Café de Nuit

Brandi wrote:

Nathan of the FoS wrote:Do we have Harkon Lukas yet?

Black Luke (born Harold Lucas) is a former rock-and-roll demigod, one of the most popular performers of his era. After a long and successful recording career he attempted to parlay his popularity into a political career--a move which was a miserable and humiliating failure, from his point of view. He quickly became mayor of his isolated small town, but each attempt at gaining national office has imploded in some more or less spectacular fashion (his daughter's involvement in a bizarre drug-running scandal with a former political opponent, Dr. David Heinz, torpedoed one bid, and his son's "suicide" under suspicious circumstances ended another). Thwarted, Black Luke has poured his efforts into establishing the Crystal Club chain of nightclubs and bars; he spends most of his time at his Black Hills mansion, throwing wild and dangerous parties for the creme de la creme of Co.R.E. society.

Ooh, that's made of win and pie.

...?....

What does it mean, this "win and pie"?

Manofevil wrote:I'm still gonna do Tristessa but First I think I wanna do my take on Van Richten. I think Van Richten would be the equivalent of a well known muckraking journalist. The ultimate conspiracy theorist. The man who discovered something so unbelievable that he knows he MUST find a way to make it known. He could be a quiet investigator like Mulder from X-files or he could be crazy gonzo journalist like Spider Jerusalem.

Spider Jerusalem is made of win and awesome. I think that if you want to keep Van Richten's essential character preserved, however, he'd be better off as the quiet and vaguely desperate Fox Mulder than as the vicious, bitter and morally vacuous Spider Jerusalem.

My personal answer would be to make him a former forensic pathologist with the equivalent of the CORE's FBI. He stumbled across something terrible, and because of his own weakness and ignorance his wife and son were killed. After that, he left the bureau and opened a private practice. Now, his detective agency (and back-alley clinic) are part of the secret war that goes on in the streets of the CORE, with the "good doctor" trying to uncover the darkest secrets of the world and dancing on the razor's edge between life and death. While his background makes him kind of like a combination of Mulder and Scully ("the truth is out there" investigator and a forensic pathologist), I see his personality being a lot more like Dr. Gregory House. (Though there's an interesting parallel there: Gregory House, Gregorian Illhousen... hmm.)

Jeremy Puckett (Hida Jiremi)

You may have something there HJ. I only chose Spider Jerusalem because only someone like him could get something like the Van Richten Guides published and have them taken at all seriously. If Van Richten were, however, the character you describe, he could publish his guides as fiction or perhaps they could be published in tabloid newspaper form like the National Enquirer and the Van Richten society treat them the same way the Men in Black treat the Hot Sheets in that movie.

There's a peculiar phenomenon in the cities of the C.O.R.E. It has to do with abandoned babies. More than a few babies have been reported abandoned in dumpsters or trashcans or doorways only to be missing when the authorities arrived to take charge of them. There are always signs that a baby was indeed at the place where the officers were sent and some reported hearing strange singing upon arriving on the scene. This singing was, in some cases, so overpowering as to cause all on the scene to stop and listen to the exclusion of anything else. This includes responding officers. The singing kidnapper, or 'Tristessa', as one tabloid has christened her, (after an old folk tale) has eluded both the efforts of both the authorities and private investigators (Some of the babies were abandoned ransom kidnaps).
The Old Folk Tale of Tristessa comes from a place called the keening mountains in the south of the C.O.R.E. Somewhere in those backwoods is the remains of a town long forgotten except for what happened there. One day, to this town, came stranger preaching a strange faith that somehow took hold among the simple backwoods folk. They flocked to this stranger as though his words were gold and were soon enthralled by this charismatic leader. They became devotees to his faith. He took from among the women of the town the most beautiful girl for his wife and swore that their first child would be the first they would offer to serve their god. The girl who would be Tristessa was happier than she had ever been in her life and was soon with child. When her baby was born nine months later, however, she followed her husband during her child's christening feast and discovered that he intended to offer the child in a blood sacrifice ritual to free his demonic god from hell. When she returned to feast looking for help, she discovered all of the townsfolk had died of drinking poisoned wine. Her husband had meant to kill them all to begin with, she realized, and immediately sought her child. With her baby in her arms. she tried to run away from the village but succeeded only in running into her husband who seized the child from her arms before she could stop him. He immediately smashed the child to the ground at her feet bellowing at her that it was already dead. Somehow, it had gotten some of the poisoned wine and had died in her arms. His wife couldn't hear him over her own screaming and crying, however. The man strangled her on the spot and then threw her body to the ground next to the child's, spitting on the corpses and cursing them both before he turned to go. He didn't get too far , though, before he heard a noise behind him. He turned around to find himself looking squarely in to eyes of his wife's undead form and the last thing he saw was his wife's mouth open in a shriek that literally torn the flesh from his bones. He couldn't even hear himself scream over her. The Banshee Tristessa had come to be. The people of the Keening mountains believe that any unwanted child belongs to Tristessa. Parents whose children disappear for some reason are said to have not loved them enough and are shunned by their neighbors even though the children may have simply run away. Children are told to stay close to their parents lest Tristessa believe them homeless and snatch them, and the children believe it. Mother's almost never leave their babies unattended for fear of Tristessa. She is said to want her child back more than anything. One of the best known tales of her is of a mother who DID leave her baby unattended for a short time only hear singing as she returned to find her baby gone. This, of course led to the tabloid's referring to the singing kidnapper as 'a Modern Tristessa' and the name has stuck. Where once only the Keening mountain folk kept their children close, now all the C.O.R.E. listens for the song that may mean the disappearance of somebodies child.

how would oozes be handled in the C.O.R.E.?
also how would soths old domain or its darklord be handled?

Just an idea for further thought another time:

"Ravenloft Steampunk"

Think about it.

abe wrote:how would oozes be handled in the C.O.R.E.?
also how would soths old domain or its darklord be handled?

Oozes would be an unknown creature - something out of horror movies, bad pulp fiction and other stories of alligators in the sewer. That doesn't mean they don't exist, however.
Oozes lurk in the sewers, cisterns and the waterways near chemical factories and powerplants. Every now and then someone shows up in hospital with massive chemical burns, but these are written off as some other kind of danger.

As for Sithicus, I was trying to avoid mimicing the "domains" and pay more attention to the characters in them.

I kind of pictured the wild elves as being rednecks in the deep woods. Sherrif Bufford T. Azreal lords his power over the hill folk, as well as any travelers unfortunate enough to cross his path. Sometimes routine trafic stops just go bad, and other times people just disapear without a trace.

The only person the sherrif fears is "Old Sloth", an incredibly rich and old landower. "Old Sloth" is famous as a war hero, though he has been secluded in retirement for forty years. He hasn't left his mansion in decades, hence the name "Old Sloth". All of his affairs are handled by an obscenely young and pretty woman, Isley.

how about the various types of vampire not already put down on this thread?

how would lahcanthrobes be handled in ravenloft futura?

I'm guessing you meant lycanthropes?

I always pictured that the gothic monsters would take on modern metaphores. The werebeasts aren't aware of their nature; they are caught in the dream that is the Modern Ravenloft and are unable to see beneath the illusion of normalacy.
Lycanthropy isn't a disease that is spread bite to bite, it is a condition shared by millions, but only active in a few. Desperation, addiction and other stimuli break down the barriers of humanity and release the mad predator within.
People who are likely to become lycanthropes are drug addicts, sociopathes and people with violent tendancies.

To the outside world, lycanthrops are human beings; some might be oblivious to their condition, whilst others might appear to be psychopaths, vaugly aware of their predatory nature. They remain human, until in the throws of the killing frenzy, where their victims see them as they trully are - horrible animal hybids. When satiated, their human illusion is restored.

Lycanthropes are drawn to the pull of Dark Lords; they relish the oppertunity to hunt and kill the enemies of their lords, while still earning a fine pay check.

Sometimes lycanthropes fall to far from humanity, and become true animals. They live in the dark corners of civilization, using human intelligence to survive on the fringe of man's domain.

how would fiends be handled in the c.o.r.e.?
also how would the standard prestige classes(dms guide and the "complete" series of books be handled?

abe wrote:how would fiends be handled in the c.o.r.e.?
also how would the standard prestige classes(dms guide and the "complete" series of books be handled?

On WotC's d20 Modern website, there was an article quite a while ago (as in, a couple of years, I think) about how to design and incorporate fiends into a modern setting. It should be in the archives for the "Notes from the Bunker" set of articles. Their example was a demon that feeds off electricity, I believe.

what sort of modern monsters would make there homes in the suwer system?

Manofevil wrote:You may have something there HJ. I only chose Spider Jerusalem because only someone like him could get something like the Van Richten Guides published and have them taken at all seriously. If Van Richten were, however, the character you describe, he could publish his guides as fiction or perhaps they could be published in tabloid newspaper form like the National Enquirer and the Van Richten society treat them the same way the Men in Black treat the Hot Sheets in that movie.

They may have had the effect of "The DaVinci Code". They cause a lot of polemic, some people believe it, and the efforts of the darklords to cover them cause even more suspicion. In the end, most people see them as just clever fiction, but there are some who know better (Or are simply more gullible).

On the other hand... To contribute a little...

Marudemi Hayime is a Rokuman expert in biotechnology and robotics. He was a brilliant and talented student obsessed with creating prostethic limbs and organs that would allow people to cheat death. His knowledge is so advanced that it allowed him to create an entire autonomous entity from the scratch, which he called 'Adam'. Sadly, the experiment was financed (And manipulated) by Firan Zonan (I don't remember the name in this version, but you know who I am talking about), who inserted a special chip that would allow him to control the droid. When he first tried to do it, during the first public exhibition of the robot -which had a similar device, made by Hayime -, it cracked, going berserk and attacking everyone in the audience. Adam escaped, taking with him his "father's" daughter, who he was jealous of, taking efforts to make him believe she was dead. Hayime's wife, OTOH, was severely hurted, and the good engineer saw no problem in transforming her into a cyborg to prevent her death.

abe wrote:what sort of modern monsters would make there homes in the suwer system?

That's easy: The Marikith were a tribe of homeless who were forced to move into the sewers of the city, and were united by a charismatic woman they called Queen Marika. A decade ago, Marika was a beautiful -and a little spoiled -teen girl with an incurable disease and a brilliant mother bent on saving her. Marika's mother developed a virus which merged its DNA with her daughter's, curing her of her disease. As a side effect, though, it turned her skin grey and cracked, made her hair fall dawn, and in short turned her into a monster. Marika was alive, but her (once very active) social life was ruined. She spent years recluded in her home, home-tutored, but year after year, he grew bitter and angry, blaming her mother for her misery.

Some time later, she discovered that the virus could be transmitted to anyone she bited or scratched. Moreso, the transformation turned all those affected into mindless drones under her control. She began to plan her revenge...

...but her anger with her mother did not stop with just one scratch... She ended up tearing her apart.

Today, Marika reigns in the sewers, lost in madness, dreaming of a fairy-tale world name Timor, where she is a fair queen, while in truth she is only the master of all those infected by her own disease.