Getting more use out of Odaire

[Deewun]

The talks about using The Created got my gears turning when I offered a (what I think is) cool suggestion on how to rejigger that module to get Ravenloft native characters, or characters that are currently in Ravenloft, to play a part. But then I realized that this is such a wonderfully useful domain, yet it only has a single use in the module it has created (pun intended). There are the classics: Scaena plot device, magical storybook, just a traipse through the mists to get there. But what else beyond that? How else can Odaire be used, to greater effect, for the Ravenloft world, and further campaigns. So I want to find more uses, and figured I'd share a few with you folks that I've used in the past.

Firstly, I figure I'll quote myself, just to keep things on track and threads separated:

An interesting hook could be finding a lost child in Kantora or Bergovista or wherever in Nova Vaasa you wanna be, who doesn't know how he got there, and doesn't speak the language. Doesn't speak any language that is known. You can then take him to see Dr. Illhousen, or perhaps a linguist of some kind, on a short side mission, creating an endearing NPC for your players to get used to. Once you find a way to speak with him, you gotta try to get him home. Hire an anchorite, find some vistani, or just wander blindly into the mists (or have the kid help you get lost in the city you found him, and as you twist and turn, you suddenly find yourself in Odaire). Lots of opportunities.

When I used the Created in my pirate campaign, I just goofed with the landscape a bit so that my crew could get their by boat, and sailing a bit through the mists.

This also lead to a larger story, with the main villain of the campaign (a genocidal gnome thief/illusionist named Masque) worked with Maligno to bring all the boogeymen (from the BoSacrifices) to terrorize the children, as they are growing up and starting to forget him (a side-effect of the mists). But the deeper thought here (beyond the plot thread) is moving the domain to make it more accessible. Perhaps the city itself joins Darkon. Perhaps it becomes an island in the Nocturnal Sea. I think that there is certainly room to explore and move Odaire into the main core, or more use. Heck, maybe the only reason the domain has stayed stuck like it is is because of Maligno's control over it, and once he is destroyed (of course not permanently, but temporarily) the mists back off and you see landscape and more of the city. Maybe it transposes itself into Borca or Kartakass. There are many many options to take this one-stop domain and turning it into some much more useful and meaningful to Ravenloft as a whole, especially since it has such a fantastic theme to it that isn't repeated anywhere else.

Another possible hook (stemming from my pirate campaign) had Maligno gaslighting one of the crew to get him to perform a LOT of terrible acts all in the promises to give him his old body back (it was being controlled by a carrionete), but the dark powers twisted him into a terrible wooden carrionete creature (I had him on a Terror Tracks to become a chimera). The crew found him and after one going completely mad and the rest having to fight him and Maligno off, tied him to a cannon and dropped him in the middle of the ocean. But of course, this terrible chimera doll monster can't stay there forever, and could be used as another hook of some kind.

I'm rambling. I love Odaire a lot (ironic for someone with automatonophobia) and want to gather more and more ideas to get it more use. What do you guys think? About what I've added, about what you could add. Go crazy so we can hear your ideas about our favorite toy Darklord.

[doctor-evil]

I've been tempted to expand the domain by adding the child snatcher from Chitty-chitty-bang-bang (who gave me nightmares as a kid).
Perhaps take that idea further, with a lord in the castle who hates children but loves elaborate mechanical, but deadly toys (including life sized toy soldiers, clown puppets and automata of beautiful women - to steal also from the movies Serenity/Austen Powers). Lots of potential to have creepy automatons.

But I like the bogeyman idea...

[Deewun]

I've been tempted to expand the domain by adding the child snatcher from Chitty-chitty-bang-bang (who gave me nightmares as a kid).
Perhaps take that idea further, with a lord in the castle who hates children but loves elaborate mechanical, but deadly toys (including life sized toy soldiers, clown puppets and automata of beautiful women - to steal also from the movies Serenity/Austen Powers). Lots of potential to have creepy automatons.

But I like the bogeyman idea...

That's all VERY cool, and perhaps an incredibly interesting turn of events for Maligno himself. Or perhaps for Julio, the crazy hobo driven nuts by Maligno's first attacks. Wouldn't it be a wonderful story to see children begin to disappear from [insert domain] and you find the Child Snatcher story with a bunch of toys around, thinking it is Maligno, but then it turns out to just be a guy. And then the carrionetes attack.

[nothri]

Opening up the sea also opens up a lot of possibilities....like Monstro the whale and other Pinnochio adventures.

[Deewun]

Jeez, that is another really great idea. Can you imagine Monstro being a huge toy, controlled by Maligno? Maligno changing his tactics just like the Fox in Pinnochio! Awesome ideas!

[Rock of the Fraternity]

What if Odiare were linked to Invidia? The cultures should be roughly compatible.

Imagine what'd happen if Malocchio tried to move in, or at least conscript locals for the armies and to station his own troops there -- and Maligno lashed out in anger.

[Rotipher of the FoS]

Stepping back from the "evil toys" theme, another untapped option for Odaire would be as an "urban archeology" locale. Remember that Odaire was Mist-napped from Gothic Earth, a Victorian-era setting: it's bound to contain remnants of some fairly advanced technology, even by Zherisian standards. Poking around in old attics and so forth, or examining whatever local machinery hasn't already been cannibalized for scrap metal by the Odairans, might just prove profitable for a wandering inventor or scholar.

Also, the fact that Odaire came from Gothic Earth, not Earth, opens up the possibility that spooky things could be hidden away there, that predate Maligno. Although it's depicted as a modest village in The Created, it's possible that the settlement had been much larger in the distant pre-Ravenloft past, before the Black Death hit GE-Italy. Probing areas of the domain which the residents are afraid to visit might turn up neverending ghostly Roman-era banquets, cursed caches of gold from the days of the merchant republics, skeletal Restless Dead condottieri still searching for a patron who'd cheated them of their pay, or the wailing huecuva of a priest who'd abandoned his faith in horror after witnessing the Great Plague of Milan. Italy has a HUGE history of conflict to draw upon, much more than all of Ravenloft's domains combined, so why not use it to confer a real sense of antiquity to an otherwise-young domain?

[nothri]

To be clear, one things I think BENEFITS odiare is the isolation. I like the feeling of delicate innocence the domain offers. It feels appropriate that its somewhat innoculated from the horrors elsewhere, with a lord who goes out of his way to 'protect' children and innocence from whatever he deems as a threat.

[nothri]

The adventure module The Created has a scene in which Malgino performs a play for the children, which the module briefly explains in a single line to be a variant on the Saint George and the Dragon myth, the role of Saint George taken up by "Sir Arduin" and the dragon refered to as the 'Wyrm'. Cute on by itself, until we combine this information with Domains of Dread and rooting Odaire on Gothic Earth. Now the question becomes....why haven't we ever heard of this variant myth before? Is it because its a local variant?

Allow me to quote wikipedia on the myth of St. George:

"The town had a pond, as large as a lake, where a plague-bearing dragon dwelled that envenomed all the countryside. To appease the dragon, the people of Silene used to feed it two sheep every day, and when the sheep failed, they fed it their children, chosen by lottery. It happened that the lot fell on the king's daughter, who is in some versions of the story called Sabra.[8] The king, distraught with grief, told the people they could have all his gold and silver and half of his kingdom if his daughter were spared; the people refused. The daughter was sent out to the lake, decked out as a bride, to be fed to the dragon.

Saint George by chance rode past the lake. The princess, trembling, sought to send him away, but George vowed to remain. The dragon reared out of the lake while they were conversing. Saint George fortified himself with the Sign of the Cross,[9] charged it on horseback with his lance and gave it a grievous wound. Then he called to the princess to throw him her girdle, and he put it around the dragon's neck. When she did so, the dragon followed the girl like a meek beast on a leash.

She and Saint George led the dragon back to the city of Silene, where it terrified the people at its approach. But Saint George called out to them, saying that if they consented to become Christians and be baptised, he would slay the dragon before them. The king and the people of Silene converted to Christianity, George slew the dragon, and the body was carted out of the city on four ox-carts. "Fifteen thousand men baptized, without women and children." On the site where the dragon died, the king built a church to the Blessed Virgin Mary and Saint George, and from its altar a spring arose whose waters cured all disease.[10]"

End quote.

Now...isn't it interesting that we see the dragon motif pop up a few times in this adventure in the form of toys and the like. Isn't it also interesting that Odiare has a rather large church (compared to the other buildings, and counting the 'Undertakers') near the center of town? More interesting still how there was a statue in the town center, featuring an unnamed woman holding a child?

Could this church be in some way dedicated to a local hero? Could Arduin have been an opponent of the red Death? Was there ever a Qabal along the lines of the Knights of St. George based in town? Whatever happened to Sir Arduin's sword or armor? Could the temple serve as some kind of DaVinci Code piece of architecture, with hidden rooms and secrets? Where is the knight buried? Whatever happened to the Wyrm's treasure? Could the Wyrm still live, perhaps gravely wounded but clinging to life? If so, is it a real dragon or something else...a sea serpent, perhaps? Something that could play the role of Monstro or the dog fish (if we go by the actual stories of Pinnochio), perhaps? Does it still crave the blood of children? Or might it be too injured? Could it play the part of the tempter, trying to corrupt the innocent in secret by offering the children things they want? What is the status of this creature, far from Gothic Earth? Did it serve the red death, and does it continue to? Do the Dark Powers cooperate with one another, are they at odds, or are they one entity...and how does this impact a creature that served one of these forces in the realm of the other?