspired with the vizier to kill her own father and control the whole kingdom. To move away the blame from her, she had the vizier imprison her in the tower's palace, and secretely seduced the warrior prince of a neighbouring kingdom, so that he qould kill the vizier and "free" and marry her; but with his dying words the old man cursed her into never being able to leave the palace's ivory tower...

Discuss more

[Isabella]

The DL Princess conspired with the vizier to kill her own father and control the whole kingdom. To move away the blame from her, she had the vizier imprison her in the tower's palace, and secretely seduced the warrior prince of a neighbouring kingdom, so that he qould kill the vizier and "free" and marry her; but with his dying words the old man cursed her into never being able to leave the palace's ivory tower...

Discuss more

I'll admit to yelling at Farah a few times when she missed a zombie and shot the Prince in the back, but I don't think she should be the Darklord.
You did say discuss so I'll go ahead and be the nay-sayer and state my opinion (which is just that) that it's not for me. Like Bloody Morgan said, it probably could work out to be nifty, but I don't like the concept in general - my major gripes are:

1) She's a bit of a sterotype.

Which is not a major gripe, since most Darklords are. Maybe I'm just behind on my Ravenloft reading, but it seems like most of the "fairy tale" domains that I've seen are twisted so that the princess is the evil party. It's a nice break from the shiny, happy, helpless princess-is-in-another-castle cookie cutter mold, but it turns her into the evil, seducing, can't-be-trusted sterotype. Which isn't bad, per say, but it seems too common to me sometimes.

I'll be the first to admit that this is just a matter of preference, and it really is a minor gripe, but it chains into my next gripe which is

2) There are much more appropriate Darklords already there.

This is, admittedly, based off the Sands of Time, not the really old hour-long game.
[minor spoilers for the game]

There's the Grand Vizer, who's old age and ill health was prematurely brought on by consumption. In his desperate effort to escape his mortality, he betrayed his entire kingdom, only to have his prize snatched away by some upstart prince.

There's the prince's father, who ravaged the land with war, ransacked an entire kingdom, slew the men, took the women as slaves, etc etc, and also went back on his word to the Grand Vizer, giving the Sands to the prince instead.

There's the prince himself. I honestly wouldn't make him the Darklord as is because I think he wouldn't work as well that way, and his curse seems to be more from messing with things he shouldn't have (more like a mist power than a DPC), but he was well on his way to Darklordhood in the third game (Mr. I-don't-need-to-save-the-peasants).

3) As you've written it, there's no way to get out of her curse.

What I mean is, most of the best Darklord curses wouldn't be so bad if the Darklord didn't activate it him/herself (like, if Strahd just left Tatyana alone, or maybe tried inviting her to a nice dinner instead of turning her into a vampire). Her curse is just kind of static, and there's no way to escape it.

Like I said, I'm not saying it's bad, I'm just saying I personally don't like it.

I liked Bloody Morgan's idea of time looping in on itself, or jumping all over the place, as the Prince tries to set things right (or the sands just feel like messing things up). I don't know if the story should be stuffed into the mold of the typical Ravenloft land, though. The most approproate Darklord (to me) is the Vizer, characterized by his mortality, but Darklords are nortoriously hard to kill and finding a replacement would be a pain - I think the Ravenloft template might be too restricting in this case.

[Sorti]

Your criticism is welcome . I'll try to improve my ideas...

And by the way, the vizier is much more a stereotype than the princess. Evil old man that makes evil thing not to die of old age? Welcome to the standard lich scenario...

Ok, so the princess did plan to have her father and the vizier killed, but the old man didn't curse her; the dark powers did. She was sincerely in love with the prince, and her dream was to unify their kingdoms, but her father hated the other royal family, so she had him removed to be happy with her true love; she has married him and has been happy for the first weeks, but then she discovered the prince loved something more than her: adventure!

The Prince is a do-gooder who saves innocents from tyrants, and in the region there's a lot of them; he's always out in some campaign to free some enslaved population or something like that, and the princess' bed grows colder and colder from her waiting and longing for her true love to be back home.

Since she lived all of her life in the luxury of the gigantic palace she's terribly afraid to go out, so she can't follow him.
But in her long and sleepless night her love turned to desire: she wants and needs him, and no stupid innocent peasant in need is going to stand in her way!
The princess retrieved the vizier's arcane library and began to study the mysteries of her strange world, and soon her bed was covered in dusty scrolls and arcane tomes depicting horrors and wonders alike.
After weeks of work she found some reference to an ancient legend, the Efreeti, a genie that makes wishes come true.

(continues...)