Domain of the month - Dominia!

[cure]

Think Soviet style gulag for the Darklord or other power that be who want to put someone on ice at a safe distance, perhaps with a little bonus gaslighting thrown in.

[Joël of the FoS]

A few more days to think about Dominia, and we'll switch to another place!

Joël

[cure]

It would be nice if the good doctor's island had some native or transplanted pest that at least bothers and perhaps actually endangers the doctor, the staff and/or the patients, to say nothing of 'heroes.' It could be flora or fauna. Probably not bloodroses, but something that removes or at least curtails the possibility of a pleasant walk about. Fearweed would have potential as would an anergen.

[cure]

I would be in favour of Dominia not having a closable domain. It is small, so it is not like you can go to ground, and just getting out of the asylum and onto the sea should be plenty challenging, without having a door slammed in one's face.

If it is closable, something involving madness/delusions is obvious enough. A failed madness check, or at least madness checks for all, the idea being that one needs to come back just to get cured.

Of course, the border closing could be left to the DM as a Dread Possibility.

[Joël of the FoS]

Thank you everybody for this input, DS will use it in the Sea of Sorrow FoS report.

If you have other ideas on Dominia, post them here!

Joël

[nothri]

1. According to Bleak House, Dr. heinfroth is concerned largely with understanding the nature of insanity and the insane, partly because he fears his 'cure' (re: transformation into a unique form of vampire) is only temporary, a fear the dark powers encourage by sending him hallucinations and half-heard whispers. He's likely going to have an avid interest in new discoveries for treatments and treatises on the mind. he probably has a minion or two stationed near every University in and beyond the Core, to say nothing of Asylums.

2. To help with the PR, I like to assume Heinfroth is actually a pretty good doctor when he wants to be. So imagine that his asylum has expanded somewhat into various 'wings', with his old asylum being the hulking fortress on the hill. In newer building house patients lucky enough not to interest Heinfroth, suffering minor derangements and short term traumas. The Doctor lets the new facilities serve as his 'public face', feeding on the patients sparringly and making certain that they are heavily drugged and unaware of his activities. After a subtable amount of time, he releases them back into the Core, more or less cured. He saves the cruel experiments, the dehumanizing humiliations, and the hideoes tortures for those he deems 'special', those who prove unusually resilient to 'mundane' insanity, those with particularly bizarre psychosis, or those who learn too much. However, he is always willing for a patient in his 'lower' asylum to suffer an unfortunate fall into madness if one of his 'favorites' dies....he prefers to keep the rooms of his asylum occupied.

3. Let’s not overestimate Heinfroth’s need for petty revenge, or his occasional desire to play the same games of intrigue as the mainland lords do. I’ll bet he has quite a list of nasty folk he’d love to have in his asylum- Gundar’s top brass, harkon’s rebellious children, and so on. Being familiar with the intrigues of these nations for over a century, he probably has a better understanding of what happens in these realms than most. If a new move is made in the rebellion of the Gundarkite people, or a new power arises in Kartakass, Heingfroth may well know the players behind them. The Doctor might occasionally try his hand at manipulation, dropping hints or outright contacting PCs or even domain lords (Strahd and Aderre are fairly well involved in the Gundarkite affairs and might be willing to make deals….Harkon probably less so). If he can cause a death of an old rival from a distant, wonderful. Even better if he can somehow manipulate events so that said rival ends up in his padded cell. Then again, these sorts of schemes have a habit of falling apart…..

4. A brilliant mind like Heinfroth would be foolish if he didn’t correspond. Most of the time he’ll chat with good folk like Illhousen, trading advice and subscriptions but keeping things fairly reasonable. Other times, he talks with more amoral folk like Mordenheim and d’Honaire. Part of his successful obfuscation of his sadistic nature actually comes from these correspondence- the domain lords see certain advantages in keeping a fairly brilliant but quite insane and horribly sadistic Doctor on call when they need an expedient way to get rid of someone when killing is out of the question or death would be too pleasant for the ruler’s tastes. Indeed, it seems a well established part of his character that he involves himself as a middle man in more powerful men’s dark schemes. Of course, such arrangements probably remind the good doctor of his relationship to Gundar, which no doubt chafes all the more. Imagine what that could mean when men look for more personal favors….like Mordenheim at the conclusion of Adam’s Wrath, when his beloved wife is restored to life but hopelessly insane. Can he trust heinfroth to help, or will the vampire turn on him like he did Gundar?

5. heinfroth seems to like recruiting new and brilliant minds into his circle of undead, if I recall. Perhaps he’s looking to expand his brood once again. And there are some many possibilities- a mentalist from Immol, a monk from the Divinity of Mankind, a Sri Rajian from the prestigious university. Perhaps he looks for a sadist, or perhaps he looks for a good man to test- imagine a newly made cerebral vampire told to help a mental patient within a certain amount of time or else the Doctor’s more brutal methods will be employed. And naturally, the doctor watches his spawn just as much as the patient, seeing what methods he employs and how long it takes for morality to give way to expediency and then to cruelty.

6. As Bleak House tells us, Heinfroth played a big part in Van Richten’s disappearance. One wonders if there isn’t a trail leading back to him somewhere. Then again, perhaps heinfroth could drop a few hints. After all, he never was able to discover if it was Van Richten’s experience, morality, or brilliance that made him so resilient to the insanity Heinfroth tried to afflict him with. And it just so happens there are a pair of twins down in Mordent who seem quite dedicated and fairly astute as monster hunters go, but lack the Doctor’s experience. They would make a fantastic basis for comparison!

[Garudos Celestar]

(Or if you want him to be really oblivious, he might not even have known she was a wolfwere! Though this is pretty unlikely, since he knew enough about Harkon to know he's a darklord. The minor fact of his species should probably be easier to obtain.)

Well, he knew about Lukas' darklordship through Akriel, and there were at least a few details she was explicitly hiding from him (such as her father's death-bed ability to transfer his soul to a dire wolf), so it's possible that she also wasn't totally honest about which particular wolf-human creature she was, and trying to stab her with both a silver dagger and cold iron dagger to see which one would work probably would not have cemented their relationship.

Now, it's still more probable that not that Dr. D was aware that they were wolfweres, but even then, how often does one get to perform an experiment to see whether a wolfwere can be turned into a vampire? Dr. D might simply have been ignorant due to a lack of any data on the issue... of course, Akriel might well have been intended to be the initial test subject.

[brilliantlight]

Interesting domain, but I keep thinking HP Lovecraft whenever the whole cerebral/psychosis aspect of the domain and its darklord comes up. If I have my way, I would place this domain with Bluetspur in a madness-themed cluster, so that the labyrinthine tunnels that hold the cells underneath the asylum will eventually lead to the subterranean slave pits and brine pools of the illithids.

Maybe put the Nightmare Lands in the cluster as well.