Help me develop a Cluster, please?

[Hell_Born]

Long, long story short, I've finally realized that nothing actually stops me from making my own mega-sized Cluster in the Domain of Dread and using it as a kind of alternative Core, or even porting it elsewhere as its own D&D Dark Fantasy setting. The problem is, I've never actually done something like this, and especially when it comes to developing the Darklords, I could really use some help. So, if it's not impolite, I was hoping that maybe interested parties here could help me figure out how to turn this Cluster from a mess of idea seeds into a fully-fledged micro-setting, please?

I will warn folks outright that my Cluster is a lot less humanocentric than is the norm, but hopefully that shouldn't be too much of an impediment.

Right now, the Cluster is only a set of domain idea seeds, which I'll cover in shorthand below. There could be others added to this if things develop well, and frankly everything's up in the air at this point.

One "Cluster wide" element I should note; having backed the Chronicles of Aeres, I was very intrigued by that setting's unique halfling subrace, the Wanderlings, so I intend to fashion an expy of them to take the traditional role of the Vistani. In short; the "Mistlings" are halfling diviners and oracles whose ancestors were part of a mighty army that fought to preserve their world against a terrible army of evil forces. But, on the climatic day of battle, the Mistlings' ancestors were unnerved by the way their foresight failed them, save for vague but overwhelming premonitions of doom. Used to obeying Fate without thinking, their courage broke and they fled, abandoning their former allies to save themselves. As it turned out, the forces of light managed to beat back the forces of darkness, but it was a very near disaster, and so the gods of that world cursed the Mistlings for their treachery. Now they travel endlessly through the misty roads, trying to keep ahead of divine wrath, wanderers never permitted to know a home, not unless they surrender the one thing they still have to call their own: their powers of prophecy and divination.

I also want to include Dusk Elves - the original Dusk Elves, the cursed outcasts of elfin society damned by Corellon and Lolth alike for trying to stay neutral during the Kinstrife Wars, the elfin masters of shadow magic and illusion - but I'm not quite sure whether I should just leave them as enclaves or give them their own domain, maybe even doubling down on it as a realm of shadow-touched feyblooded beings.

Now, for the domain ideas proper...

Domain #1: Inspired by the lore of Vampire Queen Neferata from Warhammer Fantasy, this is a dense forested & mountain domain populated by barbarian tribes of humans. The Darklord is a vampire noble driven from a much more advanced civilization that she left burning in her wake, desperate to recreate her "enlightened" culture from the humans of this domain. However, whenever she does manage to get a city-state built, it only survives for a few decades to a century at most before it tears itself apart and the survivors scatter, reverting to post-apocalyptic barbarism. She keeps trying and failing, because she refuses to accept that the vampire-ruled necrocracy she wants to recreate is inherently doomed to fail.

Domain #2: Inspired by Marvel's High Evolutionary. The Darklord of this domain is a misanthropic fleshcrafter who hates humanity (and by extension "natural" humanoids) because he believes them to be inherently evil. In his realm, he continually attempts to create a "new man" by uplifting animals, only to find to his disgust that they share all the same faults and foibles as humanity, too consumed by his self-hatred to admit that they at least share humanity's virtues as well.

Domain #3: A mountainous domain of duergar inspired by a half-remembered dwarf legend I read in high school. The Darklord is a dwarf king who never wanted to be a king, but only to be a gardener, as he loved the beauty of flowers and fruits over gold and jewels. Now he is cursed to skulk forever in the darkness, forever cut off from the living beauty he yearned for, and trying to comfort himself with the cold echoes of that beauty wrought from the precious stones and metals his people dig up from the depths of the earth.

Domain #4: A blighted, poisonous, malformed forest, ala 3e Forlorn. Home to the cluster's goblinoids, which are not universally evil. Its Darklord was once a member of the forest gnome druidocracy that still clings to life here, but when humans threatened the forest in ancient days, she preached violent action. Though she led many of the younger gnomes to her cause, their guerilla warfare failed to end humanity's threat, and so she turned to dark rites, blurring primal and shadow magic. The result was the warping of the forest into its present unwholesome state, and the transformation of her and her followers into the first goblins (well, goblins, norkers, spriggans and bahkna rahkna, at least). Her curse is the forest's present state, which she finds ugly and depressing, but whenever she tries to seize the beautiful glades tended to by the defiant gnomes to bring them under her protection, they warp and twist until they are just as foul as the rest of the forest.

Domain #5: A realm of kobolds warped from gnomish stock, the unfortunate slaves of a gnome who transformed himself (herself?) into a dragon in pursuit of power, but now finds s/he is losing his (her) brilliant mind and devolving into just an animal.

Domain #6: A realm inspired by a mixture of the Forlorn (Forsaken?) Elves of Scarred Lands, the general "Dying Elves" trope, the historical existence of the Baelnorn and the Undying Court of Aerenal, and mythological blurring between elves and the undead. Basically, in this domain, we have an empire of elves who are literally dying out; their children are being stillborn with increasing severity and their nation is crumbling. To try and stave off oblivion, they have turned increasingly to necromancy, and are now ruled over by elite conclaves of liches and death knights. They also regard humans as fuel for their fires, whether that be by breeding half-elves to ensure the continuation of their blood or by sacrificing humans to fuel necromantic rites of preservation and longevity. Basically, a very Dark Souls esque "the end is coming, you cannot escape it, make peace with death" vibe. No idea who the Darklord here is.

Domain #7: A domain inspired by a mixture of Expedition Beyond the Barrier Peaks, TSR's adaptation of the Fraal (greys) from Alternity to D&D, and a dash of Kergall of Planet X from the 1966 Fantastic Four cartoon. The Darklord of this domain is an alien tyrant named Kergall, whose brutal rule over a foreign planet ended with the destruction of that planet and the condemnation of most of its population to oblivion in Kergall's rush to save himself. But his ship has crashed on this savage, primitive "world" and though he dreams of recreating his empire here, that dream is destined to fail. Most of his advanced alien magitek was destroyed in the crash, and for every device he manages to repair and get working again, something else goes wrong. His efforts to clone new generations of fraal slaves are not working properly; the incorporation of foreign gene-stock has not only led to strange mutations (in game terms, "fraals" are changelings from Eberron) but increased rebelliousness and assertiveness, which is only accelerating the "devolution" into tekno-barbarism of his failing colony. Even the robot enforcers (warforged) are starting to go rogue and turn against Kergall.

Domain #8: Inspired by a mixture of R.A. Salvatore's Powries from his non-Realms fantasy novels and the ancient lore on Dwarven Amazons tucked away in old-school D&D. An island domain of Nordic Dwarves who regularly raid the mainlaind to go a-Viking, dragging captives back for slavery and as fuel for dark druidic rites and bloody rituals. What makes these dwarven vikings unusual is that they are almost entirely women, as their own menfolk are infrequently born and often too mentally or physically degenerate to be useful. Basically, dwarves + vikings + House Escher. The Darklord of this domain could be either a misogynistic dwarf king who committed unspeakable acts to try and ensure he would have strong sons to continue his dynasty, or a tormented dwarf queen who sought to empower the females of the clans because she believed that doing so would bring peace and enlightenment to her people, only to learn the hard way that women can be as brutal and bloodthirsty as men.

...Aside from vague thoughts of doing a human magocracy realm ala Darkon, that's basically where my ideas end. So, yes, this is very rough and it needs a lot of development to make it functional as a Dark Fantasy setting, and that's before tackling the Darklords, but that's why I'm here and hoping that you guys may be willing to give me a hand to work on taking this coal and refining it into... well, very polished quartz, at least.

[The Lesser Evil]

Comments on the races:
On the origins of your Mistlings, you may wish to keep their origin opaque given the nebulous nature of Ravenloft, through the existence of multiple creation stories/myths, to provide some differentiation between various sub-factions/groups within your Mistling society.

As for the dusk elves, how do the dusk elves relate to the elves of #6?

Comments on the domains:
General themes on this cluster seem to be humanoidkind's relationships to time, to nature, and to inter-social conflict. A lot of it centers around the darklord's regimes trying to control the basic social and/or ecological makeup of the world around them in fundamentally uncontrollable situations. So I might base a name for the cluster on something along these lines. Something like the Grinding Stones, the Land of Tattered Weaves, or some such.

Along these themes, I see some overlap between a number of these domains, as in techno/magic savy overlords trying to lord over a less so population, with some warping of the environment (social or physical) coming as part of their curse. Although it seems to be they could benefit from some further development to distinguish them, domain overlap isn't a necessarily bad thing in and of itself- as you can develop relationships between them that highlight differences. For example, how would the elves of #6 get along with #2's High Evolutionary? Would the former try to steal reproductive technology from the latter, or would they work together despite their opposing social goals but given their mutual hatred of humanity? (#6 trying to reverse change whereas #2 trying to force it). And #6 and #8 seems like they would by nature be old rivals, given their interests in maintaining their dying regimes.

As for comments on individual domains, #3 and #5 seem like they could be folded into/subsumed by #4, or perhaps be placed beneath it. Given some similar themes, it would make sense for them to come from the same world. #1s, 2 and 7 could also have come from the same world, perhaps at different points in the world's history.

With #6, I could see also see a lot of emphasis on decaying institutions- how do social institutions function without the necessary moral characters and mere numbers of people to sustain them. There'd also likely be some generational split. Many of the older elves might have a patriarchal view of the younger elves (and half-elves depending upon how "elf" they are considered) as needing to do obey the commands of the elders in order to keep elvenkind going. Whereas a significant amount of the younger ones (that live) may view the older ones as leading their people down the road to annihilation. And following following the Undying Court lore, many of the elder elves may have sought undeath and have outlasted many of their subsequent descendants, which could alienate some of the younger elves as it's seen as cheating the natural progression of cycles- not just in nature but also the transition of power from generation to generation.

Finally, I'd also see a lot of social tension in #6's elven society regarding the role of humans among the elves. The humans have a reproductive vitality the elves lack, but at the same time the elves are dependent upon them.

[Hell_Born]

Firstly, thank you so much for your post. It really made my day.

Comments on the races:
On the origins of your Mistlings, you may wish to keep their origin opaque given the nebulous nature of Ravenloft, through the existence of multiple creation stories/myths, to provide some differentiation between various sub-factions/groups within your Mistling society.

Good suggestion; what I provided in the opening post is just the basic "rationale" and was basically taken from the Wanderlings of Aeres, who likewise split from their Hinterling cousins during the last great war by choosing to flee rather than fight.

As for the dusk elves, how do the dusk elves relate to the elves of #6?

Definitely complex, though I'm making this up as I go along. Assuming the two elfin races came from the same origin world, the dusk elf's "treachery" would be kept alive by the hyper-conservative ghost elves... but at the same time, the dusk elves are "pure" elves who are showing no signs of breeding difficulties, meaning there would be ghost elves pushing to reconcile to try and acquire some of that strong blood for themselves.

General themes on this cluster seem to be humanoidkind's relationships to time, to nature, and to inter-social conflict. A lot of it centers around the darklord's regimes trying to control the basic social and/or ecological makeup of the world around them in fundamentally uncontrollable situations. So I might base a name for the cluster on something along these lines. Something like the Grinding Stones, the Land of Tattered Weaves, or some such.

Huh, I hadn't even noticed those themes. This was more of an "if I were making a Dark Fantasy D&D setting which stole the Darklords concept from Ravenloft, what would be some of the locales I'd end up with?" Thank you for bringing that to my attention, and those are some really awesome name suggestions.

Along these themes, I see some overlap between a number of these domains, as in techno/magic savy overlords trying to lord over a less so population, with some warping of the environment (social or physical) coming as part of their curse. Although it seems to be they could benefit from some further development to distinguish them, domain overlap isn't a necessarily bad thing in and of itself- as you can develop relationships between them that highlight differences. For example, how would the elves of #6 get along with #2's High Evolutionary? Would the former try to steal reproductive technology from the latter, or would they work together despite their opposing social goals but given their mutual hatred of humanity? (#6 trying to reverse change whereas #2 trying to force it). And #6 and #8 seems like they would by nature be old rivals, given their interests in maintaining their dying regimes.

Very salient points. These domains began as just a random thought stream, but I definitely want to build upon the potential for connections as they develop, since that's one of the things I most admire about 3e Ravenloft.

As for comments on individual domains, #3 and #5 seem like they could be folded into/subsumed by #4, or perhaps be placed beneath it. Given some similar themes, it would make sense for them to come from the same world. #1s, 2 and 7 could also have come from the same world, perhaps at different points in the world's history.

Interesting, although putting 3, 4 and 5 together could end up coming off as just "all the shortfolk domains should be one" if mishandled, as a word of caution.

With #6, I could see also see a lot of emphasis on decaying institutions- how do social institutions function without the necessary moral characters and mere numbers of people to sustain them. There'd also likely be some generational split. Many of the older elves might have a patriarchal view of the younger elves (and half-elves depending upon how "elf" they are considered) as needing to do obey the commands of the elders in order to keep elvenkind going. Whereas a significant amount of the younger ones (that live) may view the older ones as leading their people down the road to annihilation. And following following the Undying Court lore, many of the elder elves may have sought undeath and have outlasted many of their subsequent descendants, which could alienate some of the younger elves as it's seen as cheating the natural progression of cycles- not just in nature but also the transition of power from generation to generation.

Finally, I'd also see a lot of social tension in #6's elven society regarding the role of humans among the elves. The humans have a reproductive vitality the elves lack, but at the same time the elves are dependent upon them.

Oh, I definitely agree with both of these thoughts! The emphasis of the ghost elf domain was always the decay and the ennui, as well as the growing resentment and rage of the young crushed beneath the weight of the ages.

[Pizza]

I’d keep #3 separate if only because I am a dwarf fan, and we need more of them even if they are duergar.

My big quibble is the whole thing seems more tragedy than horror. The king is sympathetic because he’s sacrificing for a noble cause. And hey maybe that works. Maybe he’s even the ever so rare good aligned duergar who is doing this in hopes of restraining if not reforming his people’s worst urges.

Só here’s a few thoughts. It seems like one take I have read on the duergar is that part of the reason they hate other dwarves is that their works are purely utilitarian. There’s a lack of beauty there that other dwarves would include. The duergar know it, but they cannot fix it so they resent the other dwarves.

Our king tries to ease his longing for plants by holding contests for craftsmen to make works of art in the shape of flowers or other plants, but the problem is that the duergar’s inability to incorporate beauty in their work only makes such things even more pale imitations of the real thing than they otherwise would be. Well all except for the craftsman who wins each contest who makes flowers of gems and precious metals that are not only beautiful, but even seem to be alive in some way, putting forth buds, blooming, shedding petals, and repeating the cycle so long as they are planted like a proper flower. This of course leads most of the city to resent and despise this craftsman, a fellow duergar who can somehow remind them of their failings by incorporating beauty into his works.

There is a problem in this city though. Women, indeed the most beautiful women of the land, disappear with frightening regularity. Our craftsman of course is living a double life. He is kidnapping and sacrificing these women in some sort of ritual infusing his normal duergar crafts with their beauty and life force. Still not sure anyone is really a dark lord there though, and the place needs a cool dwarven name.

[alhoon]

I would dare say that a king that seems decent and sympathetic only to slowly show his ugly side is good for Gothic horror. That the king wanted to be a gardener and loved flowers doesn't mean he wasn't evil or cruel. However, going by duergar standards there could be more there. The default Duergar king is evil; they are a greedy, evil race.
But this guy, probably because of his love of flowers and the surface - or what he assumed to be his love of surface as I assume he has been on the surface either never or once - is weird and detested even by his own kind thus, I think he could work.

[Mistmaster]

Maybe the king is not the darklord, he is good; and as such he is slowly turning his subject's ways; maybe the Ghost of the king's heavy traditionalistic father who cursed him on his dethabed, because he wanted turn the kingdom in a garden, is the Darklord.

[Pizza]

Maybe the king is not the darklord, he is good; and as such he is slowly turning his subject's ways; maybe the Ghost of the king's heavy traditionalistic father who cursed him on his dethabed, because he wanted turn the kingdom in a garden, is the Darklord.

What if the king is a lich, or he’s trying to cheat death some other way like bonding his soul into a golem a la the Silver Samurai in the movie The Wolverine so he can continue to rule in some form of undeath instead of letting an evil heir scene to the throne? Driven by good desires to do an evil thing hoping to accomplish good.

Or maybe all the previous kings have become ghosts of some sort and now our good king is elderly, and he faces the choice of joining them as the people expect or killing them off to end the cycle and protect his good heir from having to make the same choice?

[Hell_Born]

One thing I should have pointed out earlier, the original idea I had for the duergar domain is that the dwarves native to it originally weren't duergar, but instead were warped into duergar-analogous dwarves by the darklord's curse; it further emphasizes just how cut off he or she is from the beauties of the surface world and its green growing things that he once loved.

But, I have to admit, considering that duergar were presented as culturally loathing beauty due to the influence of the brutal theocracy of Laduguer, God of Tyranny and Slavery, as their patron god in 3e's Ecology of the Duergar, maybe starting from a duergar basis would be better...

[alhoon]

I don't think it is necessarily better. I think it is easier.

The dwarves getting cursed to become duergar, little by little like following a kingdom-encompassing Dark Powers Track is thematic I think. A few of them could have been cursed in other ways, becoming golden-haired and pale, creating a cut like the Rashemani and Mulan.

[Hell_Born]

So, I've been thinking about the vampire queen's domain and I've been contemplating: what if she has tried multiple different iterations of her vampiric formula, resulting in the creation of several distinct races that can be seen in this domain as monsters or, perhaps, even as player characters?

Let me try to elaborate on this... in Warhammer lore, Queen Neferata is literally the first vampire, having reverse-engineered the arcane elixir that transforms mortals into vampires from a discarded prototype life-extending formula created by Nagash, the first necromancer. The domain's basic concept also reminds me of Nosgoth from the videogame Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver, which presents a realm inhabited by several different monstrous species of vampire that represent the devolved, mutated descendants of the vampire clans who ruled over the realm a thousand years ago.

So, what I'm thinking is that this domain's Darklord, whilst still wanting to recreate her original vampiric necrocracy, experiments with different permutations of the formula. Thus, each "cycle" gives rise to a new kind of vampire - which is subsequently abandoned and left to its own devices afterwards. Without her direct favor, these vampiric strains could devolve into something less like a vampire and more like a monstrous humanoid, and this "fall from grace" could inspire individuals to actively work against the darklord.

For example, one of the cycles could have seen the birth of the Striges; blood-sucking owl-shifter vampires. But now that their time has passed, what you have instead is a kind of dhampir/harpy hybrid, which now lurks bitterly in the wilderness, preying on the undead minions of the darklord out of jealousy and rage for how their ancestors were "tricked" and "abandoned". Another cycle might have seen the creation of lamias, or empusae.

Is there potential here? Because I think there is, but I admit I'm not the best judge, even if I am going for more of a Dark Fantasy vibe here.

[Hell_Born]

So, yeah, I'm sorry to post here without anything particularly meaningful, but I really have no idea how to even begin working on this project on my own. Help, please? I really want to do this because I feel guilty that I have spent so long accentuating what I don't like about Ravenloft when I've always had this option to literally go and make my own "alternative to the Core" mega-cluster to focus on the parts of Ravenloft that I like.

[tomokaicho]

Start with one domain. You've overwhelmed yourself with the scope of the project.

[Hell_Born]

Makes sense. Are there any preferences here? I figure working from a starting point that others are interested in will help, because I can pretty much orientate myself from any of the domains.

If forced to pick... I would probably start with either the Vampire Queen's domain or the Ghost Elf domain...