Which darklords could die of old age?

[HuManBing]

^ Question.

Looking at the interesting curses and workarounds and other backstories that we're throwing around creatively for the darklords, I wonder about which ones might make the cut if a later Edition of Ravenloft came out, say, ten or twenty years in the future. Or how about fifty?

A partial list of darklords who might someday die of old age includes:

Vlad Drakov (he has the vitality of a man much younger, but nothing states he's stopped aging)

Boritsi and Dilisnya (she looks youthful, he's aged since Black Box - apparently they can still die of old age)

Jacqueline Renier

Mordenheim (?) (sure, he'll come back if you kill him , but does that mean his cells will never wind down and fail?)

Hazlik (same as Mordenheim)

Harkon Lukas (same as Hazlik)

Aderre and Mallocchio (one ages slowly, the other matured quickly, but nothing suggests they live forever)

Alfred and Nathan Timothy

d'Honaire

Inza


By contrast, the darklords who could live (or at least exist) forever include: Azalin, Strahd, von Kharkov, the God-Brain, Gwydion, Maeve and Loht, Tristan, Soth.

Unless I'm missing something or gotten one of them wrong...

What others are there?

[DocBeard]

Vlad Drakov (he has the vitality of a man much younger, but nothing states he's stopped aging)

I still like the idea of giving Vlad a curse/power of having to maintain his vitality and youth through slaughter and warmongering.

[Rotipher of the FoS]

Mordenheim (?) (sure, he'll come back if you kill him , but does that mean his cells will never wind down and fail?

Mordenheim's already outlived a typical human lifespan. He seems to be leeching off Adam's construct-trait immunity to age.


Generally speaking, most darklords who were actually born in Ravenloft seem to age normally, whether or not their outward appearance shows it's happening to them. The ones the DPs took the trouble of snatching off other worlds, OTOH, often have abilities and/or natures that ensure they'll stick around indefinitely. In a way, this could be regarded as symbolic: the native darklords were always a part of the world, so they age like (super)Nature intended; outlander-darklords are interlopers, foreign to the world and its normal cycles of life.

[Rotipher of the FoS]

I still like the idea of giving Vlad a curse/power of having to maintain his vitality and youth through slaughter and warmongering.

And this would seem like a "curse" to the ol' war-happy psychopath how, exactly?

[DocBeard]

And this would seem like a "curse" to the ol' war-happy psychopath how, exactly?

Because if he stops, he starts to die.

It's a clause to keep him from pulling a Soth. Even if Darkov thinks, "Gee, I keep failing it, I'd better take some time off to reassess my tatics.", suddenly he finds a few more gray hairs in the ol'mane-can he give up his eternal youth for a chance at victory? Or will he descend into even more violent debauchery in an effort to buy enough time to launch a revised invasion that has a chance of succeding?

I dunno, it feels like it ties into the whole, "Crazed butcher who wants to be respected." thing-a sneaky way of encouraging Vlad to continue policies that keep him from being respected by his neighbors, and also setting up his redemption clause: he has to put the welfare of his people ahead of himself.

As far as Darklords dieing of old age go, to bring it a bit back on topic(Sorry about that.), I think it could work...as long as there's someone better suited to take up the reigns. Like, Dominic would suddenly be vulnerable to upsurption because his niece Celeste is, potentially, just as through a manipulative sociopath as he is, Hazlik's recent successes in his sinister plans against the Mulani people were allowed to happen because, in his apprentice Elana, he's stumbled apon a potential new Darklord to take his place; we've even seen stories like this in the rise of Ivana Boristi and Jaqueline Reiner. The idea that a potential heir only shows up when the reinging Darklord is getting older, tired, or otherwise no longer useful or entertaining to the Dark Powers ties in really well to Ravenloft's whole metaphysical nature: The Darklord in question is challanged by the potential heir, and if he or she endures, then that Darklord's evil is still worth observation by the Dark Powers. If not, a new Lord inherits the Domain.

[HuManBing]

Vlad Drakov (he has the vitality of a man much younger, but nothing states he's stopped aging)

I still like the idea of giving Vlad a curse/power of having to maintain his vitality and youth through slaughter and warmongering.

Yes! I like that curse idea too! I am also very flattered that you like it too.

And this would seem like a "curse" to the ol' war-happy psychopath how, exactly?

To Roti - this was the proposal that Vlad might be a well-intentioned ruler at heart but have a few flaws (that are serious, but not quite as bad as his current "I'm a bloody minded screaming rapist impaler psychopath" curse). One of which might be his innate distrust of civilian rule. Another might be the constant fear that his country, and all he built, might go to waste at any moment if Azalin and the other gunpowder-happy nations tilts against him. Finally the curse would be that he's forced to spill Falkovnian blood (or possibly spill blood using Falkovnian weapons) to stay youthful.

If you compare him to, say, Augusto Pinochet, or the Burmese junta, there you've got a leader who, however misguided, still has the interests of his country at heart but thinks that he's the only person able to lead them adequately. This revised curse would mean he's forced to kill and maim his own countrymen not because of his inborn bloodthirstiness but because he is compelled in part to do it. (Of course, it's not as easy as just blaming it on the powers. Poetic justice would have it that he has spilled so much blood that it is in his nature to harm the very people he hopes to protect.)

[Nathan of the FoS]

Here's my best first-thoughts list:

Darklords who appear to be aging normally: Dominic d'Honaire, Jacqueline Renier, Ivan Dilisnya, Yagno Petrovna, Hazlik, Markov, Gregor Zolnik.

Darklords who are aging slowly: Tristen ApBlanc (very slowly), Vlad Drakov, Alfred Timothy (but the Timothys live a long time as a clan, so it's hard to say for him), Tristan Hiregaard.

Darklords with long life spans: Althea (?), Easan the Mad

Darklords who can't age: Adam, Azalin, Gwydion, Urik von Kharkov, Strahd, Inza (?), Pieter van Reese, Ankhtepot, Tiyet, Diamabel, Arijani, Ebonbane, Morgoroth, Anton Misroi, Maligno, Torrence Bleysmith.

Darklords who should be aging but aren't: Harkon Lukas, Ivana Boritsi, Baron Evensong (IIRC), Meredoth, Bluebeard, Stezen d'Polarno, Elena Faith-hold, the Lady of Ravens (if we use the BoS/QtR write-up).

I have no idea: Draga Salt-biter, King Crocodile

[Sylaire]

And it helps give him motivation to launch some of his ill-intentioned, doomed-to-failure campaigns; even if his motivation is merely selfishly keeping himself alive or if you tweak his character to give him a more altruistic stance ("look what happened to Darkon without Azalin; I have to stay alive for Falkovnia's sake") this gives an external constraint to force his hand into poor strategic and tactical decisions--he can't necessarily wait until the time and strategic situations are favorable. To my mind, it's more satisfying than saying "The DPs cursed him to always lose, so he's mind-controlled by the curse into making stupid decisions" or even worse, "The DPs cursed him to always lose, so tens of thousands of soldiers on both sides are mind-controlled by the curse to make decisions which will be bad for Drakov as well as the physical forces of nature are likewise controlled to insure that the outcome will be equally bad for Drakov."

(You know, when you start breaking them down into what it would take to give them statistical game effects, some of the curses--and not just the darklord ones; look at Van Richten's, for example--are insanely powerful.)

[HuManBing]

Actually I take back what I said about the Illithid God Brain being immortal.

It's probably an organism that ages. If you factor in the fact that the dying illithids spill their own brain matter into the God Brain, that probably serves some replenishing effect on the monster.

So if you were somehow able to kill every last illithid in Bluetspur, the God Brain's equilibrium would be thrown off and it would eventually die.

[DocBeard]

(You know, when you start breaking them down into what it would take to give them statistical game effects, some of the curses--and not just the darklord ones; look at Van Richten's, for example--are insanely powerful.)

Well, that's because they're not about game mechanics. Curses are, first and foremost, about poetic justice. The only way to beat a powerful curse is to do what Van Richten did; suck it up and do what the curse says you have to do to free yourself. Yes, it's hard, yes, it may involve looking at fundamental aspects of your life and going, "Maybe I was wrong.", but it has to be possible, otherwise there's no real power to the curse-it's an inescapable doom, rather than a mystic way to have someone's own flaws bite them in the ass. Trying to get around it like so many of the Darklords do is never going to be very effective, because that's not how the story works.

To me, that's what makes curses scary. It's the same bit that makes the fay, boogiemen, and Vistani scary-they can make you part of all of those old, morbid childhood stories, urban legends, and so on. (Seriously, just look at an ubran legends site if you think that people still don't tell terrible, morbid stories for the same reasons we allways have. I did when I was doing rescearch on a villain for a Werewolf: The Apoclypse game I was running, it was a serious eye opener.) Which means you have to alter your perceptions; as a person, because suddenly the normal rules don't apply, and as a player, because suddenly it's not about how much gnoll ass you can kick or how well you can spin the rules.

That said, I do like the idea of that being Drakov's hidden motivation. Maybe what we see in Gazetter II is just what everyone /thinks/ of Drakov, which is understandable because of the debauchery he indulges in to keep himself alive when not setting a country on fire. He /wants/ to be a king like Gondegal was supposed to have been...which makes his nemesis all the more painful, because Gondegal is in the best position a king can be in. He's off the throne, and his people are somewhere else-so all the Falkovnians have to judge him by is his current actions, and not the screw ups anyone human can and would make while in office. Drakov doesn't have a chance against a living legacy, so every good deed "Lost Good King Gondegal" does is another dagger in Big D's side.

[cure]

Now if the Dark Powers were really cruel, they would let Ivan continue to age, but withhold death from him, gradually yielding an ever more withered and twisted creatured.

[Dhampire]

"Death is a release, not a punishment" - Braveheart.

Darklords that age notwithstanding, the idea that the Dark Powers would let their pets 'die' of something as rudimentary and ordinary as 'old age' almost makes them seem benevolent and that just is not 'true to form' for the Dark Powers.

It is already been said that several Darklords have lived well beyond their normal lifespan should indicate. However, that does not make them mortal, or immortal for that matter.

The Darklords are the top tier in their own respective domains but, the land is also one of both death and betrayal. Darklords have died but only at the hands of another more sinister entity. Duke Gundar comes right to mind on this one.

Darklords can, and probably will, die in time, of this I am sure.
I am also sure that it will not be time that kills them.

[Garudos Celestar]

Darklords who are aging slowly: Tristen ApBlanc (very slowly), Vlad Drakov, Alfred Timothy (but the Timothys live a long time as a clan, so it's hard to say for him), Tristan Hiregaard.

I'll take you up on the last one: Tristan Hiregaard technically isn't a darklord, but Malken is effectively immortal... at least as long as there are male members of the Hiregaard clan running around to inherit his presence.

Perhaps we should create an additional category: yes, Malken "ages," but each time his body dies he's "reborn" into a younger one.