Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 curtisin Jan 24, 2006 15:17:06	I've need a new type of Darklord for a campaign I'm putting together... However I haven't been able to find a type that would suit me.... It's because I need something in an Arctic Landscape, and it might just be me, but I haven't been able to find anyting that suited me Any ideas? (it doesn't need to be one that already existsm because my players don't know the Ravenloft setting very well, so I can use a completely new one). Any ideas? Both on history and on statistics? Thanks a lot :-)
#2 zombiegleemax Jan 24, 2006 17:31:57	Do you want a monster or a person? Arctic monsters tend to be none too bright, though a white dragon could be a darklord, with a good backstory. As for people...an inuit tribal, a barbarian (like the Faerun Uthgardt), or a settler could all be possibilities. Often arctic areas are home to cities where people go to escape their past...at least in some fantasy worlds. but, in general, i don't know what you're looking for enough to fill in the blanks. also, weird note, one of the hells is frozen, so a demon/devil (can never remember which is which...) from there may work. Glugon purhaps?
#3 zombiegleemax Jan 24, 2006 18:34:12	I've need a new type of Darklord for a campaign I'm putting together... However I haven't been able to find a type that would suit me.... It's because I need something in an Arctic Landscape, and it might just be me, but I haven't been able to find anyting that suited me Any ideas? (it doesn't need to be one that already existsm because my players don't know the Ravenloft setting very well, so I can use a completely new one). Any ideas? Both on history and on statistics? Thanks a lot :-) Did you look at Voristokov and Sanguinia? They're both artic domains.
#4 curtisin Jan 25, 2006 0:20:40	I'm looking for a person in this case, but I was thinking along the lines of some sort of arctic druid who'd transgressed against the laws of nature, by introducing and magically altering both people and animals in an attempt to make them survive in the arctic environment. Somewhere along the line he got carried a bit too far and started doing these experiments for fun and making the creatures less and less survivable until the point where started making them for fun, and out of spite. I'd forgotten about the two domains mentioned though. Got any idea about where I can find more material about them?
#5 malus_black Jan 25, 2006 12:05:39	For Vorostokov, there's the great 2E adventure Dark of the Moon, which I'm sure you can buy in PDF form from a wide range of online stores.
#6 zombiegleemax Jan 25, 2006 13:16:32	I'm looking for a person in this case, but I was thinking along the lines of some sort of arctic druid who'd transgressed against the laws of nature, by introducing and magically altering both people and animals in an attempt to make them survive in the arctic environment. Somewhere along the line he got carried a bit too far and started doing these experiments for fun and making the creatures less and less survivable until the point where started making them for fun, and out of spite. Why would a Druid mess with it to begin with? It doesn't make much sense as stated, as a druid would never have started the process... If you want a druid who engages in forced-evolution, perhaps some other event caused the domain to become arctic when it wasn't, and the druid tried to fix the situation, and evetually went a little batty because of it and started feeling like a force of nature in and of himself. Prerhaps a human settlement begain to expand after finding a resource that the rest of the world could use. The druid believed (possibly correctly) that the influx of settlers and growth of the settlement would destroy the natural echostructure, so he started to bring in more monster-esque arctic creatures (say, winter wolves). He couldn't bring more, and the humans were able to take down their numbers, so now he had to turn to dark magic in order to change normal wolves in winter wolves, etc. From there he waged war on the settlement, using armies of converted animals (and possibly converted humans) to do his biding. Of course, he ended up destroying the habitat... his tactical obsession with culling the humans down (then destroying them) caused him to mess with nature, and when the natural world finally turnned from him, the Dark Powers were there to take their place. His punishment? there is a near constant influx of humans (often adventurers and lost settlers) into his domain, causing his war to be at a constant stalemate.
#7 curtisin Jan 25, 2006 15:14:14	Hmmm.. That's not a bad idea really.... I think I'll go with that one... See how my players react to being viewed as the agressors :-)
#8 humanbing Jan 25, 2006 15:44:31	Undead flourish quite well in cold areas. Perhaps if you wanted to have a tormented druid, you could have a situation where everywhere s/he goes, ice and sleet hail down, killing the animals that s/he is desperately (and misguidedly) trying to save. His/her best efforts to keep them alive only causes them to reanimate as undead, further adding insult upon injury. After the druid passes, the flora and fauna regrow slowly, say, within a month or two. Based on these very quick and dirty notes so far, I'd imagine the druid would be a misguided zealot who tries to do good but ends up doing evil. In this fashion, he or she would be like Elena Faithhold.
#9 zombiegleemax Jan 25, 2006 18:23:00	I'm looking for a person in this case, but I was thinking along the lines of some sort of arctic druid who'd transgressed against the laws of nature, by introducing and magically altering both people and animals in an attempt to make them survive in the arctic environment. Somewhere along the line he got carried a bit too far and started doing these experiments for fun and making the creatures less and less survivable until the point where started making them for fun, and out of spite. I'd forgotten about the two domains mentioned though. Got any idea about where I can find more material about them? Have you looked at the Wendigo template from... can't remember! It's either the Fiend Folio or the MMII. That's a cold-based fey/undead thing, if memory serves. It might be worth a look.
#10 curtisin Jan 26, 2006 12:37:51	So far I've come up with a Neutral Evil Druid at 11th level, who's not an undead (I think the undead thing is making it a bit too obvious to the players who the darklord is), who has a radius of about 2 miles where the weather is constantly snowing, and where everyone inside that area takes 1d10 points of cold damage every hour (should be enough to kill off most animals), but who is immune to the damage herself. Her way of closing the borders will be by immense cold, enough to kill off even ice elementals (of which there are plenty in her realm, and whom she can (uncounciously) control... A bit like Tristan ApBlanc from Forlorn with the Goblyns). (Something along the lines of 1d10 points of cold damage each round until they re-enter her realm). I'm still working on the details of how she fell into darkness...
#11 zombiegleemax Jan 26, 2006 12:51:34	Next question, who lives in the domain? where did the spike in population come from? If a natural reasource, what resource? Is it magical in origin (or fantastical, like mithril or some such)? You should consider giving her access to some necromancy as a way to bring back creatures (as stated, undead are immune to cold). Based on the curse you want to give, I'd say the initial climate change was NOT her fault, but she turned to genocide and forced-evolution to deal with it, and went out of control. So what caused the coldness in the first place? Perhaps the resource that the people where mining/harvesting kept the place from getting too cold...thir tampering caused the coldness. Of course, the druid may nwell have used the same reasource to attract winter wolves, etc. to help her out. Not so sure about ice elementals being common...elementals are by nature planar, though certainy she'll be summoning them plenty. But in general I'd stick to natural and psudo-natural creatures, like polar bears, wolves, winter wolves, etc. Dire animals work well, especially if you describe them a bit differently and have them be a result of the druids tampering with the local speces. Anything with fur or fat and some claws works well. Treant variants may also work well, depending on how you handle them (cold subtype...ouch).
#12 solandras Jan 26, 2006 15:12:22	So far I've come up with a Neutral Evil Druid at 11th level, who's not an undead (I think the undead thing is making it a bit too obvious to the players who the darklord is), who has a radius of about 2 miles where the weather is constantly snowing, and where everyone inside that area takes 1d10 points of cold damage every hour (should be enough to kill off most animals), but who is immune to the damage herself. Her way of closing the borders will be by immense cold, enough to kill off even ice elementals (of which there are plenty in her realm, and whom she can (uncounciously) control... A bit like Tristan ApBlanc from Forlorn with the Goblyns). (Something along the lines of 1d10 points of cold damage each round until they re-enter her realm). I'm still working on the details of how she fell into darkness... I would actually discourage this as most borders have certain ways of being able to get through them without harm. For example, the poison gas of Barovia is tranversable if you are an ooze, construct or undead; You can get through Hazlan's fire border if you are a being of fire (AKA fire elemental). You can get through Richemulot's horde of rats if you are incorpral, ethral, ummm...maybe some other ways. But as it stands, yeah there are almost always a way to get through a closed border without harm.
#13 curtisin Jan 27, 2006 2:20:41	Hmmm... Good point... Perhaps I should allow Creatures of Elemental Ice to be able to cross the borders... Like they are in Hazlan... (Although cold resistance should still be no way of getting out). I will post the Darklord here once I figure out the details of the realm and the darklord herself/himself.
#14 rotipher Jan 27, 2006 7:21:18	Instead of making the animals etc into undead (too obvious, I agree), how about having her turn them into cold-resistant aberrations? Those are just as repellant to the average druid as undead -- moreso, even, if this darklord happened to come from Eberron -- and you can design a new template to apply to the mundane animals she's converted. Depending on how complex you want the adventure to be, you could let the druid drop some red-herring hints to the PCs, that the aberrant animals are being created by an "evil wizard" she begs them to defeat on Nature's behalf ... really, just a benign abjurer who's struggling to protect the tiny handfull of humans whom the druid's monstrosities haven't yet killed.
#15 zombiegleemax Feb 06, 2006 3:10:14	I don't know that making the druid an undead is too obvious. All it takes is a hat of disguise...or even better a dark blessing and presto - the druid looks human (assuming he/she/it isn't wildshaping tp begin with). Having a druid who felt that their lands were under threat sought some form of immortality to remain as its guardian is a good starting point. And the terrible cold goes so well with the lich template. It could be that the Dark Powers have caused the consequences of lichdom to spread across the whole land. The guy or gal could have had something other than lichdom in mind at the start...it just didn't *quite* work out the right way as he was seduced to ever more evil acts. The druids punishment of course is the frozen wasteland that was once verdant. If you want to go even darker then all the old animal companions are now also undead. They still protect the druid/lich but hunt the few "real" animals (or people) left to the realm...not because they need to to survive (they're undead) but because it causes further anguish to the DL. Of course the DL is "curiously" powerless to stop them (spell don't affect them etc). If the companions are killed then at the next dark of the moon an appropriate animal of the destroyed type dies and spontaneously rises to replace their ranks. Though the curse can't be circumvented a monthly reprieve might be arranged if the DL could just find some brave "heroes" to slay the pack. Of course we already have druids in Forlorn. Forlorn could go artic if Belenius (the Sun God of the realm) withdrew his blessing or if the Druids messed up some kind of grand endevour designed to thwart the goblyns that reside there. On yet another hand: There isn't really a good darklord based on the premise of greed. Have you considered creating a miser darklord whose cold prison metaphorically reflects his cold heart? To close the domains it becomes impossible to take any valuable goods out of his realm...you can only leave in the barest of rags. Of course this doesn't make him popular with traders who spurn the cursed land. And as a result the poverty in the region is quite high, even by RL standards. People might get by herding reindeer instead of farming (as many real world cultures) with small fishing based towns along a coast. Of course there would be perils both at sea and in the artic mountains and forrests of both natural and unnatural varieties. Wolves and cats are already taken in other domains so I suggest uncommonly fierce bears (this is also true of many (sub)artic regions in the real world).
#16 curtisin Feb 06, 2006 4:29:32	I like that idea with the miser, but here's what I came up with... http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=580596 (I know I posted it as a different message, but now I'm sure everyone will be able to go there)