Café de Nuit

Okay you have all convinced me of Mordent's usefullness within the core. Dominique, I broke out Gaz III and read it and agree that there is a whole slew of new stuff for me to play with. Course have to get rid of the evil 3.5 stuff (barbarian forever) and will incorporate it into my current campaign.

David I like the idea of Godefrey and his voyeuristic habits sneaking about the countryside. Have to spring that one on one of my more paranoid players..

it has the same feel as a good old slasher movie set in an haunted house. Its also the perfect place for dark cults.

I like that idea of dark cults with the hint of slasher thrown in. Have always been a big fan of those witch hunter type movies from the late sixties and early seventies, Mordent would fit in well with that feel.

Guess my real problem was that no matter what I did I couldnt bring Mordent into a role actually worth using outside published stuff or as a sanctuary land from the other Dark Lords. And that frustrated me to no end.

Ok new complaint.... Markovia is the Moreau type island isnt it? That place should be used more freqeuntly. Tales of his twisted experiments should be circulating around the seaports of the core fed by the gossiping of sailors. The one published module I have was great and entertained my players immensely.


Maraudar

maraudar wrote:Ok new complaint.... Markovia is the Moreau type island isnt it? That place should be used more freqeuntly. Tales of his twisted experiments should be circulating around the seaports of the core fed by the gossiping of sailors. The one published module I have was great and entertained my players immensely.


Maraudar

S mentioned how there was some Lamordians tried to colonize Markovia once, but were never heard from again.

Tales of twisted experiments would only spread if anyone survived to spread them.

Youre taking a little too much pleasure in that statement .. HMM.. Are we maybe the recruiter for that new vacation spot on the Island of Markovia? C'mon you can admit it, how much is Markov paying you .


Maraudar

maraudar wrote:Youre taking a little too much pleasure in that statement .. HMM.. Are we maybe the recruiter for that new vacation spot on the Island of Markovia? C'mon you can admit it, how much is Markov paying you .


Maraudar

He's being paid in virgins.
I'm being paid in kiwis and all the oil paint I can drink.

I still think Markov is screwing me out of a better deal. You don't own virgins so much as rent them...

Hmmm... Virgins or Kiwis?

Jeez, I don't know who's getting the better deal. On the one hand, there's the virgins, but fresh fruit is so expensive these days. And oil paint? That's a touch choice.

Be nice if we could find a way to scam all three . Cant let the fruit go to waste. And the virgins would look good in oil paint ..


Maraudar

maraudar wrote: Tue Jan 11, 2005 3:17 pm I've recently had the chance to re-read alot of my Ravenloft stuff ( Have to love working Grave shift) and have come to the conclusion the only reason the Mordent remains a part of the core is due to the powers needing a place to dump all the would be heroes of the demi-plane. Think about it. The dark lord is a wimp in comparison to other dark lords. Heck even ol Vlad is more intresting. What does Lord Godfrey do? Aside from being ripped apart by his ghostly wife and daughter that is. During the grand conjunction when they yanked some of the domains out and let a few dark lords go they went and kept Mordent. So the only reason has to be a centralized location for the dark powers to keep track of the good guys. Course I could be wrong ( been known to happen from time to time ) but it feels right. So what do you think is there any real reason for Mordent.


Maraudar

I think that's one of two reasons for why Mordent is as it is.
Yeah, RL needs one domain that's a relatively safe space for the good guys. Both for technical reasons (after a couple of months running from monster to monster, you need somewhere to get a long rest, resupply and maybe talk to an adventurer who actually know what he's doing.) and for psychological reasons (if every single ppace in the world is a full-on dystopia, what are we even fighting for?)
But the other reason is that Mordent is a relatively safe space, until. Until the occasional monster pops up and it's twice as panicking cause you really weren't expecting it. Until some shadow from the past comes to disturb the peace of the present. Until it turns out the 'wimpy' darklord is actually up to something. It's mostly justified reputation as the place where nothing happens is what makes the horror surprising.

I think both fit the main story trope Mordent is designed for: the haunted house.
Mordent as whole is a home for our heroes - but this home is full of dark secrets.

Gemathustra wrote: Wed Jan 19, 2005 2:47 pm

maraudar wrote:Ok new complaint.... Markovia is the Moreau type island isnt it? That place should be used more freqeuntly. Tales of his twisted experiments should be circulating around the seaports of the core fed by the gossiping of sailors. The one published module I have was great and entertained my players immensely.


Maraudar

S mentioned how there was some Lamordians tried to colonize Markovia once, but were never heard from again.

They weren't really serious colonists; they turned out to be a bunch of party animals!

If you don't like Godefroy's passivity, there's still a lot of potential for him. But In think it can require a deep dive of the lore and a lot of juxtapositions of different pieces together. If you want him to be a bit more active, I think one of the greatest possible aspects is Godefroy watching and even exacerbating antagonisms between the different sects of Ezra. It's stated in Gaz III that in addition to finding the church contemptible, he would enjoy seeing war between the sects (primarily, I think, between the Mordentish and the Darkonian branches) break out in Mordent, for all the recent dead would put a great influx of souls under his command. Heroes of Light seems to expand upon the potential conflict, as they detail the Blessed Army of Ezra being built up in the Mordentish branch due to one of their member's visions of a nasty fiend manipulating the Darkonian sect. I imagine Godefroy would be joyous about these developments and might try to manipulate them to his own ends, if he's not already.

Alternatively, or in addition, you can play Godefroy as an information broker/hoarder/exploiter and use the gathering of heroes as a plot thread. Beyound having the leader of Mordent under his sway, the settling down of many adventurers in Mordent can leave the possible exploitation of their dead spirits and through them the lives of their still living relatives by proxy. In the Ravenloft story anthology Tales of Ravenloft, the one story featuring him shows that somebody (probably the Dark Powers) has mail delivered to the mail slot of his door. He apparently has correspondence with various parties from other places in the Demiplane. Although the nature of correspondence in the story was of a much more casual nature (albeit for highly depraved people), you could easily use Godefroy as sort of Postmaster General of evil in Ravenloft, acting as a go between for various affiliated evil parties in Ravenloft if you so chose to interpret things in this way.

Interestingly, in Tales of Ravenloft one of the people Godefroy got a letter from was a vivisectionist known as Narvisek Grellar, whom murdered his wife. It could easily be interpreted that Grellar is an alias used by Frantisek Markov. Neither Man Nor Beast seems to imply that Markov is very well read and aware of events in the Demiplane despite his peasant background and being stuck on such a primitive island.