Café de Nuit

I've recently had the chance to re-read alot of my Ravenloft stuff ( Have to love working Grave shift) and have come to the conclusion the only reason the Mordent remains a part of the core is due to the powers needing a place to dump all the would be heroes of the demi-plane. Think about it. The dark lord is a wimp in comparison to other dark lords. Heck even ol Vlad is more intresting. What does Lord Godfrey do? Aside from being ripped apart by his ghostly wife and daughter that is. During the grand conjunction when they yanked some of the domains out and let a few dark lords go they went and kept Mordent. So the only reason has to be a centralized location for the dark powers to keep track of the good guys. Course I could be wrong ( been known to happen from time to time ) but it feels right. So what do you think is there any real reason for Mordent.


Maraudar

Mordent is one of the most important aspects of Ravenloft.

If anything there is little point for most of the other domains if you want to think about it this way.

If anything though Mordent is more important than just about everything else except Barovia.

Truth be told, Godfrey is an interesting Domain lord in his own right, though understanding him requires some research. In fact, the real excitement of the domain begins at the grave.

To the living, Mordent is quiet, slow and safe. But to the dead, Mordent is a vivid landscape of misery, where the sins of the past echo without end. Of the ancient edifices of Mordent, not a one is free from the hauntings of some unseen spirit. Indeed, Mordent is a gigantic trap for the souls of the departed. Those who die in Mordent with unresolved issues are caught within the web of mists. They must wander forever, struggling to escape, seeking for the release that will never come without the help of the living.

Like a fiendish spider, Godfrey sits at the center of that web. Gryphon Hill is a vortex of evil, and all people who die within a few miles of the domain are drawn into the manor. There, Godfrey rules supreme over the multitudes of spirits. Even those ghosts who aren't drawn in to Gryphon Manor are surely under the thrall of Godfrey, who is surely the most powerful of all the spectres of misty Mordent.

So you see, Mordent is in fact a very exciting domain. If you're already dead.

Well if I die there then all well and good.. Course owing fealty to a wimpy ghost who gets ripped up by a little girl would be hard to stomach (so to speak). I still think it's just a dumping ground for the heroes of Ravenloft, both the living and the dead. Sucessful and defeated. Dont get me wrong I like the place, if I was drawn in to demi-plane I would prefer to end up there. It just seems like a boring place to live Darklord wise.

Maraudar

Well, I just re-read the Godefroy's current sketch in GazIII, and he seems anything but wimpy to me (and not only for his CR of 16). Like any good Darklord, he has long-term plans that he is quietly setting to fruition. Between his schemes to destroy Lord Jules Weathermay, his increasing network of blackmailed nobles and his plans to provoke a religious war within the Church of Ezra, he's a very real menace to the living as well as the dead. Not to mention the army of ghosts at his beck and call, many of whom are dead heroes or relatives to canon NPCs.

I think its part of Godefroy's charm that, although a very powerful menace on his own right, he is not the most important secret within his domain. With half a dozen other half-forgotten cursed families, the mystery of House of Gryphon Hill itself and the strange attention the Mists and misty creatures seem to give the domain, all make Mordent a rather dangerous and intriguing place. Not to mention the Alchemist and his Apparatus, or the fact that at least three most important families of Ravenloft today (the Godefroys, the d'Honaires and the Reniers) originated here, leaving behind many an uncovered legacy.

As for being the 'dumping ground' for heroes, it may have seemed so in 2nd Edition days, I think, but now I see it slowly changing. With Van Richten gone, Mordent has, what? the Weathermay-Foxgrove twins? Andrez Weissritter? And those are more often abroad than not. Other notable noble figures include Alanik Ray in Dementlieu, Tara Kolyana in Hazlan, and more recent additions to the setting, such as Jameld of Hroth in Sithicus, Narana and Stepan Hiregaard in Nova Vaasa or Javier Renier in Richemulot. And this is not counting lots of other noble-but-flawed characters, such as James Mousel, Johann Severin, Wyan of Viktal, Agatha Clairmont or Jander Sunstar.

I rarely involve the darklords in my games..

I don't know about anyone else...

Igor I would agree with except I'm one of those barbarians still using 2e. This is'nt a slam on the later editions but I just dont like em and honestly dont intend to waste my time with learning how to use them. Now I did buy the books but that was so I could keep abreast on what was going on and then convert them to my style . That aside, I appreciate the comments from you all and your outlooks on this little land. There is one last note I'd like to add. I'd love to see a book put out on Alanik Ray's most intriguing cases similiar to the one in the USS ( I think that was it)


Maraudar

Way to bored at the welfare office today making sure all the women and children dont set fire to the lobby..

Godefroy may not be dangerous himself, burt what about the rest of Gryffon Hill? All those incoprporeal undead just waiting to fall upon anyone who enters. Anyone who enters Godefroy's home should feel extremely fortunate to make it to the front door, let alone any further.

Troile wrote:I rarely involve the darklords in my games..

I don't know about anyone else...

It takes a certain amount of planning and manipulation to incorporate Darklords into a campaign. I use them as plot hooks and as villains myself, but it is ok to not use them. It is personal preference on the part of the DM.

maraudar wrote:Igor I would agree with except I'm one of those barbarians still using 2e.

Ahh. This explains much. I stuck with 2e for as long as humanly possible also (I'm now a lifelong convert to 3.5, but I can see why some would choose not to be), and for as long as I was in 2e I hated Mordent. I agreed with you completely; it seemed like a complete waste of time. But some of the 3rd edition books, especially Gazetteer III, have changed my mind; while I wouldn't go so far to say that it's second only to Barovia in importance (Darkon forever!), it's improved dramatically, and my current campaign is based there.

If you really want to make Mordent a more palatable domain, I'd definitely advise looking at Gazetteer III. While a lot of the mechanics wouldn't do you much good, you could at least incorporate some of the flavor text and crunchy bits.

maraudar wrote:I've recently had the chance to re-read alot of my Ravenloft stuff ( Have to love working Grave shift) and have come to the conclusion the only reason the Mordent remains a part of the core is due to the powers needing a place to dump all the would be heroes of the demi-plane. Think about it. The dark lord is a wimp in comparison to other dark lords. Heck even ol Vlad is more intresting. What does Lord Godfrey do? Aside from being ripped apart by his ghostly wife and daughter that is. During the grand conjunction when they yanked some of the domains out and let a few dark lords go they went and kept Mordent. So the only reason has to be a centralized location for the dark powers to keep track of the good guys. Course I could be wrong ( been known to happen from time to time ) but it feels right. So what do you think is there any real reason for Mordent.


Maraudar

Godefrey is one of those darklords that got ignored in second edition. He was one of the earliest and Mordent had alot of attention with VanRichten there, I:10 set there, and a couple adventures. Much of 2E was spent on the really cool lands or the hard ones where extra attention was really needed.
d’Honaire had very little done with him, Nathan Timothy wasn't even supplied with a curse, Keening was just a place with a lesser Necropolis no one ever went. Alot of places were just "eh" in the early games, Mordent included. No one really noticed though because it was relativley peacefull and there were no troubles having players there for more than two sessions.

What use is Mordent? It is a land of haunted houses, a rural countryside like much of England. Think Hound of the Baskervilles with moors and the like. Ghosts, spirits, restless dead and the curses of family bloodlines.
The lord is cunning and intelligent with centuries of unlife behind him. He can leave the manor, remember that. He has free reign over all the lands and can spy invisibly or manipulate events. He has his plans.

Mordent is a good domain seriously it has ghost and you are free to add any monster anyway! I mean a werewolf familly and a wererat familly come from mordent if I remember... also I like the fact that its renaissance but you know country renaissance, it has the same feel as a good old slasher movie set in an haunted house. Its also the perfect place for dark cults.

With Mr Mangrum's hints, Eowin Timothy, the founder of the Timothy Clan, is very much alive.

Probably the Kargat writers were reluctant to tackle Godefroy's backstory (and therefore Mordent) because they didn't want to contradict individual game campaigns' outcomes from I10. It's the same way that the current crop of writers won't go into detail about what happened to Van Richten: declaring one of the possible adventure-tracks "canon" would alienate a lot of DMs who went with a different track.

Besides, it's not a bad idea to have at least ONE domain where PCs can "lie low" for a while, without darklords and/or monsters breathing down their necks. Darkon's memory-shift effect disqualifies it for that purpose, and other peaceful-seeming domains like Dementlieu are really infiltrated by darklord pawns, so Mordent's a useful place for a breather from constant threats and intrigue. It's like Frank's yellow house on the old "Millennium" TV series: it makes everyplace else seem far darker by contrast, and it keeps PCs' experiences from being sooooo incessantly grim as to be depressing rather than thrilling.

Sure, Mordent doesn't seem to fit the pattern of other domains, if you think of a domain's purpose as "scare everybody every minute of every day" ... but MOST domains break *some* kind of pattern: Bluetspur is too high-level; Keening has nobody around for its darklord to terrify; Tepest's peasents can be scarier than its darklords, etc. Try thinking of Mordent as one extreme end of a scale, in terms of the subtlety of the villains' influence and impact, with "overkill" domains like the Burning Peaks at the other extreme.

Mordent also serves as a nice "blank slate" to put some of the "place this anywhere" adventures from CoTN and such. The Automatic Man, the min-kins, Lumina, Carnival, the unfamiliar, Undying Justice, Scaena, etc...