Ordinary things not found in Ravenloft

[Isabella]

- Consistent North-South migration patterns of birds
- Geological fault lines

For that matter, anything relating to plate tectonics - earthquakes, volcanoes (although I suspect that they'll happen regardless on DM whim). Same with heavenly phenomenon like solar eclipses (which we know have happened).

[Nikolas of the Mists]

The world is flat
Would they know why a compass worked believing this fact?

[Rotipher of the FoS]

Heck, IRL people used magnetic compasses for centuries before they had a clue how they really worked. The real question is, what overly-complex rationale for magnetism have the Lamordians come up with?

[Isabella]

Considering that the entire world is held together by the mysterious whim of powers beyond comprehension, there's nothing saying that Ravenloft doesn't have all the stuff we just listed.

[Nikolas of the Mists]

I wonder if Lamordians believe the world is indeed round, and that there are indeed magnetic poles. Maybe they think the demiplane is just one big continent. in a round world

[Rotipher of the FoS]

Gaz II explains the Lamordian view of the cosmos, actually. They do understand that the world is made of chunks of landscape adrift in the Mists; they just insist that this is a perfectly normal and inevitable result of natural processes. To them, the "Mists" are the fundamental essence of creation, regarded with much the same abstraction as early IRL natural philosophers regarded "phlogiston" or "the ether".

Certainly, an educated Lamordian's universe was not the invention of such fictitious "intelligent designers" as gods, Dark Powers, and/or Dungeon Masters.

[HuManBing]

Are you suggesting that phlogiston and calx have been discredited as scientific theories???

...

I'm gonna need a few moments alone, guys.

[High Priest Mikhal]

Are you suggesting that phlogiston and calx have been discredited as scientific theories???

...

I'm gonna need a few moments alone, guys.

Don't worry. They couldn't know about phlogiston; that's a part of the Material Plane, not the Deep Ethereal. But I do wonder if any Lamordians have "mad" claims that their world is an artificial construct as unnatural as the created?

[Tykus]

-Geological fault lines

That impies no geologicial activity and Borca and Darkon definitely have some. Besides how hard would it be to create domain with that feature.

[Tykus]

Here's one for you: No noontime shadow pointing north.

I'm actually working on a domain that's "south of the equator." Hence the sun sits to the north during the day.

[Tykus]

Technically, holidays such as Halloween shouldn't exist in RL but it does (by name, even). Given the history of the holiday and the suspected, forgotten history of the holiday, the DPs have has no in-game historical basis for it unless Barovia came from Earth as an import.

Christmas and similar holidays can be written off as winter solstice events (which they technically are). Easter was originally a Celt/pre-Celt holiday before the Romans took over and was eventually Christianized.

[Paladyn]

Going after your track: if Core is just stationary piece of earth, so there are no magnetic poles, ergo compass does not work, as well as some other navigational tools.

[Rotipher of the FoS]

That impies no geologicial activity and Borca and Darkon definitely have some. Besides how hard would it be to create domain with that feature.

Yes, but that needn't be a result of fault lines. If the DPs can create a giant tree that sucks up seawater, distills it, and expels it into the Vuchar, they can certainly simulate geysers in Borca or volcanoes in the Burning Peaks.

But continuous regions of geologic stress, buried deeper than anyone will ever actually dig, and colliding with more force than the tiny landmass of the Core could plausibly generate? That seems like the hard way to do things, compared to just letting the Dark Powers shake a place up when they think an earthquake is appropriate.

Frankly, I'm not sure if there can be such a thing as a "natural disaster" on a world like Ravenloft. What look like random catastrophes might all be a result of DP interference, monsterous powers at work (e.g. krakens causing storms), and/or darklords throwing hissy-fits that carry domain-wide psychotropic repercussions.

[Rotipher of the FoS]

Going after your track: if Core is just stationary piece of earth, so there are no magnetic poles, ergo compass does not work, as well as some other navigational tools.

There's a reference to compasses in one of the books, IIRC. It points out that compasses cease working in the Mists, which implies they must function elsewhere in Ravenloft.

Hmmm... perhaps native scholars might postulate that there's a gigantic, undiscovered IoT made out of iron, somewhere far to the north of the known domains? (Real-world scientists once speculated that the North Pole was an iron-rich island, before the idea that the Earth itself is magnetic was proposed.) Early biogeographers once came up with the alleged "lost continent of Lemuria", for a lot less reason.

Imagine someone trying to launch an expedition to go there.

[Nikolas of the Mists]

Imagine someone trying to launch an expedition to go there.

Yep, or someone with solid navigation tools and skills simply setting a course in one direction away from the core and never coming back "falling off the edge of the world". I mean, we don't really know how far the borders of the 'sea domains' really are from any canon material, do we?