Mephisto wrote:In QtR 27 on the semi-finished article on Dominia there is a really good fleshing out of Dominiani's motives. Because of his knowledge of how the Demiplane works and the knowledge of the coming conjuction (pre-GC), he had a really good reason planning to take Harkon Lucas's place and then when that failed decided to help the adventurer's kill the Duke. He wanted to become attached to Kartakass/Gundarak as a darklord because he was afraid the possibility that his existence was part Gundarak's false history as he "existed" before Gundarak's formation. So if the GC happened there was a chance he would be nonexistent. On the other hand this could be just a viewpoint of a vampire whose lineage had a long history of madness
But as a motive it was really interesting, better than the usual mature vampire deciding to brake the bonds with it's master by the second's destruction, or the motive of wanting to govern Gundarak since in the years between 736-740 his governing of it was almost minimal, preferring to continue his psychiatrical experiments and taking good care of his patients...
I didn't get to QtR yet to fill in the gaps in my narrative, and this part of the campaign was kind of sprung on me quickly. (I was supposed to do my Curse of Strahd ReVamp first, but due to my GM feeling burned out, I decided I'd rather jump in and GM as well rather than meet half as often. Since we were doing GC 5 and 6 in the ReVamp, I figured I might as well do 1-4 because three of the five players will be the same.) I haven't even read Heart of Midnight or Death of a Darklord yet (not that they really matter, but I really have been trying to read all the canon before I jump into a setting, using stuff like QtR as necessary to supplement the canon).
Anyway, I definitely like that line of QtR thinking you summarized, but I ended up going with something very different, though ironically, I also made Dominiani very knowledgeable about the demiplane (but not about the Conjunction—the only one in my FoG who anticipates the hexad verse is Venrith Chole, a Kargat NPC who happened to have been assigned to Kartakass in case the first verse occurs there, and he basically going to try to recruit the players after they manage to be around for the first three hexad verses).
I had Dominiani be born in 642, almost thirty years after Gundarak becomes a domain. He grew up in Teufeldorf, with a fairly normal life as a medic, but despite being married to his work, he got married in his 30s and had a son. I kept the bit about the mental illness plaguing his family. In my version of events, in early 720, Dominiani does something to get on Duke Gundar's radar in a bad way (not sure how precisely yet), but Gundar gets back at him by turning his wife and son just prior to when Dominiani is ready to extract her cerebrospinal fluid to attempt to curb his madness issue. As per canon, that makes him a cerebral vampire (and his wife and son normal ones). His wife is bound as one of Gundar's brides, and Dominiani is plagued by this, but since he's one of the Duke's thralls now, there's not really much he can do to fight back against Gundar directly. This is part of the motivation for his eventual conspiring with Akriel—and later, the adventurers—to try to loose his bonds by destroying Gundar. For me, he has no urge to rule Gundarak; he just wants his wife and kid back.
Re: the kid... So the kid doesn't get vampirized immediately. The wife is first. The son (Jacob, 13) escapes while Gundar is vampirizing the wife. He finds his way to Medraut's lab, and they actually hit it off. Gundar is scouring the castle, but doesn't look there of course. Jacob's hereditary madness hits around that moment, and it manifests in a way that really delights Medraut. Once Medraut realizes Gundar is after his new friend, Medraut curses/blesses Jacob with invisibility so he can better hide from Gundar. Invisible, Jacob attempts to leave the castle, but eventually Gundar finds him anyway, bites him, and lets him go. (Slightly longer story, but the son eventually goes insane, finds his way to Kartakass, and becomes "Jack Bequick" from Children of the Night: Vampires. My players will probably destroy him before visiting Dominiani, as they will be nudged to tackle him right after they walk in on Akriel being whipped. This is intentional. As part of this, they will find his coffin, which is labeled Jacob Oliver Heinfroth.)
Stripped of his wife and son (whom he believes escaped, but holds out all hope for a reunion), Dominiani basically splits his time between studying anything and everything he can, doing whatever he needs to do for Gundar, and plotting against Gundar. Part of the reason he reaches out to Akriel is from having heard about the Crown of Souls in Kartakass, and thinking it might help him take revenge on Gundar.
Eventually, the players get to Jacob and presumably defeat him for good. Meanwhile, Akriel will be using a magic item to secretly communicate their progress to Dominiani. They get to Dominiani before finding the crown, where they might find out about his cerebrospinal injections (he has to get an injection from his wife every so often to stave off the madness), and they might mention the vampire they killed, to which Dominiani would inquire about the name. (As part of his studies, he keeps meticulous notes on vampires—including Gundar and Strahd—and has a copy of RVR's Guide to Vampires, published ironically the year prior.) Dominiani knows about "Jack Bequick," but the players will presumably tell him that they destroyed Jacob O. Heinfroth. Which will certainly cause him quite a deal of pause. Of course, the good doctor won't go after them because that will sabotage his entire plan for vengeance. But it will kick him right in the heart. Either way, he gets over it and presumes that if he can overthrow Gundar, then he can at least have his wife back.
So after FoS is done, I'm using a character narrative to bring them back to Gundarak (a relative of one of the players ends up also being one of Gundar's vampire brides, so they will return to save her, and with motivation for destroying Gundar). This will happen largely as summarized in the few sources documenting Gundar's assassination, though I will try to get the group to swing by Medraut's lab. Medraut—now dead 16 years from Soth and his crew—haunts the lab as a ghost, but is more than happy to help "Friends of Jack's." He'll almost certainly reveal everything about turning Jack invisible and helping him escape. They won't learn who Jack's father is though, but they'll have more reason to want to kill Gundar since he was responsible for vampirizing Jack/Jacob.
So they will presumably kill Gundar, saving not only the character's relative, but also Dominiani's wife. Since killing a darklord permanently should inspire hope, I really want to end that part on an upbeat, so I've decided to add the bit of lore in some vampire franchises that if you kill a vampire, everyone who it vampirized is healed from the affliction. As such, in killing Gundar, we are also saving Dominiani AND his long-enslaved (as one of Gundar's brides) wife. Everything ends on a good note, and Dominiani doesn't WANT to become the darklord of anything. The characters move on to what awaits them in probably Borca, and all is presumed well.
Except a few days later, when Dominaini needs to get another cerebrospinal injection from his wife. And it doesn't work. Because it wasn't her fluids that staved off Dominiani's madness. It had to do with something from the vampiric side of things. Eventually, Dominiani falls to his madness, and becomes responsible for her death (undecided, but I think it would be on-brand for him to basically Munchausen-by-proxy her to death, thinking she has gone insane—as well as gaslighting her into thinking so—and only he can save her with barbaric medieval "treatments"). Her loss at his own hands ends up being what drives him to the point of insanity necessary to grant him his own domain.
And as a reminder, they have no idea who Dominiani really is. I really really want to fit in Bleak House now, but I can't do it for a long time, or else MASSIVE SPOILERS. (RVR is in the CoS part of the second campaign.)
That's my current plan. Here's hoping none of my players happen upon this message board, haha.
— onmyoji
