Lamest Dark Lord, and Possible Fixes...

[Ail]

As for Tristessa, I don't know, Banshees are a Gaelic creation. Banshee is just an anglicization of Bean-Sìdhe, I believe.

La Llorona was just a common ghost.

Alex

[WolfKook]

As for Tristessa, I don't know, Banshees are a Gaelic creation. Banshee is just an anglicization of Bean-Sìdhe, I believe.
La Llorona was just a common ghost.

Hehehehe... Yeap. It's true. But, beside filling the Banshee archetype, the story (and name) of Tristessa still has some similarities to La Llorona.

BTW, I completely forgot about The Illithid Brain-God and (a special mention to) the Marikith Queen! They seem completely hopeless! (I haven't finished the Zherisian Gazetteer yet, but though I have high hopes in the brothers of the FoS, I don't really expect miracles...)

[BigBadQDaddy]

Okay, I got a total waste:

Malus of Nosos.

Just the fact that the only illustration of this D-bag appears in DoD and he looks like Billy Zane.
His whole schtick is based off the Masque of The Red Death story by Edgar Allen Poe (which could have been cool as an adventure, not an Island of Terror).
His motivations are rediculous. I believe his father or mother or both where Druids and Malus rebelled and became an enviromentally targeting terrorist and destroyed there forest. His current sketch is he is just some wussy guy in a manor full other fops hanging out while his whole domain goes the way of some diseased infested industrial blight inhabited by friggin Otyug's for gods sake! Seriously, I mean, sure an Otyug can be kind of scary, but at the end of the day, it's a muppet eating a pile of feces.
Fortunatly, (correct me if i'm wrong) this waste never reappeared in and 3 or 3.5 edition book.

[LordGodefroi]

In regards to Drakov, I think the designers forgot a few things about his real-world analogue, Vlad The Impaler:

1) The Impaler was constantly at war because it was he who was constantly under siege or threat of siege by Turkish forces. He was a warlord by necessity not because he liked it. (OK, by necessity AND because he probably liked it.)

2) As a Catholic, The Impaler was at odds with the Muslims just across his border. Considering the multi-national reach of the Catholic church and the politics of the time, there's a religious element to The Impaler's foreign policy and warfare.

3) The Impaler also suffered from internal political strife as well as headaches from foreign invaders. The boyars all desired power and plotted against the Prince to gain political leverage.

4) The Impaler was quite moral in his own way. It's just that he was sadistic and draconian in his methods of punishment. (For example, there was an incident where he nailed the turbans to the heads of the Turkish ambassadors for their ill-mannered refusal to remove them in his presence. There was also the time The Impaler had a wife impaled for allowing her husband to go out in public shabbily dressed.)

In short, had Drakov been designed with a few of Vlad The Impaler's character traits or personal situations intact, he would have been not so one-dimensional.

DMs who want to beef up Vlad Drakov should read "In Search of Dracula: The History of Dracula and Vampires" by Radu Florescu and Raymond T. McNally and "Dracula: Prince of Many Faces" by the same authors.

[HuManBing]

So? Strahd did essentially the same thing, and without the decades of dreaming of wiping out a nation's-worth of enemies, to precede his fall.

I disagree. We already know Strahd was a general and battle hardened through many years' death and slaughter. The fact that his conquests are seen as helping the nation doesn't mean we should dismiss them entirely when considering why he might have attracted the DP's attention.

It's clear that it's not the magnitude of one's crimes that make you a darklord, but the motivations and character-flaws that drive you to commit them.

I agree. To some extent there must be an element of "the hell you carry within you" in order to make the DPs interested in you. A completely psychotic madman who knows no fear, frustration, or setbacks probably wouldn't arouse the DPs' interest as much as somebody who does. (This is one reason why Drakov's character, as currently portrayed, doesn't cut much ice with me.)

Just a note: it seems that your assertion there may be taken by readers to mean that the magnitude has nothing to do with the DPs' interest. And there I would disagree. I think magnitude of one's sins does factor in, but it's just that - one factor amongst many others. Definitely not irrelevant, but not dispositive either.

What I'm arguing is that a quantitative comparison of Hazlik to his surrounding Core Darklords leaves him somewhat wanting. He probably has enough evil, frustration, anger, and other Emotions That Lead To The Dark Side of the Force(TM) to warrant him becoming a darklord, and his actual sins are on par with what I might imagine an Island, Cluster, or Pocket Domain Lord might wield. But regardless of the "mens rea" test of the intent to do evil, Hazlik comes up short in the "actus reus" test of the act of doing evil.

It's possible that he committed many foul and depraved acts while experimenting as a Red Wizard. Or perhaps he ruined many an innocent's life while politicking and maneuvering. We'll never know, because TSR/WotC never mentioned it. (And with the disowning of Ravenloft by WotC's "cut off my nose to spite my face" licensing policies, we probably never will, given the Impenetrable Red Tape Domain Border between Faerun and Ravenloft now.) What I'm saying is that based on what we know and how it's been presented to us, Hazlik lacks the wholesale slaughter of Harkon Lukas, the brutal battlefield staking of Vlad Drakov, the wedding rampage of Strahd, and the systematic oppression of Azalin to make him on par with the domain lords.

The fact that he's gay seems introduced as an afterthought, perhaps to make his character more interesting. Its confusion with the background of WHY he's even in Ravenloft in the first place is very unclear and makes me wonder if it's meant to be part of his sin, or part of his punishment, or just completely tangential.

Given the sparseness of his background evils, it's a conceivable argument that he's being punished in part for his sexual preferences. Note that even august sources such as Dante Alighieri might echo this judgment - Dante even put his beloved former teacher on the seventh layer of hell, because although the teacher was otherwise an upright and noble person, he was a practicing homosexual.

Me not being Dante, however, I find that a little harsh. I'd argue that the Dark Powers would probably even allow gay marriage in Ravenloft, with the reasoning being that gay people have the right to be just as unhappy as the rest of us...

[Joël of the FoS]

In regards to Drakov, I think the designers forgot a few things about his real-world analogue, Vlad The Impaler

Just a quick note: designers never used 100% of one real world caracter to create any darklord. It's a common mistake to assume this.

Drakov, for example, was inspired by a mix of Vlad the Empaler, Stalin and Hitler, but surely the larger dose is fictious material.

Joël

[Undead Cabbage]

*pokes his head of his studies*
Hey guys, figured I'd swing by again and give my two cents.

For "lamest darklord", I'd probably say a bunch of the 'pocket' lords are tied for the booby-prize, IMO. Plenty of them were never developed beyond a one-shot appearance in "Darklords" or the "Book of Crypts", because TSR's Kargat knew they were pretty hopeless as written.

So true, it hurts to look back at those books.

Personally, other than already mentioned pocket lords, I don't care for von Kharkov very much.

That's cause he's black, ain't it? Naw, I always thought Kharkov was a tribute to the random garbage that sometimes gets produced in D&D as well.

Then you have what I think of as the passive darklords, the ones who don't "leave their mark" on their domain, as it were. Again, they vary widely in appeal and this group also varies broadly in power, but they don't exert that all-controlling influence over their own land: Lord Godefroy, Dominic d'Honaire (who kind of bridges the last two groups), the hags of Tepest, Gabrielle Aderre, Elena Faith-Hold, Sodo, Urik von Kharkov, Meredoth.

Very much have to disagree I'm afraid. At least for most of those.

Godefroy, d'Honaire, Aderre, Faith-hold, and Sodo all have great influence on their realms. It's simply a question of HOW they have influence.

Godefroy has spiritual control in Mordent, but figuratively and literally. The Mordentish DARE not disturb the House on Gryphon Hill, and live in constant fear of it's shadow. Although he doesn't do much to cause it, the Mordentish are ruled by superstition, which is why his Mansion largely remains intact (save one botched attempt at his life). Further more, Godefroy is gaining more control through his puppet, Daniel Fox Grove. In a literal sense, he's the lord of all ghosts in Mordent: you can't get more of a mark than that. He's just got better things to do than mess around with puny mortals that aren't worth his time, unless they happen to annoy him or he has a use for them of course.

d'Honaire OWNs Dementlieu, especially Port-a-Lucine, with the exception of the growing influence of Le Cerveau (The Brain). He owns it by actually capturing the minds of people, ruining their lives, weaving political games just for the heck of it. d'Honaire doesn't have to go beat any one with his bear hands: he has all of his obediants to do that for him. I don't see how you could make more of a mark than that.

Aderre's adultry is causing an Invidia wide revolution: enough said.

Faith-hold is the leader of a corrupt religious sect of Belenus that chokes the rights of Nidalan's daily. She's constantly re-instituting rules to weed out 'heretics', taking everything her people have in the name of her God. I don't see how that isn't exerting control over her lands.

And as for Sodo, he has a hand in a lot that goes on in Paridon, but very few actually know about it. He's the leader of all the Doppelgangers in Paridon, and uses them to strike fear into the hearts of it's people with the Bogeyman "Bloody Jack". I can see where he might be brushed off as a 'passive' character, since a lot of what he does depends on no one finds out he was involved, but I'd argue he's almost TOO active about controlling what goes on in his realm to a fault.

Remember: A Darklord need not physically be powerful, in order to leave their mark on their realm.

(This third group I essentially define by the question of, "If my adventure takes place in Domain X, will experienced Ravenloft players expect to brush against Darklord X therein?" Mordent adventures almost never involve Godefroy or Gryphon Hill; there's almost a cottage industry in them, especially driven by Godefroy's pre-Gaz III passivity. Conversely, if you go to Souragne you're probably going to encounter zombies or voudan or both, wererats in Richemulot, jackbooted medieval stormtroopers in Falkovnia, wolves of one sort or another in Kartakass and Verbrek, and so on.)

2e adventures, it's because they were all skewed towards the big favorites.

3e adventures, tended to be (but not always) less about the canon darklords, more on new foes (since DLs were no longer the 'boss' of the game).

And then, for my Darklord de Fromage, the Lamest, cheesiest Darklord

Azreal Dak/Inza.

How would I fix this?

Bring Pot head back.

[HuManBing]

But that would require us to contradict the only power known in the D&D universe to be stronger than the Dark Powers.

Namely, Weis and Hickman.

Forget it, man. Even the hordes of the abyss can't help you there.

[Nathan of the FoS]

But that would require us to contradict the only power known in the D&D universe to be stronger than the Dark Powers.

Namely, Weis and Hickman.

Forget it, man. Even the hordes of the abyss can't help you there.

There's always my solution: No Sithicus! No Sithicus, no problem.

[steveflam]

There's always my solution: No Sithicus! No Sithicus, no problem.

Booooooooooooooooooo! Some people like Sithicus Bring back the Death Knight! Azreal is my vote for lame DL as well.

[Brandi]

Okay, I got a total waste:

Malus of Nosos.

Just the fact that the only illustration of this D-bag appears in DoD and he looks like Billy Zane.
His whole schtick is based off the Masque of The Red Death story by Edgar Allen Poe (which could have been cool as an adventure, not an Island of Terror).

Actually, the real Masque of the Red Death riffs are in Sanguinia, where Ladislav Mircea appears to have earned his darklordship (using RLDMG's capsule summary here) by a self-serving forced quarantine a la Prospero, followed by the nasty addendum of performing medical experiments on his former friends to save himself.

Personally, I keep wanting to fuse Nosos with the world outlined in the Thief games, perhaps making Malus something more like the deranged Mechanist Karras, but I can't seem to quite put it together....

[Drinnik Shoehorn]

Okay, I got a total waste:

Malus of Nosos.

Just the fact that the only illustration of this D-bag appears in DoD and he looks like Billy Zane.
His whole schtick is based off the Masque of The Red Death story by Edgar Allen Poe (which could have been cool as an adventure, not an Island of Terror).

Actually, the real Masque of the Red Death riffs are in Sanguinia, where Ladislav Mircea appears to have earned his darklordship (using RLDMG's capsule summary here) by a self-serving forced quarantine a la Prospero, followed by the nasty addendum of performing medical experiments on his former friends to save himself.

Personally, I keep wanting to fuse Nosos with the world outlined in the Thief games, perhaps making Malus something more like the deranged Mechanist Karras, but I can't seem to quite put it together....

I always want to add Nosos to Zherisia.

[Jester of the FoS]

Well, 90% of the "lame" darklords seem to be the ones who only appeared in a single product and never had an adventure, novel or Gaz done for them.

Some lords are naturally "cool" and just scream out ideas. Other need to be coaxed or presented in a better light, some need better lands and hooks. I'm sure there were some pathetic lords redeemed by the Gaz and we at the Fraternity hope to continue that tradition.

[Sylaire]

Oooh, debate!

Personally, other than already mentioned pocket lords, I don't care for von Kharkov very much.

That's cause he's black, ain't it? Naw, I always thought Kharkov was a tribute to the random garbage that sometimes gets produced in D&D as well.

What I liked about von Kharkov was that he started out as a panther. The true pathos of his condition was very nicely set out in his short story in Tales of Ravenloft. No matter what he does or what good or evil he might commit, he always carries with him the knowledge that a life of peace (mentally speaking), without compulsions warring with intellect, instincts warring with greater motives, had once been his and has been forever taken away.

Then you have what I think of as the passive darklords, the ones who don't "leave their mark" on their domain, as it were. Again, they vary widely in appeal and this group also varies broadly in power, but they don't exert that all-controlling influence over their own land: Lord Godefroy, Dominic d'Honaire (who kind of bridges the last two groups), the hags of Tepest, Gabrielle Aderre, Elena Faith-Hold, Sodo, Urik von Kharkov, Meredoth.

Very much have to disagree I'm afraid. At least for most of those.

Godefroy, d'Honaire, Aderre, Faith-hold, and Sodo all have great influence on their realms. It's simply a question of HOW they have influence.

Godefroy has spiritual control in Mordent, but figuratively and literally. The Mordentish DARE not disturb the House on Gryphon Hill, and live in constant fear of it's shadow. Although he doesn't do much to cause it, the Mordentish are ruled by superstition, which is why his Mansion largely remains intact (save one botched attempt at his life). Further more, Godefroy is gaining more control through his puppet, Daniel Fox Grove. In a literal sense, he's the lord of all ghosts in Mordent: you can't get more of a mark than that. He's just got better things to do than mess around with puny mortals that aren't worth his time, unless they happen to annoy him or he has a use for them of course.

d'Honaire OWNs Dementlieu, especially Port-a-Lucine, with the exception of the growing influence of Le Cerveau (The Brain). He owns it by actually capturing the minds of people, ruining their lives, weaving political games just for the heck of it. d'Honaire doesn't have to go beat any one with his bear hands: he has all of his obediants to do that for him. I don't see how you could make more of a mark than that.

Aderre's adultry is causing an Invidia wide revolution: enough said.

Faith-hold is the leader of a corrupt religious sect of Belenus that chokes the rights of Nidalan's daily. She's constantly re-instituting rules to weed out 'heretics', taking everything her people have in the name of her God. I don't see how that isn't exerting control over her lands.

And as for Sodo, he has a hand in a lot that goes on in Paridon, but very few actually know about it. He's the leader of all the Doppelgangers in Paridon, and uses them to strike fear into the hearts of it's people with the Bogeyman "Bloody Jack". I can see where he might be brushed off as a 'passive' character, since a lot of what he does depends on no one finds out he was involved, but I'd argue he's almost TOO active about controlling what goes on in his realm to a fault.

Remember: A Darklord need not physically be powerful, in order to leave their mark on their realm.

No argument there. Heck, Mordenheim started out as a 0-level human. What I really mean, and perhaps I expressed it badly, is, does the darklord define his/her/its domain or does he/she simply live in it. Or, expressed differently, does the domain have a life, a culture, without the darklord?

I'm not saying, for example, that Godefroy (especially in the third edition) doesn't extend himself out and affect the lives of people in his domain. What I'm saying is that Godefroy is more of a symptom of the greater character of Mordent. Mordent is a land of mists and moors, hag-ridden with ghosts. Godefroy...is simply the biggest, baddest of the ghosts that haunts the place. I'm going to go grab the Black Box, because it's got the best quote to express my point...

Okay, here we go: "When Strahd and Azalin left, Lord Godefroy was the most powerful evil force in the area. He became its lord, and his powers increased."

See what I mean? Yes, Godefroy is a powerful evil entity, but the domain of Mordent is not an express reflection of his nature--indeed, he reflects it. Similarly, Dementlieu's culture does not reflect d'Honaire's mind-control powers; rather if anything it gives him an appropriate politically-and-socially-complex setting to use them in. If d'Honaire and the Living Brain fried each others' synapses to ash, the endless political and social dance would go on...perhaps moving towards violent revolution and a reign of terror. In Zherisia, doppleganger society lives secretly among and influences human society, but human society has made remarkable progressions on its own.

Conversely, G'Hennan culture bears the inescapable stamp of Yagno Petrovna. Everything significant about G'Henna--the worship of Zhakata and the rituals and customs associated therewith, the mongrelmen outcasts, etc.--is centered around Petrovna and his curse. Yes, you can walk through G'Henna and have an adventure that doesn't involve Petrovna (albeit I'd wonder why the DM chose to set it there as opposed to a different domain), but there's no way you can escape the awareness of the darklord's pervasive presence. He defines what G'Henna is all about.

Anyway, I hope that makes it a bit clearer what I meant. Sorry for expressing myself clumsily the first time out.

And then, for my Darklord de Fromage, the Lamest, cheesiest Darklord

Azreal Dak/Inza.

How would I fix this?

Bring Pot head back.

That leads me to pose a possible Ravenloft truism: successor darklords suck.

(BTW, I don't count Gabrielle as a successor in that Invidia is written for her. So maybe "successors to canon darklords suck" would be better, but it's just not as pithy on the tongue).

[Brandi]

That leads me to pose a possible Ravenloft truism: successor darklords suck.

Alfred Timothy? (Who was definitely less interesting before 3e made his curse meaningful.)