Ravenloft Cosmology

[Fuzzball]

I considered it, but I don't know how to implement it. I'm not good with biology.

[Gemathustra]

"Rust" itself does not transmit tetanus.
The rust hides bacteria that cause tetanus. Some oxides, like copper oxide, or lead, are poisonous, though.

[Fuzzball]

Just a thought, but perhaps metal poisoning should be a result of the plane instead of an elemental's attack. For example, a Fort save each day (say 10 or 15 + the number of days spent on the plane), or take 1d2 Constitution damage/drain which won't heal naturally until the character leaves the plane.

Each of the planes could have some kind of similar effect.

Rust - Metal Poisoning
Pyre - Lung Problems
Blood - ?
Grave - ?
Rot - Leprosy? or...Thorn - Some kind of poison?


Disease could be a special effect of a rot elemental instead.

[NykylaiHellray]

Hmmmmm grave could be trench foot (the foot problems people got in the trenches in WW1)

Also it could have gangrene.

[Rotipher of the FoS]

Septicemia (blood poisoning) is such an obvious one for the Blood-plane, it scarcely bears mentioning.

FWIW, the physiologist in me says that the Quasi-plane counterparts of Blood ought to be other bodily fluids, not scabs etc. The "positive energy" equivalent of blood would be milk (a life-sustaining secretion), while the closest "negative energy" counterpart for blood would, frankly, be urine (i.e. concentrated toxins filtered from plasma).

[NykylaiHellray]

o.o.........right.....personally a plane of urine does not appeal to me.


Anyway for the quasi planes. I am thinking now that quasi planes as spitfull said would be pointless.


Though I still think we should make dread quasi elementals.

Which are summoned if a summoner attempted to summon a quasi elemental.

The dread version shares the same stats as the one he would have summoned, but the name changes and it becomes evil aligned.


Quasi planes of grave.....i think would be maggots and bone.

Maggots as they grow from the rotting corpses....but still does not make sense.


Bone I think makes sense. =/...



Oh spitfull I bought heros of horror today and saw the great taint elementals. Maybe they could be occupants of the dread elemental planes as well.

In a planescape notebook I read recently it says there are chaos and lawfull elementals in each elemental plane to......but I cannot be bothered to think of dread versions at the mo =P

[Rotipher of the FoS]

o.o.........right.....personally a plane of urine does not appeal to me.

Nobody ever said physiology had to be appetizing. But you're right: that's not exactly the kind of "Horror Check" that a Ravenloft game should be striving for....

[Spiteful Crow]

Personally, I don't wanna mix taint elementals with Ravenloft. They should only appear if the DM is using taint in the campaign.

As for environmental hazards, the plane of grave would have random pockets of negative energy. As I think I mentioned in the description for pyre, the ground has a tendency to spew gouts of fire. (remember that forest from Princess Bride? Exactly! ) The plane of blood has pockets of positive energy, but I'm not sure whether to make them the "nice healing" kind or the "heal until you explode!" kind. Or some of both.

As for Quasielementals, some of them are pretty dark already. And, I think it'd be pretty funny for a wizard to try and summon a steam quasielemental and risk getting a mist elemental. They won't know whether they succeeded, or ended up with a mist elemental until it's too late.

[Rotipher of the FoS]

Personally, I don't wanna mix taint elementals with Ravenloft. They should only appear if the DM is using taint in the campaign.

Oooo, creepy idea just hit me! Why not combine HoH's taint elementals and Ravenloft's existing fear/horror/madness rules, so we can have "fear elementals", "horror elementals", and "madness elementals"...?

[Spiteful Crow]

Ooooooooooh...

How would they look, though?

I'm thinking madness elemental should look wildly different to different people, just to have party members second guessing each other and going crazy.

[NykylaiHellray]

Maybe fear elementals are dopplegangers, pretendung to be party member before they strike.

[Manofevil]

In case you all haven't noticed. I'm slowly working my way through the threads I've missed while being offline for an entire month. Gotta say. I like where this one went. I still like my idea of the ground under the misty borders being of the plane of grave. Be an interesting turn of events if dwarven delvers dug too close to the border and came up in the center of the endless graveyard.

If you wanted to make a corrupted metal elemental composed of weapons, here is my suggestion for abilities.

Blade Dance – As a standard action the elemental may make a touch attack against any melee weapon. The weapon becomes a dancing weapon under the control of the elemental. If the weapon is held, the wielder is entitled to a Will save equal to 10 + ½ the elemental’s HD rounded down. The weapon remains under the elemental’s control until the effect is dispelled (dispel magic, limited wish, miracle, or wish), the elemental releases it, or the elemental is destroyed. An elemental may have up to one half its HD in weapons under its control at any time.

Might make for an interesting confrontation with ol' Ebonbane.

[ewancummins]

For nasty side effects of Grave, I like the suggestion of trench foot[it's nasty ]. What about a similiar maladythat starts out low and spreads upwards? A sort of ''trench body''[not how it actually works, but this is a fantasy].The longer you stay, the more you rot. If it kills you, you rise as walking dead.

For Blood, what about hemmoraghic fever-literally sweating blood?

[Spiteful Crow]

Well... I wanna make the planes dangerous, not automatically fatal.

And hemmorhagic fever would be kinda hard to notice on the plane of blood, since you're already swimming through blood anyway.

[ewancummins]

Very good point. I should have re-read the Plane o' Blood description!

I just like nasty diseases[well, in a game context-dealing with them in real life isn't much fun].