Where next?

[cure]

I grant that it seems to be less popular than the Shadow Virus, still I insist that we not ignore my suggestion of a Gazetteer on The Musarde River and its Tributaries.

The point being both something old and something new. Nearly nothing has been written of life and death on and along the key artery of the Western Core and any thing that might be written would go a long way towards fully fleshing out Lamordia, Falkovnia, Dementilieu, Richemolet, Mordant, Borca, Verbrek, Invidia, Sithicus and Kartakass.

Imagine a voyage from Southern Kartakass all the way to the Sea of Sorrows.

We know there are pleasure boats that would make the trip every year to Carnival in Invidia, but we know next to nothing of dangers along the banks, beneath the waters, above in the trees, and especially near or in the ports. With what frequency are other boats well or ill met upon these waters none have even speculated.

Upon quitting Sithicus for Invidia we know only of Timothy and his steamer. Is it unique? Is it typical? How far up river and how far down river do he and, we presume, his rivals venture? What do they carry and for whom? What dead have they left to haunt the waters and to claim the unwary?

Verbrek insofar as it is human clings to the Musarde, yet we know so little of its docks and its captains. Surely it isn't simply the private preserve of Timothy . . .

The merchants of Borca to say nothing of the government are surely passionate about squeezing every last copper possible from those who ply the river. But we have heard nary a word of this.

Richemolut is built on the Muscarde from one end to the other. Might not her river rats be the great sailors of the Musarde from end to end? Or do the wolfweres command the head, the werewolves the middle, and the wererats the lower reaches?

We know something of life on the rivers inside of Mordant but nothing of life on the river that defines her Eastern frontier.

Falkovnia and her neighbours must have war barges and other devices obvious and subtle for the Musarde is the great frontier between them.

Is Dementilieu really as indifferent to the Musarde as she seems?

And Lamordia, the terminus of the great river, must be defined in large part by this fact, to say nothing of the horrors that lurk in the great river delta.

In brief, the key hurdle to and means of communication and travel in the lands of the Western Core awaits us. The Musarde divides and unites many of our favour domains and thus is most worthy of our attention.

[Faust]

The sea would be the best idea. I mean sure we had almost no adventure hook for the seas but this is because almost nothing has been written on them.

My second vote would be the wildland(yes I do like tlaking animals and yes the wildlands can be used to be make a good adventure and even a good campaign).

[Undead Cabbage]

Idea for cure,

Chances are, if the Sea ia voted in, it will probably be based more on the area around the core, as opposed to the river. I say this because it would seem that most people interested in doing the seas are pointing towards Liffe, and the like.

However, I will give your ideas some merit. You're right, an adventure along the river would be cool. Have you thought about producing a net book for it? It sounds like you've got a good handle of some ideas for it .

[Jonathan Winters]

I think the ideas around the rivers, pirates and boats are all very good!

But, unless I am mistaken, they do not serve the idea of covering the domains...

That being said, this would make a very good book by itself!

Patrick

[cure]

You're right, an adventure along the river would be cool. Have you thought about producing a net book for it? It sounds like you've got a good handle of some ideas for it .

The idea had occured to me and I confess to having been tempted by it. Part of the motivation for doing it AND for not doing it is tied to canon and in particular the contradictions and/or ommissions in it. For example, Timothy is depicted both as having a nearly ignorable craft, somewhat consistent with the unimportance of the Musarde as an artery for transporting goods and people, and as captaining a great steam paddleboat, consistent with the Musarde being a highly developed corridor. Equally, the river descriptions in the Gazetteers show strong evidence of having been thought up independently of one another even though they were in fact describing one river. As I recall, for example, the Invidian description suggests that traders do go up river across Barovia and into Kartakass, but the lake that would be their destination is described in the Kartakan entry as having absolutely nothing to warrent such interest. So there are problems to fix, or at least to clarify, but ideally with some authoritativeness so that a netbook does not simply multiply the contradictions.

I do not have a Musarde spanning adventure in mind, at least at this point. And I would personally be more interested in a Gazetter like treatment of the river than in one or more adventures set along it. Still one or more adventures wherein the Musarde was much more than simply background would have merit, especially if they spanned more than one domain since my whole point is that the river must be thought of and treated as an integrated whole that to some extent has its own laws and escapes the complete control of individual domain lords.

One adventure I do have in mind would involve a trip from Skald in southern Kartakass in the company of revelers headed to Karina's Carnival in Invidia. The purpose of the trip would be to escort to Verbrek a beautiful but sickly, unwitting Barovian spy who Lukas has commissioned (under duress of enchantment and as repayment for 'liberating' her from months of imprisonment by beasts at the Kartakan inn) as his ambassador to Alfred. The official subject of discussion is contained in a sealed letter wherein Lukas proposes a truce between his 'people' and Alfred's 'people' plying the Musarde river. But the woman also bears as a gift a bottle of poisoned muckelberry wine with a sealed note from Lukas to Timothy stating that it is sure to improve the latter's howling. Lukas does not believe in the possibility of a truce and expects the poison to be detected. But he hopes that in a rage the werewolf lord imprudently devours the woman whose blood has been slowly laced with massive quantities of wolvesbane. The party must uncover the plot lest they put themselves and the woman in Alfred's power. Those working against the successfull delivery of the woman to Alfred include a renagade wolfwere who mistakenly believes that Lukas is genuinely seeking to open diplomatic relations with werewolves, a second Barovian spy charged with determining the fate of the first, and agents of Sithicis, Invidia, and Richemulot put on the trail of the party by the second Barovian spy. There is also an agent of Lukas charged with seeing, by all means necessary, that the party completes its mission. All of these individuals prefer to cloak any attacks behind the mask of the 'natural' dangers of the Musarde and its ports so discovering the machinations will not be easy. The best clues may lie in the tortured dreams of the young woman who labours under conflicting enchantments from Lukas and Strahd, to say nothing of the memory of the imprisonment by beasts and the effects of the wolvesbane in her blood.

I do not have the time to personally do much with this let alone the idea of a netbook for the next half year or so.

Still the idea, in particular, of shapechangers that are strong swimmers (wolfweres, werewolves, and wererats) being significant forces on different parts of the river, with Invidia and Borca as the flashpoints between them, seems promising and worthy of development.

[Gemathustra]

There's only one problem with your river adventure, in that, a lethal dose of wolfsbane kills a person very quickly, and the symptoms of a non-lethal dose of wolfsbane are very obvious (hallucinations, coma, then death).

[cure]

There's only one problem with your river adventure, in that, a lethal dose of wolfsbane kills a person very quickly, and the symptoms of a non-lethal dose of wolfsbane are very obvious (hallucinations, coma, then death).

Well five points:
credible or not, tolerence was slowly built up to the wolfsbane over the course of months (indeed their is a feat for this in the Legacy of Blood);
human tolerance of wolfsbane is presumed to be far higher than lupin tolerence, wolfsbane being an allergen for werewolves and wolfweres;
hallucinations from a non-lethal dose in a human are an excellent addition, whereas coma far less so, and death from a non-lethal dose would of course be a contradiction in terms;
more inconveniently the person may actually have been chosen, after repeated failed attempts, because of an unusual natural tolerence;
or at worst it can be fudged through magical modification or a magical item yielding such tolerence.

In all honesty, I think the initial justification suffices, but the addition of hallucinations is perfect. I suppose the woman could even be half-Barovian and half-Borcan but that seems an unnecessary complication.

[Ail]

There's only one problem with your river adventure, in that, a lethal dose of wolfsbane kills a person very quickly, and the symptoms of a non-lethal dose of wolfsbane are very obvious (hallucinations, coma, then death).

Well five points:
credible or not, tolerence was slowly built up to the wolfsbane over the course of months (indeed their is a feat for this in the Legacy of Blood);
human tolerance of wolfsbane is presumed to be far higher than lupin tolerence, wolfsbane being an allergen for werewolves and wolfweres;
hallucinations from a non-lethal dose in a human are an excellent addition, whereas coma far less so, and death from a non-lethal dose would of course be a contradiction in terms;
more inconveniently the person may actually have been chosen, after repeated failed attempts, because of an unusual natural tolerence;
or at worst it can be fudged through magical modification or a magical item yielding such tolerence.

In all honesty, I think the initial justification suffices, but the addition of hallucinations is perfect. I suppose the woman could even be half-Barovian and half-Borcan but that seems an unnecessary complication.

I like this idea very much, and the justifications seem enough to me. I also like the idea of the Book of Waterways, if I may call it so. I don't have much use for it at the moment, safe that I'm hoping to put Larissa Snowmane in my adventure in a river in the very middle of the Core, and would like to know it possible for her to sail from there to the open sea and vice-versa.

Ail

[Samael Hands of Stone]

I guess I should throw in my two cents since this appears to be a hot topic.

I would love to see new material become available on Forlorn and Verbrek, realms that in my mind are in desperate need of "beefing-up". While I understand the need for mystery, I've always found these two realms severly underdeveloped and kind of just sitting there for no particular reason. It would be nice to give them some life.

Also, taking a note from aforementioned concepts of river-ways and such, it might be cool to conceieve a comprehensive guide to all of the Core's documented (and even secret) trade routes, with all the stories, anecdotes and npc's that such information should imply. A brief overview of the major companies or groups that control the trade, the rivalries, etc. This supplement could encompass the water-ways and beyond.

just some ideas...

[Ail]

I guess I should throw in my two cents since this appears to be a hot topic.

I would love to see new material become available on Forlorn and Verbrek, realms that in my mind are in desperate need of "beefing-up". While I understand the need for mystery, I've always found these two realms severly underdeveloped and kind of just sitting there for no particular reason. It would be nice to give them some life.

There's little chance that Forlorn is done, since it appeared in Gaz 1.
I however like to have some humans living actually in Forlorn, and not only druids.

Ail

[cure]

Also, taking a note from aforementioned concepts of river-ways and such, it might be cool to conceieve a comprehensive guide to all of the Core's documented (and even secret) trade routes, with all the stories, anecdotes and npc's that such information should imply. A brief overview of the major companies or groups that control the trade, the rivalries, etc. This supplement could encompass the water-ways and beyond.

Ultimately, this is precisely what I want too and it - as much as contradictions with the canon and a fondness for water - motivate my idea of looking at the Musarde.

The domain by domain approach to rivers, roads, and trade generally has been a miserable failure. There has been no coherence to it what so ever. Best of luck trying to divine what a highway man or pirate would be robbing unless it is wheat from Falkovnia.

As to secret trade routes, there are weapons flowing to the Gundarakan resistance from Kartakass and perhaps Sithicus, in the opposite direction there is a flow of goods liberated from Barovians by the resistance, there are weapons flowing to the Invidian resistance through Borca and perhaps Barovia, there are weapons (probably Falkovnian) flowing to Malocchio in Invidia up the Musarde, likewise there are Falkovnian troops making the same trip, there are horse stealers irking out a living smuggling horses out of Nova Vasa into Hazlik, Barovia, Tempest, and Darkon, I believe that the wolfweres are smuggling something (probably weapons for the Invidian resistance) out of northern Kartakass on the Wolf Song river, there are hints of a path, fit for mules, traversing southern Barovia and thus bypassing Strahd's poisonous mist, I suspect poisonous plants or poisons based on them from Forlorn are smuggled across Kartakass to the Gundarakan resistance, and there is an abandoned dwarven road leading into the Mountains of Misery that sees a slight traffic consisting of crazed men who treat with the abominations that drove the dwarves out.

[Samael Hands of Stone]

Also, taking a note from aforementioned concepts of river-ways and such, it might be cool to conceieve a comprehensive guide to all of the Core's documented (and even secret) trade routes, with all the stories, anecdotes and npc's that such information should imply. A brief overview of the major companies or groups that control the trade, the rivalries, etc. This supplement could encompass the water-ways and beyond.

As to secret trade routes, there are weapons flowing to the Gundarakan resistance from Kartakass and perhaps Sithicus, in the opposite direction there is a flow of goods liberated from Barovians by the resistance, there are weapons flowing to the Invidian resistance through Borca and perhaps Barovia, there are weapons (probably Falkovnian) flowing to Malocchio in Invidia up the Musarde, likewise there are Falkovnian troops making the same trip, there are horse stealers irking out a living smuggling horses out of Nova Vasa into Hazlik, Barovia, Tempest, and Darkon, I believe that the wolfweres are smuggling something (probably weapons for the Invidian resistance) out of northern Kartakass on the Wolf Song river, there are hints of a path, fit for mules, traversing southern Barovia and thus bypassing Strahd's poisonous mist, I suspect poisonous plants or poisons based on them from Forlorn are smuggled across Kartakass to the Gundarakan resistance, and there is an abandoned dwarven road leading into the Mountains of Misery that sees a slight traffic consisting of crazed men who treat with the abominations that drove the dwarves out.

Is this information above canon or are you surmising that these routes exist based on canon source material?

[cure]

Where does canon begin and where does canon end, a question more poignant still since a publisher may never print a single new word . . . .

The Invidian resistance is canon. The Falkovnians in Karina is canon. Falkovnians backing up Malocchio is canon I believe. I cannot see Borca permitting Falkovnian soldiers to cross its territory or arms for them, so that leaves smuggling up the Musarde as the only logical path. I can see Borca quietly supporting the enemies of Malocchio and his Falkovian allies however. Lord Gundarak's policy on weapons from canon means that there is a desperate lack of them for resisting Strahd's forces. They cannot come from Invidia because they are needed there. The frontier with Borca will be too well guarded and is too far away to service the needs of those in southern former Gundarak in any case. Hence weapon smuggling from Kartakass and in exchange for loot from Barovia makes eminent sense. Similar trade with Sithicus is far more speculative. Similar trade for weapons with the remains of humanity in and around Forlorn seems unlikely. But the poisons of Forlorn, which are canon, would be invaluable to a resistance movement. Wolfwere's running them to the Barovian border would be easy money and sometimes easy prey. To be clear, there should be a trail or trails paralleling to the West the guarded road joining Kartakass and Barovia. As to smuggling on the Wolfsong river, this is an attempt to resolve a contradiction in canon. The Kartakan entry in the Gazeeteer says there is nothing of significance at the head waters of the Wolf Song in northern Kartakass. The Invidian entry says there is trade up this river. So it must be smuggling and by someone who can disappear into the woods of Kartakass, hence wolfweres. It also explains the story about the sea monster in the lake, an attempt to scare people off.

Horse smuggling from Invidia is a logical conclusion from canon. The Vistani has agreed a deal not to do this, but others would, less efficiently, pick up the slack. The demand across the core for these horses is canon. The Nova Vassan policy that only those that cannot reproduce may be exported is canon.

The mule trail through southern Barovia around Sawtooth is borrowed from http://www.gryphonhill.com/barovia/maps.html. The hamlets that it strings together are canon as are their (approximate) locations.

The abandonned dwarven road might or might not have some basis in canon. The Mountains of Misery would seem a natural place for the dwarves of Darkon but in fact they shun them. Yes there is Ebb, but she is new. I take the canon Cult of the Dark Mother and assume that this cult has just scratched the (sub-)surface. Ravenloft dwarves are proficient not in fighting orcs but rather abominations for it is they that drove the dwarves out. This proficiency is from the Fraternity forum. For me the Mountains of Misery have an older dwarven name that translates as the Mountains of Madness. It is my tribute to Lovecraft in the Core. Thus we have a trickle of crazed magicians, alcolytes, and slaves who tend to the unfathomable desires of what lurks just out of sight.

[Samael Hands of Stone]

So they are logical deductions based on canon source material, got it. Thanks.

[Shoon VII]

finish off the Core by exploring the seas and islands around it.