Nocturnal Sea Report – in depth (non pun) analysis: Liffe

[Joël of the FoS]

Esteemed members of the Fraternity,

About a month ago, we released the FoS Nocturnal Sea Survey. For those who haven’t got it, you can get this 400 pages netbook in the Library room.

Yes, 400 pages , but considering there are six islands to cover, as well as the waters of Ravenloft’s eastern sea, the page count per domain seems reasonable to us.

We’ve had a lot of great feedback so far in the main thread discussing this report, but inspired by the interesting design bogs we’ve seen from various D&D designers, we’d like to make an experiment, which is to discuss in depth the NS Report domains, one after the other.

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So we’ll start with Liffe, with David as the chief designer for this domain.

We suggest you reread this domain and provide David (and all the others who chipped in for ideas and dread possibilities) some feedback, questions, comments, etc.

Here’s the time to ask here any questions you might have about Liffe.

If it is worth it, we’ll make an official erratum file or add a complement information web enhancement from these discussions.

Also, David will share some design choice he made, and add similar thoughts and he and the FoS team had during the revisit to Liffe.

Get your FoS NS report copy and let's start the discussion!

In a week or so, we’ll switch to Vechor.

The Souragne Fraternity of Shadows

[Jester of the FoS]

Liffe made for an interesting project because it was a hodge-podge of small settings from the Book of Crypts which were not meant to be a unified land. You can the lord, Evensong, who comes from the Dragonlance setting (Krynn) yet IIRC the adventure features a calendar with Greyhawk dates.
Likewise, you have other adventures with ties to the Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk.

Chris Nichols was instrumental in the initial set-up of the idea and the creation of some of the more interesting elements (the land remembers, the church of the Thousand Gods). He provided a lengthy brainstorming for much of the land and seas.

One of his ideas was to move Evensong to demilord status, lord of the pocket domain of Neverwere manor. A new character was to become lord of Liffe.
I veto-ed this idea early on because I just did not feel right re-writing canon; it's not my place. So -for better or worse- I decided to stick with the Baron.

With the mish-mash of worlds and places I decided to make that the defining feature of Liffe rather than an unfortunate side-effect of its creation. Liffe would be a land of contradictions and combinations.
Embracing this, I added as many references to past characters and lands as I could, slipping in little extras. While I don't think I explicitly stated it in the text, Liffe draws in the refuge from other lands, it collects the extraneous and homeless.

[cure]

For the errata, as already suggested in the other thread, more clarity as to the darklordship is needed.

To my eye, there can be A darklord and any number of darklords in waiting OR there can be several demi-darklords with the darklordship as yet undecided or otherwise in suspence (as was the case in Darkon awaiting the return of Azalin). BUT there cannot be A darklord (or even a pair of darklords (Borca)) and demi-darklords in the same overlapping domain. To be explicit this last is to not deny the possiblity of a pocket domain or pocket domains within the domain of Liffe, where the pocket domain(s) locks in its lord and lock out any other lords.

Now I confess to still being confused, perhaps my fault, whether Eversong is a darklord (in which case the demi-darklords should be downgraded to darklords in waiting, i.e., candidates for evalation if Eversong is destroyed) or is a demi-darklord among others. Or are there pocket domains and accompanying restrictions on the movement about Liffe of some or all the individuals concerned.

Finally, if the lot of them are demi-darklords, what restrictions, special conditions, if any govern them when in the presence of one another. This matter goes to the point that the land is supposed to reflect in some sense the darklord and is perhaps best thought of in this case as a variation on a reality wrinkle, which is to say Isolde and Carnival might lend some inspiration to the matter.

[Jester of the FoS]

To my eye, there can be A darklord and any number of darklords in waiting OR there can be several demi-darklords with the darklordship as yet undecided or otherwise in suspence (as was the case in Darkon awaiting the return of Azalin). BUT there cannot be A darklord (or even a pair of darklords (Borca)) and demi-darklords in the same overlapping domain. To be explicit this last is to not deny the possiblity of a pocket domain or pocket domains within the domain of Liffe, where the pocket domain(s) locks in its lord and lock out any other lords.

The hard fast rule about darklords has always been the same as Highlander: there can be only one. Except for Borca.

I'm presenting Liffe as a special case, similar to how Borca is a special case. An exception. The Dark Powers make the rules, why do they have to stick to them?


Basically, Liffe is domain flotsam. You had Puncheron, the Beast of Moondale, the Beast Cult, Evensong, Ejrik Spellbender, Nightblood the lich, etc. All were small lords of tiny pockets and all ruled shortly until adventurers can and hacked them down.
Their lands were fading, they were fading, and nothing would be left. But these pathetic fragments of lands all clung together, like scraps of trash cling together in the ocean to form flotsam. Just enough to maintain themselves and the lord's lives.
The Baron is the darklord. As the strongest of the other lords he's the dominant force, the true lord of the land. The rest are tied to the land, bound and cursed like other darklords, but they're not the most powerful. Some were actually saved from death by Evensong unwittingly taking power (others, like the beast in Moondale, are dead).

If you don't like that idea treat the demilords like former lords (Timothy springs to mind) who still have small spheres of influence (reality wrinkles) and cannot leave the island.

Really, it's all just an excuse to explain why the land is such a particleboard land. And keep all the 'dead' NPCs still around.

[Rotipher of the FoS]

Borca isn't the only canon domain with multiple lords. Tepest and the Nightmare Lands have always had more than one darklord in residence, and in the case of the Nightmare Court, one of them (the Nightmare Man) seems to be dominant over the others.

If it helps, think of Liffe's minor lords as directly comparable to the lesser Nightmare Court members, even though they don't actually defer to Evensong's authority the way the Ghost Dancer, Hypnos, etc, defer to the Nightmare Man.

[cure]

If it helps, think of Liffe's minor lords as directly comparable to the lesser Nightmare Court members, even though they don't actually defer to Evensong's authority the way the Ghost Dancer, Hypnos, etc, defer to the Nightmare Man.

Yes, it helps. And indeed it is worthy of explicitly being sited in the 'errata' for the sake of clarity.

The Nightmare Land being of a whole with itself does not provoke the same uncertainty that Liffe thrown together of parts does. So what does not need explanatory comment in the case of the Nightmare Land does in the case of Liffe.

[Rotipher of the FoS]

True, to a degree. OTOH, we don't know much about how the Nightmare Lands came into being, in the first place: it's conceivable that a similar, long-ago merger between domains was responsible. (Note that each of the minor Court members has a particular home base or territory, within their shared domain, that reflects his/her/its personality.)

[Joël of the FoS]

David, while Evensong and Puncheron are fully stated in appendix, and Malisha presented as "female "aberration" Ari4/Clr5 (Cult leader)", and Nightblood as "a Wiz 20 -> four beings of 5th level", what do you suggest for classes and level for these remaining demilords?

Ejrik Spellbender (odem)
The Kelpie (from Fiend Folio)
Tavelia

Joël

[Archedius]

What Joel wrote reminds me. If Malisha is from Bluetspur on a mission from the God Brain ('she's' an Illithid), there's a problem.

Illithid are hermaphroditic and have no gender. About twice in their life they deposit fertilized eggs into the brine surrounding the Brain, which then kills the weak ones by 'eating' them.

I'm sure no illithid would actually care about how feminine or masculine their name sounded to thralls, so the name Malisha can stay. However, there should be some consistency with established canon regardling the illithid (even if the word isn't mentioned). Malisha should be errataed into not having a gender.

[Jester of the FoS]

However, there should be some consistency with established canon regardling the illithid (even if the word isn't mentioned). Malisha should be errataed into not having a gender.

Malisha was listed as female in Book of Crypts, so her gender is also part of canon.

Illithid tadpoles are implanted in human host bodies which mutate to accommodate them; there's no reason there can't be some differences between tadpoles in a male host and in a female host.
Illithids themselves are not the natural evolution of the creature. Their true adult form is quite different (but considered an aberration). Mind Flayers are a forced change.

Also, Malisha was reincarnated into a young girl's body, and is still more human than flayer (physiologically speaking). So in this case, there is a definite gender.

[The Giamarga]

I think illithid gender is, like for example warforged or doppleganger gender, more a psychological thing.

[The Giamarga]

David, while Evensong and Puncheron are fully stated in appendix, and Malisha presented as "female "aberration" Ari4/Clr5 (Cult leader)", and Nightblood as "a Wiz 20 -> four beings of 5th level", what do you suggest for classes and level for these remaining demilords?

Ejrik Spellbender (odem)
The Kelpie (from Fiend Folio)
Tavelia

Joël

If i understand DoD right, odems do not normally keep any of their character levels. Tavelia is officialy statted in the Darkon Gazetteer, and the Kelpie could be a normal kelpie.

OTOH I'm always interested in more detailed builds.

[cure]

As to the University of Liffe, I wonder if a department of business or even a professor of business is 'historically' accurate. Does anyone know how recently business became a university subject?

The first American business school dates to 1881, the Ecole Supérieure de Commerce of Paris is the oldest business school in the world being founded in 1819, and Aula do Comércio in Lisbon was founded in 1759 as the world's first institute specialising in the study of business. Which of course doesn't answer the question of when a science of business actually began and business took leave of being something one just did, probably under the tutelage of one's family, rather than something first studied.

It is of course perfectly possible that Ravenloft and the Boritsis are ahead of the curve, and there are certainly other instances of such, but still it strikes me as being oddly modern, more appropriate to the Mask of the Red Death than Ravenloft. Then again, the Boritsis strike me as being closer to the Medici and so commerce as an extension of political power rather than business as a science unto itself which may be, and indeed should be, openly shared with others. Indeed it is the secretive Grabens who seem to be behaving in what is a more timely manner.

I suppose my underlying worry is modernity creep. Lamordia is, of course, very modern and Paridon is perhaps relatively too, followed by Dementlieu. Universities in these places that are hardly contemporary, whether in terms of their course content or organisation, but that are far more than fledgling make sense. Elsewhere universities would be correspondingly more limited and even quite primative or, alternatively, steeped in the study of matters unacceptable to us and Lamordians such as astrology and magic. Hence a business professor, from the ruins of even less modern Il-Aluk, setting up shop in Liffe, with the help of a family that should resemble the 15th century Medici, seems a little jarring.

One might even wonder if this is not something of a bias of the FoS itself, the organisation being deeply rooted in Lamordia and Dementlieu, and our modern world too, and so its academic fondness for meeting scholars (and overly modern ones at that) in other lands. A case of finding what one is looking for . . . . when an older, more alien and less accommodating reception might be more in order . . . as seems to have been the case in fact with Dirac and the Drowning Deep.

Then again, it is perhaps nothing more than an attempt to account for the unfortunate and unsensical canonic reference (from Legacy of Blood) to brother Boritsi moving to Liffe.

[Rotipher of the FoS]

Granted, "modernity creep" is an issue ... but then, Ravenloft hasn't been historically consistent since I6 put a gigantic pipe organ in a medieval castle. And with things like Larissa Snowmane's paddlewheel-driven riverboat undeniably woven into canon, it's clear that consistency with real-world history takes a back seat to what's flavorful and genera-appropriate.

If it helps, I suppose one could write off the "business school" as a ploy which the elitist Liffen aristocracy cooked up, to shoehorn all those scruffy merchants'-son students into their own bourgoise academic program, and out of their blueblood classmates' hair! But really, there's no law that requires an in-game culture's political, social, economic and technological development to advance in lock-step with how real-world Europe happens to have progressed. The Cultural Level ratings only pertain to domains' broad tone, IME, not every little detail.

As for the Boritsis, I'm sure they do use commercial forces as a club to reinforce their political clout, back home in Borca. In regions as newly discovered as the Nocturnal Sea, OTOH, that's not going to be a viable strategy ... at least, not until they can establish a power-base within that sphere of influence. Perhaps that's what their endowment of the business school is really all about, if they're betting Evensong and his fellow-snobs will fail in their efforts to hold back Liffe's middle class: if every merchant in Armeikos boasts of a degree from a school that has your name on it, twenty years from now, there'll be a considerable payoff in trading-partner loyalty. That could do a lot to counterbalance the Carlyle company's own under-the-table shenanigans in the region.

[cure]

Returning to the darklord issue, the insert (p 11) that describes the characteristics of the land says, "Darklord: Baron Evensong (demilord)", while the later insert on the Demilords of Liffe (p 42) says, "If a single demilord were to gain enough power, that figure would become Liffe's sole darklord, and the land would subtly reshape itself around them." This seems rather contradictory. If there is, as discussed and as implied in the second citation, several darklords, even with Eversong being chief among them, it is misleading to invite us to think that there is one darklord in the first citation, even if the "(demilord)" bit is perhaps intended as a warning that the situation is abnormal. An errata for the first insert on p 11 seems in order.