Darklords that you've killed in your games

[Willowhugger]

A nice little place to talk about Darklords you've killed in your games and how...

Gwydion- While not destroyed, the Shadow Rift adventure I made the Obsidian gate "blow up" and thus it was assumed he's trapped forever and no longer the Lord of the Domain.

Thus Lohlt is now The "Crippled Lord"

I made Gwydion also a Tuatha De Daanan, in effect I used the rules for "Titans." and I also made i clear that Gwydion was following a very alien morality but it was the same morality as the fey so they were the betrayers, not he.

Trissentia- I tied her death directly into the Shadow Rift plotline. Instead of a Necropolis, I had the village in her land alive and well (except for now being transformed into changelings).

The Villagers in Keening all believe in a "Lottery" (taken from the story of that name) that every newborn in a year must have one of them offered up to Trissentia so that she will not go hunting for her baby this year.

The players lost a member but destroyed her when they found the skulls of so many infants in her land.

Keening simply became part of the Hags domain with very little change. Oddly, the place is now filled with hundreds of babies' ghosts as some weird effect has resulted in all of the children coming back and wanting 'mommies'

Urik von Kharocov- I basically ran Fevlovic's cat as it was, though I added the urgency that his latest bride was actually one of the PC's sister who'd been abandoned by a bard in that area.

After Urik was killed, I had the realm fall into the hands of Alfred Timothy whose werewolves renegades have gone to Pantara castle and taken it over to become "civilized"

Alfred can't assail them because his men aren't equipped to fight "Civilized" foes

Vlad Dracov- He will soon join them in our games. Basically, the PCs have been working with the "free Falknovians" and Gongela's group (rather like the Marquis and Terrorists unfortunately) while elminating Vlad's lieuetnants (almost all of them are his direct children)

His death will only mean the corruption of Gondegal though. Eventually, I'm thinking of adding the Shadowborn Cluster to the edge of Falknovia and have Elana Faithhold made a Duchess who "resisted" Dracov according to her not exactly 'trustworthy' memories.

[Jester of the FoS]

All my darklord deaths tended to occur early on in my DMing carreer when I was still writing... stuff that was not-so-good. And that is being terribly generous.
I threw the players against far too many darklords and they knew far too well what the lords were. They found them far too easily and things went far too smoothly for them most of the time. Kinda sad really. But I was 15 at the time and had pretty much self-taught myself dungeon mastering.

Now I so seldom put the players up against lords and never tell them they even exist.

Of course in a break from my current campaign I ran my group through House of Strahd with some expendable characters and they managed to take him out remarkably easy (blundering into the Sunsword and other fun toys and luckily avoiding all the cool traps).

[Willowhugger]

As a rule, I tend to treat the Dark Lords as villains in my campaign that aren't meant to be destroyed but I will treat the players to standard odds if they are willing to oppose them.

The Dark Powers, in my games at least, have no desire to protect the Lords from destruction save for a very few (oddly Strahd is not one of them) and even that is able to be gotten around.

The PCs if they have a proper plan and it fits the story can indeed oppose and destroy the Dark Lords, since the Dark Powers know that there's always another evil that can take their place.

The difference is though that opposing some lords is just FRACKING STUPID.

Azalin and Strahd are so powerful and intelligent that opposing them will almost certainly be akin to suicide. Alfred Timothy is a different matter though and if you can catch him alone, that's a different story.

Even then, below Alfred, there are some Lords who are only MEANT for a one time encounter.

The list of them to me includes

Monette
Tiyet
I'Cath's Empress
Staunton Bluff's Lord
The Darklord of the Sea of Sorrows
King Crocodile
The Lady of Ravens
Madame Radanavich
Ebonbane
The House of Lament
The Phantom Lover

Plenty of "Darklords" who exist less to provide story info but to be destroyed and simply have nifty powers.

[Jester of the FoS]

Agree, and when I review products like that I come down harshly. The kill-the-lord & escape story was old the first three times it appeared. But it's been the basis for everything from House of Strahd and beyond...

[Willowhugger]

There's nothing wrong per say with Lords that exist only to be killed or modules that whose purpose is to be the destruction of the Lord in question when its done.

It's a canned adventure and the death of the villain is usually the best way to resolve these sorts of things. Most players would feel cheated if they were directly opposing Arijana and then have him narrowly escape.

Recurring villains are good but you can have too many of them and some players are like the Knights of the Dinner Table and won't rest until they or their foe are dead.

I do think that most would agree though that plenty of Darklords who are "one shot, one kill" would have better had their page count spent in Lords who can be used in other ways.

Ironically, I advocate alot of Island Lords being incorporated into clusters and cores for this very reason.

[Stygian Inquirer]

Recurring villains are good but you can have too many of them and some players are like the Knights of the Dinner Table and won't rest until they or their foe are dead.

There are some Darklords like that. In fact, two sessions ago in my campaign, the party 'killed' Harkon Lukas, but they left before he could come back in a new wolf's transformed body.

Other Darklords like that that I can think of off the top of my head are: Death, Hazlik, and Malken (kind of).

[Willowhugger]

Death has the excuse, despite his cruddy origin (unless you believe Death possessed Llowyn Dachine-in my games, he's actually a Dark Power made manifest)

And there's no problem with some DLs being incredibly hard to kill. Hazilik's no harder to kill than your average Lich....he just doesn't seem dead.

Harkon Lucas' immortality is harder to justify but darnit if he's not too much fun to kill.

[tec-goblin]

Well, considering final death, the darklords that were killed IMCs are:
1)A serial killer in Paridon (before the doppelganger took his place)
2)The ghost in the gryphon hill (I forget his name now, I just woke up).
3) Death. It wasn't that difficult. He was killed by a holy word++ a portal to positive plane opened in the middle of Necropolis, cleansing it permanently (the whole issue involved a huge BOOM)

[Darkknight]

Only have on DL dead and it was back in 2e. I always hated Markov.. Just pissed me off for what ever reason. Ran neither man nor beast... And thankfully the pc's killed him.

Campaign note, a red dragon had forced the PC's into the mists and this creature became the new DL. Now rats steal his treasure at every turn. He is unable to leave the island to attack ships and there is l;ittle treasure on the island... Thus his madness is slowly eroding on him. He has no control over weather, he can only hope that ships crash of their own accord.

Rarely do I have PC's and Dl's go at it.

[Jack of Tears]

I killed off and replaced all my lords, aside from Strahd, Mordenheim, Tristan Ap'Blanc and Soth. (and the nightmare court, I guess)

Basically, I got to a point ... about the time of the grand conjunction ... where I didn't care for the way the setting was going and just decided to remake it as I saw fit.

I am much happier with the way things are now ... plus, I have the added benefit of not having to worry about my players learning too much from published material.

[William Blackmoor]

My players (who were under a geas not to hurt catlike creatures ) were present at the destruction of Arijani. His mother took his place (believing herself to be an avatar of Kali) but the populace still believes Arijani rules the Land.

[Cole Deschain]

Lessee...

Gabrielle Aderre got offed when the PCs seriously screwed the pooch in a mission she'd sent them on and led Malocchio's entire friggin army to her doorstep.

So, Little Lord Hatey-Pants got to kill Mommy... only to find himself doubly imprisoned within Invidia, with the added curse that he will never completely subjugate his lands.



Dominic D'Honaire ran afoul of a particularly tough batch of characters, including a sickeningly lucky mage who simply kept making his save, and who was crazy enough that he had no problem burning Dominic's house down in broad daylight. This wizard went around destroying Dominic's safehouses, tracking him by the simple expedient of sending his familiar (a rat) for a ride in D'Honaire's carriage, eventually leading to D'Honaire's death at the hands of agents of the Living Brain, who took over.

Of course, the party had to leave Dementlieu in a hurry, since commiting arson is looked upon fairly severely... But that's what D'Honaire gets for brainwashing one of their most valued associates into trying to kill them.



Urik Von Kharkov met his end a la Felkovic's Cat. Since most of his vampire cronies had also been wiped out, I had a werepanther assume politcal leadership, while a hag of my own devising became the darklord.


Bluebeard? Dead. And not too impressively, either.

Now, the death of Markov... that was one I rather enjoyed. Mostly because my players were sweating bullets the entire time, and it really could have gone the other way, if just one of their contingencies had failed.

[Yaoi Huntress Earth]

The list of them to me includes

Tiyet
I'Cath's Empress
Staunton Bluff's Lord
The Darklord of the Sea of Sorrows
King Crocodile
The Lady of Ravens
Madame Radanavich
Ebonbane
The House of Lament
The Phantom Lover

I think The Phantom Lover has potiental to become a sneaky and powerful adversary if DMed right. You have a DL that can travel almost anywhere and seduce your loved ones only to take them away or turn them against you by the time you realize what's going on. If you ruined his plans, I have a feeling he'd have a very vengeful streak to him.

[Charney]

In my games, the only dead darklords are those who died in cannon.
Gundar, Radanavich and Radaga

[The_God_Brain]

In Ravenloft games in the past, the PCs have killed Kharkov then later had to find a way to bring him back and destroy Lady Adeline, who became the Darklord after him. They also killed/destroyed, Ebonbane, which was so easy that the characters could hardly believe he was actually a darklord. They have fought and defeated (but not killed) a darklord I invented (or rather, adapted from a non-Ravenloft module) called The Wraith King.