Café de Nuit

There exists a book about a city of undead, D&D 3.5 Hollowfaust - City of Necromancers Its a sourcebook for the Scarred Lands d20 setting.

Has anybody managed to incorporate this into Ravenloft as a domain? Any Ideas or even better, experiences?

Series: Scarred Lands
Publisher: White Wolf Publishing/Sword & Sorcery Studios

From the White Wolf Catalog:
Lords of the Dead
A sourcebook for any fantasy campaign, both the Scarred Lands and elsewhere.
In the shadow of a dormant volcano crouched the dead city of Sumara. Wandering necromancers rediscovered it in the wake of the Divine War, and from the bones of that slain nation, the wizards fashioned a new realm: Hollowfaust, City of the Necromancers. Today, this city-state grows and prospers, defended by legions of undead warriors and ruled by a secret society of powerful spellcasters. On the surface, there exists a curious culture that embraces both the joy of life and the inevitability of death, but deep below, in tunnels beneath the city, the necromancers delve into the secrets of mortality and the undead. Welcome, then, to Hollowfaust — one of the strangest cities in all of Ghelspad. Enjoy your visit. And don't die. This Sword & Sorcery™ book is published under the Open Game License and is 100% compatible with 3rd Edition rules and the d20 System.

I'd never heard of it before now.
It sounds like it'd fit pretty well into Cavitius-that-was.

Rock of the Fraternity wrote: ↑Fri Mar 07, 2025 1:04 am Cavitius

Domains with Greyhawk connections (reminding myself and new readers)
Cavitius was the domain of the demigod Vecna, who has now escaped from the demiplane. Sir Loran also serves there. Cavitius is a realm of deserts, volcanic ash, and eternal twilight that drains the life from those who enter. It is separated from the neighboring realm of Tovag by the Burning Peaks mountain range. Cavitius is named after Citadel Cavitius.

https://greyhawkonline.com/greyhawkwiki/Vecna
https://greyhawkonline.com/greyhawkwiki ... l_Cavitius
https://greyhawkonline.com/greyhawkwiki ... onnections
https://www.fraternityofshadows.com/wiki/Cavitius
https://mimir.net/places/citadel-cavitius/

I never liked the "Vecna becomes a deity" story-line or adventures. Too much power and excesses.

I would keep him in Ravenloft as a darklord so he can have a useful role. Hollowfaust could be a city ruled by a circle of apprentices of him that oppose him and bring him endless frustration. Or something like that, bound to his suffering.

Another idea would be making a domain of Hollowfaust on its own and the guildmasters a collective of darklords that struggle against each other in vain. A collective of darklords, one yet many and many yet one, i do not think exists in the setting. One darklord and the rest end up, from time to time according to their victories and defeats and plots within plots, as Demilords, Lords and Overlords.

I think this would work well and make things more mysterious and open up a great host of adventure ideas as the guildmasters contest each other.

Isolde wrote: ↑Fri Mar 07, 2025 3:37 am I never liked the "Vecna becomes a deity" story-line or adventures. Too much power and excesses.

So much agree.

Isolde wrote: ↑Fri Mar 07, 2025 3:37 am Another idea would be making a domain of Hollowfaust on its own and the guildmasters a collective of darklords that struggle against each other in vain. A collective of darklords, one yet many and many yet one, i do not think exists in the setting. One darklord and the rest end up, from time to time according to their victories and defeats and plots within plots, as Demilords, Lords and Overlords.

I think this would work well and make things more mysterious and open up a great host of adventure ideas as the guildmasters contest each other.

While we have had some collective darklords before, in canon and in Quoth, there is plenty of interesting ground to tread here.

I liked the city when i first read it, and the concept of a "mobile" darklord seems neat.

Personally, making Hollowfaust a conventional Domain of Dread feels like a waste to me, since it misses the locale's entire selling point and what makes it so interesting - it's a city of necromancers that is Dark But Not Evil, a place where the traditionally sinister and eerie art of necromancy is genuinely being exploited to provide a high quality of life for its residents and whose rulers, whilst tyrants on paper, are genuinely benign and ensure their human subjects enjoy one of their setting's highest standards of living in terms of public health, safety and general life satisfaction. If you make it just another "hellhole city ruled by evil necromancers", you take away from what makes Hollowfaust so unique.

If it absolutely has to be a conventional domain, and not, say, a realm within the greater domain of a Darklord, it'd work far better, in my opinion, as a domain for a Darklord of the "fallen angel" variety - the kind of character who normally would be considered a hero putting a hellish lair of evil sorcerers for laying siege to Hollowfaust, but whose refusal to accept that they aren't evil has instead made them the villain.

...Actually, saying that, I just realized that Hollowfaust could theoretically work as one city-state within a larger domain based around a Darklord defined by his or her obsessive zealotry and hatred of arcane magic - a Witch Hunter type Darklord who now finds themselves trapped in a realm where arcane magic is exulted as the highest of arts and even sorcerous studies traditionally seen as evil (necromancy, conjuration, enchantment) are instead lauded and genuinely used for the greater good.

It could be a LN antagonist of a darklord within his or her domain.

Other than the ones already mentioned above;

1 Planescape/Ravenloft. Dustmen city-state that "slips" into Ravenloft from time to time? Or has a gate.
2 Ravenloft. LN antagonist city-state of a darklord within his or her domain.
3 Prime material. City-state that guards the gates to the underworld in the underdark in oerth or faerun or mystara or other. Can slip into Ravenloft or even have a gate for Ravenloft as well.
4 Prime material. Sacred city-state, still far from most civilization, of LN death deities (Wee Jas of Oerth, Kelemvor of Faerun other deities from settings that fit). Can slip into Ravenloft.
5 Ravenloft. A domain unto-itself.
6 Krynn. A secret city-state made up of members from the order of nuitari, black robes turned renegades, that have become LN and seek to know necromancy beyond the towers of the high sorcery and their limitations. Enemies to all three orders, but mostly want to be left alone, and of Chemosh (Krynn god of undead, not much known about him just undeveloped like most of dragonlance) and of almost everyone. Can slip into Ravenloft.

please suggest others

There is a 3.0 book called Heroes of Light that presents The White Arcanist class, all about utilizing the power of necromancy for the greater good, and trying to walk the edge of corruption without ever succumbing to the darkness. To me this seems like an excellent setting for such a character, or at the very least a point of origin for them. I've never heard of it before, but thank you for bringing it into the light, I'm very excited to poke around in it.