Paridon-sized Domain [help]

[Talum]

Please allow me to introduce myself I'm a man of wealth and taste... Pleased to meet you hope you guess my name.

With introductions out of the way im here to ask for inspiration in the making of a domain im going to use for my next game, the idea of the domian is an island of terror that is of CL 9, and its in contact with darkon, lamordia, mordent, dementlieu, richemulot and paridon, as you probably guessed by the name of the topic, its only a city with a little bit of land surrounding it. It has a very prestigious wizard school that is focused on the mixin of magic and science, for this all of the domains previously mentioned are very interested in making a exclusivity trade agreement.

During a masquerade the Red Jester(or clown or harlequin, i cant decide on the name yet) (kind of like an evil robin hood "kill the rich and give to the poor") steals a wand colection from the ruler(count? prince? i dont know what would be apropiated) and kills his wife, the PC are from one of the domains interested in making alliance, they are sent to solve the case in order to gain the favor from the ruler (other partys are at work here to, the domains the PC dont chose for example, numerous bounty hunters and the local government etc).

Im open to all coments, sugestions and citisism that you think will improve this adventure.

Oh! and i still dont have a name nor "fealing" for the domain yet, i was thinking of making it Italian like, as i havent seen any other renaissance italy in RL

(english is not my native lenguage, sorry if i look like an idiot for not knowign how to write properly)

Thanks in advance, Talum DeValois

[brass]

Since you've got a harlequin, a masquerade, an Italian feel and wizards tend to be quite showy; you could go with a renaissance Venice feel. Canals are great for chases and aquatic beasties. Perhaps a deep one esque secret among the gondolas.

Also Paridon is generally on the brink of starvation, what are these people eating?

[The Giamarga]

Isn't there a Venice based fanmade domain out there? But why does it have to be it's own domain in the first place? Richemulot or Dementlieu would do nicely for this villain imho. He doesn't need to be a darklord does he?

[Hogan Van Monsterband]

A Venetian domain sounds great. Your ruler could be a Doge or, if you wanted to go more religous, a Cardinal or a Pontiff. The Carnival levels of Assassin's Creed 2 are probably a good reference here - the PCs have to solve this in the middle of a massive party where everyone in the streets is wearing masks and costumes, could be quite surreal. You might also want to go for some feuding families, some kind of complicated vendetta, because everything in Ravenloft is better with vendettas.

[Talum]

Since you've got a harlequin, a masquerade, an Italian feel and wizards tend to be quite showy; you could go with a renaissance Venice feel. Canals are great for chases and aquatic beasties. Perhaps a deep one esque secret among the gondolas.

Also Paridon is generally on the brink of starvation, what are these people eating?

i was thinking todas more of a Toscana feel but now im tempted by the Venice idea, i will ask the players and see what they want. People ARE starving to death and sick with the plague in the city this is why the aristocrats whant this solved quickly, the Red Jester is seen as a hero by the poor and as a threat to the rich

Isn't there a Venice based fanmade domain out there? But why does it have to be it's own domain in the first place? Richemulot or Dementlieu would do nicely for this villain imho. He doesn't need to be a darklord does he?

The Red Jester is not the darklord but its part of the curse, the thing is, i thought first of the darklord and then i started thinking of the domain, basicaly the ruler of the domain used to be a court jester for a great emperor in another plane, but he wanted to be more, and then the backstabing and Disguise Self started, the mist took him and placed him a very small land resembling his own, he wants to be king of a great empire, thats why his domain is only a small, starving, infected city, the Jester is his "true face" given flesh


Another thing i came up with today in the office is that there are only 2 other people on the domain that are not "mist made", by that i mean these two were pulled by the mist with the darklord, one is a vampire with political aspirations, and the other one is the elf archmage running the wizard school (he want to leave ravenloft ASAP by makign a spelljamer ship kinda thing) these two will often call the land Veritan(the name of the empire in the plane they came from) and then excuse themselves and call it Fierotzia (the Domain name) this will be clues for the character to start diging in the past of the domain and finally uncovering the darklord

Anyone has any ideas about the religion of the place? i was thinking something warhammer 40K inspired (The God Emperor of Mankind! or the Omnissiah the cult to the machines) but im open to sugestions, i want it to be no clerics(as a class) in the domain and that the people are astonished by the concept of faith giving powers

[Sareau]

Perhaps the locals were much like the Romans-they have the household gods, mostly ancestors, but are largely pragmatic and secular, spawning many philosophies, but no real religeon per se.

Of course, ancestor worshippers can have all manner of undead literally in their basements, as in The Vampire and the Ballerina, or, given the paucity of food, could be using Carnival or other masked balls to disguise a cannibal diet. There was a recent atrocious movie tracking the immortal Erzabet Bathory to Venice, and I was struck by how easily she arranged her baths in the Carnival setting. Such individuals would be fitting, as Your Red Jester/Harlequin/Mountebank seems more the serial killer type than other horror archetypes.

I would suggest leaking a Secret that the darklord is trying to obtain for himself or squelch entirely, so he's picking off anyone who knows about it-which should include one or more of the players...

But then again, I've always wanted to reenact The Abominable Doctor Phibes and have a disfigured genius deliver bizarre murders for obscure motives.

[Talum]

yea i been thinking on the darklord having a secret that he wants to keep safe(other than the true nature of the red jester) hopefully i will come up with something in time, i was thinking that the red jester didnt kill his wife mearly turned her into a hideous amorfic creture (something resembling the resurected mother of edward and alphonse in full metal alchemist, after she turned into Sloth)


the canibal subplot sounds rather interesting but i think it will be a little too much to ad to the current plot

[Sareau]

Perhaps the Jester's wife was accidentally morphed and he's after a cure and/or revenge on those responsible-i.e. play Ten Little indians and pick off guests one by one, letting the party figure out why the victims are on a hit list. The party gets hooked when an NPC they need to speak to is targetted by your jester or taken out-and more bodies pile up. Perhaps in this initial encounter, the Jester spares them:"You had aught to do with the fate of my beloved-you will live now, but cross my path again and there will be WAR between us!"

Of course, some detective work is required to know exactly where the jester strikes next, but as long as he's flamboyant enough or has a signature kill, like the Joker and Red Skull from the comics, they'll catch on soon enough...

[Pale]

The wife who was killed.... was it the wife of the Jester or the wife of the ruler?

If the ruler has a collection of magic wands, what is his connection to this school of magicians that the elf runs? Is magic just that prevalent in your domain?

I'm not entirely clear on the disposition of the domain - is it a city on an island, or a peninsula, or something different? What's the geography?

[Manofevil]

The wife who was killed.... was it the wife of the Jester or the wife of the ruler?

Or BOTH?

[Talum]

The rulers wife was murderes(in fact turned into an abomination), the Jester is not a "man" he is "something" created by the dark powers to torture the darklord(the ruler), the domain is in the sea of sorrow just a little bit west of Blaustein.

People of the domain know about magic and dont have the same fear most people in ravenloft have of it, but this doesnt mean there are a lot of wizards going around, they know magic is usefull and powerfull but also that its very dangerous, so the few wizards that live in the school are not allowed to leave without heavy escort and sometimes with some kind of restrain to their arcane skills (handcufs or similar), the sole reason the government allows the school to exist is the production of magic items(the domain most important industry), the Use Magic Item skill is much more comon than the real casting, and all magic items that are not made for the Nobles are very carefully inspectionated before selling them to the public, algo the school works as a university, and most wizards also are some kind of scientist (be it a biologist a psychologist or something else)

[Pale]

Your ideas, I think, have substantial potential. But I suppose they might need a mite more refinement - at least for my tastes.

Why is the ruler cursed? Is it for stealing the wands? What was his specific crime? You said that the Red Jester (for lack of a better name) is part of the torture inflicted on the ruler - showing his "true face". But what did the ruler due to warrant the attentions of the Dark Powers? Did he turn his own wife into an abomination, or is that just another consequence of his curse and his previous curse-worthy actions?

Starving and infected populace, limited land, a king-who-isn't-a-king, ambitions to rule but stuck with an imaginary/"mist-made" populace, wizard school where the wizards are near-prisoners despite magic (use magic device) being so prevalent.... a bogeyman/benefactor in the form of the Red Jester, an abominable wife-thing... How does this all fit together?


When you first laid out the description, I thought of a cross between the shipwreck island in Pirates of the Caribbean and Hogwarts Academy from Harry Potter's films - so I thought of it as having a significant vertical component. Tightly clustered, we'll say. With the canal idea (which I quite like), that opens up a lot of trouble for how the city is put together - because it's basically built on top of water, and there's little land that isn't either sunk or built upon, ie, turned into part of the city. At least, in my mind that's how it works.

The more you describe the wizard school, it almost sounds like a sweatshop - they can't leave unless handcuffed? Their works are sold abroad? Has the ruler enslaved the wizards, and uses their craft output to buy the food the city needs? Is the ruler aware of and trying to fix the food shortage? Are his legitimate attempts to -fix- the hunger problem being upstaged by the more flamboyant (and short-term) solutions of the Jester (ie, theft from those who have food now and giving it to those who don't have food now)?

[Sareau]

Please do elaborate-i was actually picturing more of a fantasy setting like the "Imager" series-a very Rennaissance Italian setting with guildmasters and the Mages firmly allied with the city's government.