Café de Nuit

Hi guys!

So for all the years (not so many) that I’ve been playing D&D, I thought the fallowing was true:

Ravenloft is a demiplane, which is severed from other planes so that its denizens couldn’t escape it. The Dark Powers there gathered realms from all the worlds of the Material Plane, united by the sins their Dark Lords have committed.

Shadowfell is a gloomy reflection of the Material Plane, which means there are equivalent places in them: Neverwinter and Evernight being an obvious example. That also means that there could be Shadowfell mirrors of other worlds (not just Toril), and maybe even of the space between planets as well.

Recently, I was reading the new book (VRGtR) and it stated that Ravenloft is part of Shadowfell now. I double-checked it with CoS, and it appears to be true. So my question is, how Domains of Dread fit into the whole “reflection of the material plane” concept? Is there still a material plane version (and also Feywild version while we are at it) of Barovia without Strahd? If it is so, what will you encounter when you travel to Shadowfell and try to get to Barovia? Is the place where it should be just covered in mists?

What happens, when Dark Lord dies and the mists thin? CoS states that you can escape, but where do you actually escape? Is it the surrounding regions of Barovia on its planet? Is it on Material Plane or still in Shadowfell, just not surrounded by the mists?

Also, how come one can travel by foot from Hazlan to Darkon, if their reflections are on different planets? Are the mists just a weird portal?

I know it’s a lot of questions and most of them are gonna be speculations, but I’m just a little confused with this new lore and want to know your thoughts.

Well, it was kinda hinted for long that domains were "dark mirrors". In fact, I believe the Shadowfell of 4e and 5e were partially influenced by Ravenloft.
For example, in the last two adventures of Grand Conjunction, people are transported to the "Real" Barovia.

So, I hope some of my answers help here. To me, this is what I know.

Ravenloft is indeed a Demiplane. It was constructed by the Dark Powers first by taking landmasses from the Material Plane, and then by creating land from the mist later. It is not in itself in the Material Plane, but is in the Border Ethereal, a boundary between the Material Plane and the Ethereal Plane. In the older editions, which I am getting this information from, it is several landmasses which are joined together, but the mists mark their borders and the control the darklords have. Later, after an event called the Grand Conjunction, it was pulled into or placed in the Shadowfell.

I don't disagree that there may be shadowfell versions of other worlds. For most of Ravenloft though, in my opinion, since it was formed in the Border Ethereral, it likely does not have a Shadowfell version. In the worlds where places like Forlorn and Barovia came from, likely those lands vanished since it is known the Dark Powers ripped those lands from their worlds and any remains of them likely only exist as parallel versions in their versions of the Feywild and the Shadowfell of those worlds. Trying to get to Material Plane Barovia from one of them will only bring you to an empty land if not a massive hole where the land used to be.

So like I said, for the most part, since the lands of Ravenloft weren't created in the Material Plane I personally do not think they have shadowfell or feywild versions of the domains. Not that anyone inside of Ravenloft would be able to explore that idea anyway since escape from there is incredibly unlikely and only at the whim of the Dark Powers.

As for what happens when a Darklord dies? One of three things.

1. The domain is absorbed by the mists and vanishes. This happens with domains which are alone in the mist, Islands of Terror.

2. A new Darklord is crowned. This has happened before such as when Ivana Boristi killed her mother, or the Hive Queen killed her own mother in Timor. The title of Darklord passed to them. This method only occurs if there is someone just as evil as the original Darklord within the domain like with Soth and Inza in Sithicus.

3. The Domain is no longer a domain and is absorbed by surrounding domains if part of a Cluster. This happened after the Grand Conjunction where Gundarak was annexed by Borca and Barovia. Verbrek also absorbed Arkandale this way when the previous darklord of the latter was released, being of no more amusement to the Dark Powers.

So at the end of COS, Barovia is truly a part of Ravenloft. It is not part of its original world anymore. When the mists thin, you can escape to any of the surrounding domains. You don't truly escape the evil of Ravenloft, you just escape Strahd's brand of it.

Hope this answers some questions. I kind of get technical when I answer questions like these.

In 2nd and 3rd editions Ravenloft was a Demiplane in the Near Ethereal Plane (the borders of the Ethereal Plane) and that was one of the reasons why ethereal resonance that create sinkholes of evil exist. Also in my speculation why ghosts were made more unique if not powerful in Ravenloft in 2e VRGtGhosts, nowbeing separated in five magnitudes. In 4e the WotC created the concept of the Shadowfell, a plane in my opinion inspired by the Demiplane of Dread. My theory when 3rd edition Ravenloft stopped and 4e D&D begun was that a massive apocalyptic Ravenloft event that was about to occur, but never unfolded, The Time of Unparalleled Darkness placed the Demiplane of Dread in closer connection with the Prime Material Plane and the Shadowfell was created. Now that in 5th edition everything has been "rearranged" (for lack of willingness to use a worst word) it could be seen as the ToUD changed the whole Demiplane if the VRGtR writers cared about continuity as the timeline in VRGtR is 735BC the same timeline where the world begun in the 90's 2nd edition.

While before 5e Ravenloft was separated in a small "continent" of domains bordering each other named The Core and surrounded by Mists, floating in the Mists Islands of Terror as is the canon in 5e, Clusters which were semi-themed domains (numbering from 2 to 5) that have attached to each other forming smaller "Cores" (that first appeared in 2e Domains of Dread) and Pocket Domains, domains that could exist in a building, a room, an item (as the domain of Aggarath, located in the hilt of the dagger Aggarath). So before 5e in the 2nd and 3rd editions you could travel from one domain to the other normally if the domains were part of the Core or same Cluster. Someone could also use specific permanent or semi-permanent mistways that exist in some parts of the Core or Clusters that created a misty passage to another domain (Island of Terror, Cluster or Pocket Domain), if you search about mistways in Mistipedia you 'll find some. Someone can travel through the Mists with the help of the Vistani or by making a Mist Ferryman (evil, hooded skeletal-like creatures that inhabit the Mists) take you to another domain either by subduing one or with the help of a blood ritual.

Your question about Prime Material versions of a domain may or may not exist, for instance Barovia was snatched from the Prime Material Plane but there is also a Barovian in the Prime Material Plane as in in adventure Roots of Evil that takes place during another apocalyptic event that almost destroyed the Demiplane named the Grand Conjunction in 740 BC. During that event darklords where returned to the Prime Material Plane worlds were they had originated before being imprisoned once more wen the GC collapsed. There are other domains though that are created not as being taken from the world they originated but out of thin air (or Mist).

What happens when a darklord is destroyed? Well if the darklord doesn't have a contingency power that recreates/reforms him (thus making him indestructible) then the domain can either return to it's place of origin, be destroyed in an apocalyptic event following the death of it's darklord (disappearing in the Mists), be absorbed by neighbouring domains or gain a new darklord, usually the next in line tragic bad (evil) ass character. If the domains fate is to be destroyed or be taken back to the Prime Material Plane then the characters can escape Ravenloft either via the Mists or simply taken along with the domain back to the Prime Material Plane. On the other hand characters can always be taken by the Mists after a Darklord dies and just transport them to any other domain in the Demiplane (DM decides depending on the campaign).

Okay, as the resident outcast who actually likes 4th edition, allow me to try and offer what little insight I can.

Ravenloft as a setting has always been an oddity in the greater D&D metaverse. In the original Great Wheel configuration, Ravenloft was known as the Demiplane of Dread, and was officially a series of interlinked demiplanes anchored around a singular villainous being who acted as a living keystone. Each individual sub-demiplane, known as a Domain of Dread or Island of Terror, appeared as a single "bubble" of relatively normal terrain surrounded by mists or some all-encompassing terrain feature - a forest, a desert, an ocean, etc.

The metaphorical "center" of the Demiplane was a series of Domains that were placed in physical proximity to each other, forming the illusion of a standard continent; this was known as "The Core", and it served as the "default adventuring zone" of Ravenloft - similar to the Sword Coast of the Forgotten Realms or the Known World of Mystara or the... whatever it was where most of the early Greyhawk adventures were set.

At the end of 2nd edition, the "Domains of Dread" boxed set introduced the concept of Clusters; smaller equivalents to the Core comprising an average of two to five Islands of Terror that shared a strong thematic link and sometimes even a historical link, resulting in their being grouped together. For example, the "mummy horror" inspired domains of Har'Akir and Sebua are linked together as part of the Amber Wastes cluster.

From the perspective of Planescape, the "meta-setting" that held the "true answers" to most of D&D's cosmological questions, the Demiplane of Dread resided in the Deep Ethereal region of the Ethereal Plane.

When 3rd edition came along, all of this lore was preserved.

Then 4th edition came along... we never got an official 4e Ravenloft campaign setting in 4e. We never got an official conversion of the original Castle Ravenloft module from which the setting sprang, making it the only edition to lack one! So we don't know what WotC would have done to reconcile the Core of old with the new World Axis cosmology. Perhaps they would have simply left it alone as the Demiplane of Dread, as demiplanes still exist in 4e's cosmology as "anomalies" of the metaverse - places outside of That Which Is Known.

But, at the same time, the 4e design team wanted to try and give Ravenloft some love; it had, after all, actually been pushed aside to a third party publisher (White Wolf, via their Sword & Sorcery line) for 3e. So, they began adapting the concept of the Domains of Dread, which received a brief discussion in the 4e Manual of the Planes sourcebook and a smattering of articles in Dragon/Dungeon Magazines.

To try and explain... in the World Axis, a Domain of Dread is the Shadowfell reflection of a place that has been cursed by the deeds of an individual, who committed such an act of evil or blasphemy or horror that their tainted soul is drawn into the Shadowfell and bound to the region where their act of ultimate darkness took place. In the mortal world, the locale is usually normal, but tends to be abandoned due to the terrible history of the place.

Escaping a Domain of Dread in the World Axis is a lot easier than doing so in the Great Wheel. If you can get beyond the borders of a Domain of Dread, you enter the Shadowfell proper, and can move normally from there. Also, a given domain may have some mystical ways to break the curse that can send a hero out of the Shadowfell entirely. But escaping is never simple; whilst domain boundaries are not as inherently lethal as the domain closures of editions past, usually, you need to do some kind of magical ritual or mystic sacrifice in order to get through the borders. Otherwise, you just keep coming back into the domain.

Confused? Sorry, I'm not the most articulate guy around.

As for how the 5e version is supposed to work... I can't really comment, as my eyes tend to start bleeding whenever I spend too long reading "Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft". Given that 5e lore in general seems to be a hatchet job of pre-existing canon from across multiple editions, it's probably safe to say you'd be putting more thought into how it works than WotC did.

I am going to use a quote, by Gonzoron, from Etherel plane or Ravenloft? discussion.

Gonzoron of the FoS wrote:The difference between Ravenloft and other places is that in other worlds, you can go "deeper" into the Ethereal plane, leaving behind the part that touches the material plane. If your travel far enough into the Ethereal, you can reach other Material Plane worlds, or the positive or negative material planes, or any of the elemental, para-elemental, or quasi elemental planes. (Or, if you're unlucky, the demiplane of Ravenloft itself).

In Ravenloft, everyone is stuck with the Near Ethereal/Border Ethereal. You can't access the Deep Ethereal because that would let you escape the demiplane. (Coming through the ethereal to Ravenloft is a one-way trip.)

I see Ravenloft as fitting into a 3D intersection between the Ethereal Plane - The Shadowfell and Plane of Negative Energy - as it combines all three elements:

It has the mists/darkness of the Shadowfell
It doesn't make sense and follows nightmare logic giving it the dreamy quality of the Etheral Plane where 'ideas live'.
Necromancy and undeads abound suggesting a close connection to the Plane of Negative Energy.

This then can be combined with canon of worlds cut off from the regular cosmology - Eberron and Athas are two examples - the former created in secret and the latter 'warded' to contain a ancient evil.

The way I look at it is that that each Domain is basically a cross between the 9th level spell Imprisonment and the 8th level Maze containing those entities too dangerous to be able to exist anywhere else. This is because they did something so horrible that they themselves called the mist upon them in punishment or that their power threatened the gods themselves (cough Vecna) and needed to be taken out and into a place where they might remain forever.

In order to keep them from escaping it gives each of these being a world to rule so that they might be satisfied to live out their days distracted with petty problems and no longer pose a threat to the rest of the multiverse.

It's much like how the Lady of Pain will Maze those who pose a threat to the balance in Sigil but on a much bigger scale and I'd guess The Dark Powers may well be a similar entity.

In terms of how Ravenloft domains connect, to me Ravenloft is basically a big game of Risk as they are in constant motion - some are stable like Barovia while others constantly shift and move.
Domains grow and shrink based upon the power of their Dreadlord who themselves gain power though fear/influence.

In my homebrew game where the PC's are Dreadlords I made one major tweak to the rules: Instead of being trapped to one Domain Dreadlords are now trapped to Ravenloft as a whole, so someone like Strahd can think they've escaped only to end up stuck right back where they started or worse - in someone else's Domain of Dread!

For a Dreadlord to lose their domain is bad and to leave their domain is a huge risk!
My rules for Dreadlords who escape is that can only regain hit points via resting if they're in their own domain and if they get scared they lose levels and their domain shrinks accordingly.
If they manage to destroy a domain or turn it so they're considered the new Dreadlord they gain levels as the domain is added to their realm.

A Dreadlord who takes too long to return may find their domain has moved on without them, they no longer have full control, their power diminishes. - in some cases they may have their domain overtaken by another Dreadlord or a new one has riven up from their land to replace them.
To regain their power they either need to defeat these upstarts or risk becoming no more then a wanderer of the mists.. to have no power and no home, tortured to have lost everything and now be nothing more then a background player.

This is something I've been working on this week as one of my PC's is Vecna who in the OG canon escaped Ravenloft.
He has decided to return to Cavatius which eh, in the current canon no longer exists but is mentioned under the Disaster Horror themes in the latest sourcebook.

My plain is to give our Dark Sun loving Forever DM (who is playing Strahd who thinks it's a 'easy win' for him to invade) a chance to play in a even more extreme version of Dark Sun where Cavatius is being devoured by The Serpent from Die Vecna Die.

So far the plan is for Vecna to find his Domain in a mess, being torn apart by the forces of a Black Hole (actually The Serpent) who was let in via the portal he created to the Plane of Negative Energy in his earlier escape.

In Vecna's absence 3 new factions have risen:
1 is dedicated to him and led by his old allies
1 is a doomsday cult worshiping the black hole (I've yet to figure out who will lead this one)
and the final bunch have turned to his former apprentice a wizard and former ruler of Athas - now a Litch in her own right who has taken over to rule Cavatius after her own misdeeds caused her to get sucked though the same portal after a failed attempt to escape Athas.

The splitting of his worship is why he is no longer god-tier and got level drained and also why the recent destruction of a domain led to the mist being pushed back a bit restoring his followers faith and a level up