Reconciliation

[Rock of the Fraternity]

Let's see if we can't take some of the 5e material and use it to advance the 3e Core in a - to us - harmonious fashion. I haven't gotten the VRGtR yet, so it's mostly speculation for now on my part. Everyone feel free to pitch in.

[Rock of the Fraternity]

Falkovnia:
Let's say Vladesca is a daughter of Vlad Drakov. She started dressing as a man and assumed a false identity early on, so as to be able to become a soldier. It turned out she was good at it - bloody good. Soon, she was running a lot of operations abroad, doing 'mercenary work', overseeing trade enclaves, and generally advancing her father's plans. But then she started receiving offers from the Four Tower states. Clearly Vladesca was too cunning and skilled to be killed on the battlefield or taken down by an assassin. But when the Four Towers played on her pride and ambition, they found her weakness. Vladesca wanted to be recognized as a skilled woman, rather than live as an imitation man. She wanted her father's respect - and to sit on his throne.
Vladesca took the bribes given to her by the Four Towers and used them to raise a mercenary force loyal only to her ... then used it to wreak bloody havoc in the Four Tower states. Vlad Drakov loved it, especially when he learned Vladesca was one of his illegitimate children. Vladesca and her forces were invited back to Falkovnia, to be fêted and awarded honours. They marched into Vlad's capitol city ... and again unleashed bloody havoc, as Vladesca wanted to overthrow her father to prove her worth and claim her own land.
The two Drakovs charged each other ... and the Mists rose.

Falkovnia is now twice as large, with Vlad ruling one half (old Falkovnia) and Vladesca the other. Neither can leave their half to personally face the other. Vladesca is burdened by swarming zombies, which force her to face the fact she got where she is through treachery, rather than skill. She can't devote her resources to anything other than keeping the undead in check. Vlad is still cursed with military failure; Vladesca's treachery has now made him paranoid as well as mysoginistic towards his female relatives. Troops he sends into New Falkovnia get mobbed by the zombies, just as they would in Darkon.

[Rock of the Fraternity]

Lamordia:

Viktra is the deviant spawn of an insane bloodline.
A Mordenheim related to Victor (a second cousin or the like), she shares Victor's propensity for scientific genius and his utter disregard for classic ethics and morals.
Born in Lamordia in the Mists, Viktra regarded the domain's capacity for horror as a source of endless research material. And no source was as rich as Schloss Mordenheim and its seemingly immortal master.
Victor never saw Viktra coming. One morning he simply awoke to find himself strapped to an operating table in his own laboratory, staring into eyes just as insane as his own. Then the experiments began. Many experiments, most of them agonizing. But those were nothing compared to the horror that followed.
Using what she had learned of tissue regeneration by cutting into Victor and growing cultures of his cells, Viktra concocted a recuperative elixir, and tested it on the ideal test subject: comatose and crippled Elise Mordenheim.
Elise did regenerate and rip herself free of her restraints and the machines Victor had made, but she was a monstrous amalgam of flesh and mechanics, a dreadful monster that fled into the night howling its rage and remembered pain.
At this point, Adam put in an appearance. Driving Viktra away from Victor, the Darklord of Lamordia sought to kill the madwoman who had disrupted the tragedy of Schloss Mordenheim. But Mists rose to separate them...

Lamordia has also grown larger, though not as much as Falkovnia. Viktra rules her own slab of the frigid land, seeking ways to create the ultimate lifeform. Adam is Lord of the rest. Victor is free to move about. But Elise moves freely throughout both parts of the land, her mind twisted to madness and evil by the torments she suffered under both Mordenheims' hands. Adam finds himself torn between hatred of her and a desire to have her company. Victor is desperate as ever to find a way to make her whole once more. Viktra just wants her dead.

[Igor the Henchman]

I really like your Vladesca. That story really works.

One note: the end result is a little close to Ivana/Ivan relationship. Have you considered having Vladesca simply replace her dad?

[Igor the Henchman]

Lamordia's update, I think, needs to account for the fact that Leudendorf and Neufurchtenburg are much more steampunky in the new book, that the Living Brain is now the political leader of the domain and that there's enclaves of ancient humanoid tribes mounting attacks on the encroaching civilization.

[Rock of the Fraternity]

I really like your Vladesca. That story really works.

One note: the end result is a little close to Ivana/Ivan relationship. Have you considered having Vladesca simply replace her dad?

Not really. Having them both alive heightens their torment, and unlike Ivan and Ivana they can't physically come to blows because each is stuck in their own half of the enlarged Falkovnia.

I could see Vladesca - as a Dread Possibility - try to undercut Old Falkovnia in the sale of grains and things. She knows about Vlad's secret strategy for Core conquest and could try to usurp it, just as she did his land.
Vlad, who despises mercantile warfare as unmanly, would suffer the double indignity of needing to actually focus on Falkovnia's exports and having to fight a 'mere' woman.

[Rock of the Fraternity]

Lamordia's update, I think, needs to account for the fact that Leudendorf and Neufurchtenburg are much more steampunky in the new book, that the Living Brain is now the political leader of the domain and that there's enclaves of ancient humanoid tribes mounting attacks on the encroaching civilization.

I'll have to take a closer look at that once I've read the book.
Viktra could be more open to sharing her technological discoveries, if only to fund her research.
As for those ancient humanoid tribes... Victor has been letting his failures escape into the Lamordian wilderness for decades. If they join up with Viktra's failures... well.

As for the Living Brain... Meh. He's more suited to Dementlieu in my opinion, but maybe he serves as a shadowy advisor to his sister by ways of a lively correspondence?

[alhoon]

When VRG comes out?

[Rock of the Fraternity]

Well, when I get my copy, anyway.

[Leliel]

Ooh, this is my jam!

I already had a basic plan for Saidra d'Honoaire, namely that it's her married name - I'll be able to do more once I have the book, but given how she's effectively a deliciously twisted Cinderella, I have it that she married, then murdered, Dominic before replacing the Council of Brillance with her own loyal patsies, and her own personality and magic obsession caused the domain outside of Port-a-Lucine to become... odd. It's still there, but it seems to change to fit the claims of her social circle, and nobody's sure if she's doing this - when they admit it exists. It's also become home to a lot of immigrant hags who fled Tepest when Lorinda went even more nuts and started claiming to be Morrigan, in need of a child.

Also, someone else had a good idea for Dominic to possibly still be around - his old Obedients seem to have a lot of orders that seem...coordinated.

[Rock of the Fraternity]

Maybe Dominic's pulled the biggest scam of his life and he is still around and is completely in charge, but gaslit Saidra so she thinks she's running the place from her 'party island' in Pernault Bay.
Saidra could have murdered Dominic's previous wife and slithered into her position, then tried to kill and replace Dominic. In doing so, she definitely committed crimes worthy of Darkladyship over her own personal Ibiza and she became a very public figure -- explaining why all the fashionable people want to party at her place -- but she was not quite clever enough to outfox Dominic.
Instead, he sacrificed a body double and slid into the shadows, doing what he does best: manipulate events from behind the scenes. The Council of Brilliance pretended to obey Saidra's edicts, but really took orders from Dominic, who was steadily bleeding his wife's coffers dry while she prepared her party island.

By the time the island was ready, Saidra was dead broke and terrified of anyone finding out. She retreated to her stronghold, utterly convinced that she's barely holding on to her power and station through her brutality...
Except Dominic and his Obedients are running the show on the mainland. D'Honaire takes sadistic glee in spinning his would-be murderess an illusion of Dementlieu gone mad beyond her own personal Ibiza/hell, and subtly influences the minds of those who go there so their stories about Dementlieu at large never properly match up.

[Rock of the Fraternity]

Richemulot:

Jacqueline had big plans for the Becoming Plague. In order to properly test it, she commissioned the construction of a new city named Pestis. A clean city, an orderly city. A city with straight avenues. People were glad to move there, with a little encouragement from la Renier. It was the perfect city to spread a disease, where every place could be reached and no victim could hide.
Jacqueline set her plans -- only someone jumped the gun. The Becoming Plague was released in Pestis before the Reniers were ready, and to Jacqueline's dismay it turned out that she had no control over the suddenly turned population of wererats -- and they had no control over themselves.
Today, Pestis is a festering madhouse of disease and starving (were)rats, squabbling for food and territory and forever eager to burst out of the city and into the countryside.
Jacqueline is forced to devote resources -- both human and wererat -- to keep the Festering City contained. She cannot afford the city's wererats to get out, for they would likely devour the nation's food sources and population within a year. She faces considerable difficulty, however.

Jacqueline has lost face among the other wererats. She invested a lot into the Becoming Plague and Pestis, but her grand scheme blew up in her face. The Plague Kings and Plague Queens are clamouring for her to sterilize the rest of the Becoming Plague before it loses them Richemulot. Her own family is sensing weakness.
The human population of Richemulot is growing restive. The people always knew the wererats were there, but terror kept them biddable. Now, with a city full of crazed wererats, fear is leading to anger. Too many people have barely returned from keeping the black line around Pestis, carrying tales of fighting and killing crazed shapeshifters. Before, Renier 'fun and games' generated enough terror that people put up with it and kept their mouths shut. Now, Renier attacks often lead to eruptions of violence and protests. The human populace is considering a grand purge of all wererats, not just the lunatics in Pestis.

Louise is getting more difficult to control. Jacqueline needs her sister, both as company and an enforcer, but Louise feels Richemulot is about to erupt into civil war and she wants out. Jacqueline has to offer her ever more lavish rewards and manipulate her using her A-game... and even that may turn out not to be enough.

And underneath all Jacqueline's problems, there is a niggling doubt, a seed of fear and terror. What went wrong in Pestis? Who set off the Becoming Plague prematurely? Why did the dread disease not work the way it should have? Is there a traitor in the ranks? Is it the Cult of Simon Audaire? Les Echansons? Some other force out of the House of the Sages? Louise? Another Renier? A rogue Plague King?
Jacqueline does not know, and her paranoia wars with her monophobia...

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

Just dropping a note here that I wholeheartedly applaud this effort and look forward to contributing once I get my copy of the book and read it.

[Rock of the Fraternity]

*salutes*
I look forward to everyone's input. Let's use what we're given to advance the Core. ^_^

[Leliel]

Maybe Dominic's pulled the biggest scam of his life and he is still around and is completely in charge, but gaslit Saidra so she thinks she's running the place from her 'party island' in Pernault Bay.
Saidra could have murdered Dominic's previous wife and slithered into her position, then tried to kill and replace Dominic. In doing so, she definitely committed crimes worthy of Darkladyship over her own personal Ibiza and she became a very public figure -- explaining why all the fashionable people want to party at her place -- but she was not quite clever enough to outfox Dominic.
Instead, he sacrificed a body double and slid into the shadows, doing what he does best: manipulate events from behind the scenes. The Council of Brilliance pretended to obey Saidra's edicts, but really took orders from Dominic, who was steadily bleeding his wife's coffers dry while she prepared her party island.

By the time the island was ready, Saidra was dead broke and terrified of anyone finding out. She retreated to her stronghold, utterly convinced that she's barely holding on to her power and station through her brutality...
Except Dominic and his Obedients are running the show on the mainland. D'Honaire takes sadistic glee in spinning his would-be murderess an illusion of Dementlieu gone mad beyond her own personal Ibiza/hell, and subtly influences the minds of those who go there so their stories about Dementlieu at large never properly match up.

Hm. I think that's unnecessarily mean to her, and I prefer a darklord rival who is, well, a rival.

I'm not objecting though; I just say she figured it out and is now locked in a battle of wits, as she relies on her resources (contacts with hags, utter dominance of the public aristocracy, and magical skill) in a brutal tug of war with her husband; he has his mesmerization and existing networks, she has her legitimacy and a growing corps of monstrous lieutenants. And all of the domain is being torn apart through it - it's rapidly looking more and more like just before the French Revolution, as Dementlieu bucks beneath its overlords and grows resentful. Dominic, naturally, is in control of the original friends of liberty...but how deeply?

As for Tepest:

Hail, Finn of Vyktal, the Inquisitor who singlehandedly managed to break what civilization existed in Tepest and prove it was the fae's forest - humans just lived in it.

It seemed like such a good idea at the time; Wyan was increasingly unsure if all magic was witchcraft, and slowly realizing how much of Tepest was only giving lip service to the idea that they were completely free of fae influence - and how outright benign the Halan "witches" were. He never stopped his zeal, but increasingly, he started to advocate for an "extra phase" to trials, to see if someone who was fae or enchanted was "Summer-touched"; aware on some level of what mortality meant, and trying to understand human morality - such individuals, while they would be put under heavy restrictions and swear themselves to the Inquisition, would be allowed to live and dedicate their lives to protecting humans and sorting hearsay from actual knowledge. To Finn, this was proof the High Inquisitor was corrupt - and in a stroke of hypocritical genius, decided to turn evil against evil, and work with some local goblins to frame him for being a cleric of Math Mathownwy, and thus, something that was drastic enough to prosecute.

This was what Lorinda, always the most ambitious and embittered about her state of the Three Hags, had been waiting for. She was not idle; she had been quietly engineering this conflict for years, while letting the Halan clergy slowly extend its reach throughout Tepest. By the time Finn made his move, much of Tepest had grown to, at best, resent the witch trials, and at worst were actively sabotaging them (it helped by that point she had learned to transform unborn children and adults into hexbloods, leaving their free wills intact but given them caliban-like traits and inherent magic - suddenly, it was impossible to ignore how common it was for "fae" to be born of human mothers and to become such later, and her gamble that parental love and the desire to keep alive would regularly win out over devotion to myth paid off - even the most zealous inquisitor suddenly found himself in an awkward position when his true form sprouted an antler crown or his daughter born with long ears). His "reveal" was quickly found out by a secret conspiracy of hexbloods within the Inquisition, who warned Wyan and exposed Finn's conspiracy with the goblin tribes. The Inquisition and soon Tepest split into a civil war as both the fae influence on one side and the raving hypocrisy and darkness of another become obvious - which was when Lorinda appeared to the feuding sides as Daghda, announcing that the Mother of Tepest had come to guide the world through its long Winter in preparation for its rebirth - after having tricked Finn into sealing her sisters into her cauldron, before mummifying him to leave him with the eternal knowledge of how all he had done was allow the greatest witch in Tepest to assume control.

By all means, the moderates won, and this was a good thing; Wyan still runs the Inquisition, which has stopped and realized just how badly it was mislead by its own superstitions and fear. Hexbloods and demihumans are still treated with suspicion, but they are not faced with hatemobs anymore, and the witch trials require actual evidence that malign magic was done before they begin, with the penalties for a false accusation severe, and there is something resembling a working partnership (if a tense and fraught one) with the Halans - a magic-user who swears loyalty to them will find that the Inquisition, while a harsh and suspicious guardian, will gladly protect the Summer-touched from prosecution. But it was a Pyrrhic victory, and everyone knows it. Vyktal belongs to Mother now, her price for saving Tepest from burning itself to the ground, and the center of her cult - really, little more than a garden of sacrifices and reagents for her attempts to have the thing her hag nature denied her; a child of her own. To say nothing of the survivors of the Radicals, who fled into the depths of the forest. For while they had turned on Wyan in the belief that he had been corrupted by magic, they also solved the cognitive dissonance of their leader being a treacherous liar who worked with profoundly inhuman entities, by deciding that evil used to fight evil is just, and that damnation of the self in favor of others is not damnation at all.

They are not called the Radicals anymore. They are called the Ordu Dorchadas, the Darkened Order (please forgive me for bad Irish). It is a name they have chosen for themselves, for to them, they must darken themselves so others may live in the light. And if they're already doing that - well, it's hardly more of a sin to experiment with magic a bit. Or undeath. Or to become the rulers of villages who needed to be reminded that heretics cannot protect them anyway...