Café de Nuit

Favored Soul Jacintha has risen to supreme power in her empire. She is hailed as the Voice and Chosen of the goddess. Her beauty is the envy of all who view her. Her power is supreme.
She is also a horrible mother, who favors her sons, regularly beats and starves her daughter, and poisoned her husband the king for not being devout enough.
Under her rule, the Empire is wealthy and prosperous, but religious law has replaced secular law, and much of the wealth comes from the Empire's newfound aggression against its weaker, "heathen" neighbours.

Vedmor is not a holy woman. She is a thief, a scam artist, a bandit leader with a quick mind and a silver tongue. She can read the mounting tension in the scattered nations and capitalizes on it. She unites first gangs of bandits, next local militias and finally armies under her banner, and strikes the Empire like an avalanche.
Under her leadership, blood washes the earth and skulls are piled up high.

When Vedmor enters the Imperial palace, she first meets Jacintha's daughter and barely saves her from being sacrificed in a death rite meant to kill Vedmor herself. Her heart is moved by pity for the first time in a long time. On the same day, she adopts the abused child as her heir - and beats Jacintha to unconsciousness in front of her, depriving her enemy of both her teeth and her fingers.

The Mists have risen. The land is a part of Ravenloft now.

Vedmor's hands are stained black, some say because she dared harm the goddess's Chosen. She rules a fractious nation, forced to deal with constant uprisings and struggling to keep her people fed. She would love to cut and run with the treasury and her new daughter, but she is constantly surrounded by her loyal guards and ministers seeking her guidance.
Jacintha is not dead; she was locked in the old castle, most of its doors and windows sealed shut. She can use her magic to stay alive and frequently curses the nation, but she can't be part of it anymore. Some days she climbs to the highest tower, where she can peer through an arrow slit. Most of the time she suffers, rages and weeps.

Which of these two women would you say is the Darklord, and why?

Both are, in an "eternal" domain struggle for ruleship and the extincyion of one another.

I too would tend to see them both bound as co-darklords, especially if you can build up a longer history together. In the absence of that, I would say it could be a toss up. I would tend to see Vedmor as the primary darklord because she has actual power and influence, whereas adventures with Jacintha would be primarily limited to a single dungeon crawl- Jacintha is otherwise fairly impotent as a darklord. On the other hand, an argument could be made for Jacintha because the seminal event linked to the formation of the domain- the attempted murder of one's child for vengeance and likely blasphemy it entails- is a pretty heinous one- unless there are details left out of the narrative described here- such as Vedmor's raid of the palace resulting in a horrid bloodbath. If freeing Jacintha's daughter and the other survivors of Jacintha's tyranny in the palace was the Dark Powers' last way of offering Vedmor a way out and she squandered it by driving the child further into mental darkness and killing or mutilating the others, I would tend to go more with Vedmor. But given a possible choice of both Jacintha and Vedmor, I echo Mephisto's sentiments.

Obviously Jacintha; Vedmor has still love in her heart, there is still light in her darkness.

The Lesser Evil wrote:I too would tend to see them both bound as co-darklords, especially if you can build up a longer history together. In the absence of that, I would say it could be a toss up. I would tend to see Vedmor as the primary darklord because she has actual power and influence, whereas adventures with Jacintha would be primarily limited to a single dungeon crawl- Jacintha is otherwise fairly impotent as a darklord. On the other hand, an argument could be made for Jacintha because the seminal event linked to the formation of the domain- the attempted murder of one's child for vengeance and likely blasphemy it entails- is a pretty heinous one- unless there are details left out of the narrative described here- such as Vedmor's raid of the palace resulting in a horrid bloodbath. If freeing Jacintha's daughter and the other survivors of Jacintha's tyranny in the palace was the Dark Powers' last way of offering Vedmor a way out and she squandered it by driving the child further into mental darkness and killing or mutilating the others, I would tend to go more with Vedmor. But given a possible choice of both Jacintha and Vedmor, I echo Mephisto's sentiments.

Something about Jacintha to keep in mind is that blasphemy is a theme of her whole story. As a Favored Soul, she did not channel power from the Empire's goddess, but she let people think she was that same patron's Chosen and Voice. On the other hand, she did turn her Empire into an economic powerhouse; apart from inciting holy wars to keep the machine going (as well as creating a theocracy based on her own whims and tormenting her own daughter as stress relief), she did rule her territory well.

Something about Vedmor to keep in mind is that yes, she is evil. If her boots wear out and she has no money to buy new ones, she will happily beat up and rob someone with the same size feet. If someone stands in her way, she will not lose sleep about killing them.
But she's pragmatic about it; if she can threaten someone or just slap them around a bit so they'll do what she wants, she won't kill them. She wouldn't attack someone who has nothing to take. If she does kill someone, she tends to be quick about it; torture isn't her thing, if only because it's time-consuming. Jacintha was the sole exception, and that was because Vedmor actually felt offended at what the Empress had been doing to her own flesh and blood.
Then again, Vedmor did incite a war against the Empire in hopes of securing a lot of plunder. In a way, the war was her magnum opus; a scam on an international scale, a robbery to go down in history. She never planned to be a longtime ruler, and is quite upset that the whole thing blew up in her face like this -- but she is proving to be quite an efficient ruler all the same. It does not make her happy.

Jacintha is much worse IMO. She is a world class hypocrite who beats her own children and is willing to sacrifice one of them and starts holy wars for a religion she does not truly believe in. Vedmor in comparison is a bandit who grabbed the throne of a tyrant during a civil war. She may not have done so to liberate the land but she would never would have pulled it off if Jacintha wasn't so horrible. If they aren't co darklords then I would pick Jacintha.