Category:The Shadowlands

This section contains canon info from officially published sources

The Shadowlands is a Cluster, composed of Avonleigh, Nidala, and Shadowborn Manor.

Chronology

• 611 BC - (The Great Kingdom) Wielded by a possessed monk, Ebonbane strikes down Kateri Shadowborn in her own home.^[1] Shadowborn Manor is claimed by the Mists.^[2][3] Kateri rises as a geist.^[1]

• 615 BC - The Mists draw in Elena Faith-hold after years of bloodshed caused by her War of Evil. She continues her fanatical crusade against evil in the Land of Mists, killing the populations of ten towns.^[4] Thanks to Elena's transgressions, Nidala forms.^[2][3]

• 631 BC - (Approximately) Alexi Shadowborn founds the second incarnation of the Circle in the Land of Mists. The Knights of the Shadows refer to its members.^[5]

• 646 BC - (The Great Kingdom) The evil inside Morgoroth is reawakened by the killing of Lambert. Morgoroth kidnaps Aurora Shadowborn and takes her back to his home, Tergeron Manor. When Ferran Shadowborn and the rest of his knights give chase confront Morgoroth in his home, where they are slaughtered to the last man.^[6] In Ravenloft, Avonleigh arises from the Phantasmal Forest.^[2][3]

• 646 BC - Morgoroth attempted to construct a magic mirror to escape the Demiplane of Dread, but the effort backfires with a blast of eldritch power. The blast destroys the mirror, separating it into thirteen ethereal shards. In addition, the blast destroys Morgoroth's physical form and dispersed his ethereal essence throughout Tergeron Manor. Driven mad, his malign intelligence became one with the manor itself.^[6]

• 747 BC - The Shadowlands cluster forms from Nidala, Avonleigh, and Shadowborn Manor.^[7][8][9]

• 751 BC - Gondegal becomes leader of the Circle^[10]

• 754 BC - In the first half of the year, Irvyne Wolfe, aka the Red Wolf, meets Nadia. They fall in love. In the summer, they are married. Weeks later, the Vistani deliver a prophecy to them. Maureve decodes the prophecy as meaning that a true paladin will be born and eventually otherthrow Elena Faith-hold. Still later, Nadia becomes pregnant but keeps her husband from knowing.^[11]

John W. Mangrum on the Kargatane's vision for Ravenloft Gazetteer Volume X

This section contains Potential-canon info, revealed by the creators from never-published sources

• The Phantasmal Forest doesn't have a fixed shape. Shadowborn Manor, Avonleigh, and numerous tiny little domains all float around in it, sort of like pocket domains. The best way to think of it is to consider the Phantasmal Forest an amoeba, with Shadowborn Manor its nucleus. The Phantasmal Forest exists because Ebonebane's evil is so pervasive and powerful that it seeps through the planar membranes of his domain, so to speak. Since first appearing, it's slowly spread around Nidala, like an ooze absorbing its prey, to the point that "today," there's only one shrinking stretch of border that leads directly to the Mists. In all other directions, one must pass through the Phantasmal Forest to reach any other domain.

It's not necessarily the size that makes the Phantasmal Forest easy to get lost in -- it's that the Phantasmal Forest is a manifestation of the Misty Border, and like the Mists, it's directionless. Nothing leaves tracks, and there are no trails to follow. (The BoS story discusses this.)

• After it was trapped in Ravenloft, Ebonbane spent decades corrupting every aspect of the late Kateri Shadowborn's life. It wiped out her family, corrupted her allies, and so on. Each time it successfully turned one of Lady Shadowborn's former friends or ties to evil, it drew them into the Phantasmal Forest, and thus Ravenloft. They're all still out there, pseudodarklords of pathetic little psuedodomains.

Morgoroth and Elena Faith-hold stand apart because they damned themselves, with minimal involvement from Ebonbane. Thus, although their corruption delights Ebonbane and ultimately feeds into its evil, they do not serve Ebonbane, unlike the other pearls in its collection.

• Pseudodomains -- pearls in the oil, I think I called them in the RL DMG -- include Kateri's unicorn mount Addar, now driven mad and equally lost in overweening pride and self-loathing. His 'domain' is a small glade that travels with him. He can act as a guide for those who play to his vanity.

Another is Forenoon Abbey, a monastery significant to Lady Shadowborn that's now the home of the undead Ahltrian. This was the first pearl in Ebonbane's collection -- the first thing beloved of Kateri that it destroyed after returning to the world.

• Ebonbane can animate anyone who dies in Shadowborn Manor or the Phantasmal Forest as an intelligent ghoul. If a humanoid corpse is left lying in the mire of the Phantasmal Forest, then after a few minutes it sinks into the swampy earth and, a few days later, digs out of the mud at Forenoon Abbey, now one of the Ahltrian and utterly subservient to Ebonbane.

• The Phantasmal Forest is trackless and directionless; getting lost is the norm. It used to lead back to the Great Kingdom on Kateri Shadowborn's homeworld, but those planar pathways closed as Ebonbane wiped out the last remnants of her legacy.

• The general thrust of adventuring in the domain is the conflict between the human evil of Elena Faith-hold and the monstrous, all-consuming evil of Ebonbane, and the prospects of Elena's once again being offered a true evil to fight. What would her reaction be? Meanwhile, Ebonbane is monomaniacally fixated on destroying and/or desecrating everything th ....

• Ebonbane can't leave its tiny domain, but the Ahltrian can. They regularly steal into Nidala to wreak havoc. Their ultimate goal, beyond simple destruction, is to pull Elena into their ranks, and thus add the whole of Nidala to Ebonbane's holdings. (This would, presumably, let Ebonbane extend its senses into the land, and possibly mean that any corpses left on the soil, anywhere, would be sucked down into the Ahltrian.) Essentially, the whole domain would become just another part of the amorphous, sunless Phantasmal Forest.

• And, of course, the Knights of the Circle must make an annual pilgrimage to first Avonleigh and then Shadowborn Manor to maintain the magic that keeps Alexi Shadowborn, Ebonbane's current prison, in stasis.

• Morgoroth is the third player in a two-sided battle, falling somewhere in between Elena and Ebonbane, but too wrapped up in his own concerns to be an active participant. If the inherent struggle of the Shadowlands is human evil vs. monstrous evil, he falls somewhere in between. He is a monster, but he holds no allegiance to Ebonbane and in fact has a strong motivation to keep the fiend in check. This makes him a potential ally -- not of Elena, but of the Circle, who have to deal with him every year. However, unless you play to his single "redeeming quality" -- his desire to keep his innocent captive alive indefinitely -- he's as treacherous and malevolent as they come.

References

Data from the Ravenloft Catalogue

		Ravenloft Third Edition
		Ravenloft Third Edition - pp15,18,155-159
		Ravenloft Third Edition - p156
		The Shadowborn Cluster Shadowlands, The Shadowlands