First, we are left to wonder why Azalin needs to obtain two artifacts from Sergei's wedding. These are the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind and the Icon of Ravenloft. If he really wanted to throw a spanner in the workings of Ravenloft, he could theoretically just have Strahd killed before he became a vampire, thus forestalling the formation of Ravenloft at all.
We are left to assume that the two items have some power in and of themselves. Looking at the Gazetteer I, their powers are fairly modest, at least compared to most artifacts. The main powers of the HSoR are: generally useful against undead (Phylactery of Undead Turning powers, allowing the user to turn undead as though they were four levels higher), and specifically useful against vampires and other sunlight-affected undead (bursts with light of the sun for a brief period of time). The HSoR also can cause damage if touched against undead as a melee weapon.
Now, the Icon of Ravenloft merely stacks with the power of the HSoR. It bestows a +4 to turning attempts, and allows the user to heal as per cure moderate wounds. It hurts undead who hold it by giving them two negative levels.
All in all, these are nifty little magic items, but not one that really should count as more than a curiosity for somebody like Azalin. Bear in mind that Azalin already has a huge collection of magical items as of the Grand Conjunction. (After the Grand Conjunction, his collection grew even larger because of the operation of the Ebon Fold and the Eternal Order collecting and confiscating magical items throughout the country.)
So: why does he bother with the HSoR and IoR?
Here's my theory. It is generally non-canon, although I do try to fit it in with other canonical events. Also, it may seem overly technical, relying on a logical explanation rather than the McGuffin cop-out of saying "Well the Dark Powers just wouldn't allow that so there". Use it if you like, and if you don't like it for either of those two reasons, then hopefully my disclaimer here will forestall any unconstructive criticism. Hopefully.
The two symbols are remnants of the original Barovian faith, which remained nameless until 3rd edition, when the Gazetteer gave it the term "Andral". Apparently the faith is mostly dead, although it is clear that the High Priest Kir was a faithful of Andral. He crafted the Holy Symbol. It is less clear who created the Icon, but GazI says it's clerics of Andral, too. (Though not specifically Kir.)
Firstly, I would change the powers around a little. The +4 to turning attempt of the Icon is clearly an offensive power to be used against the undead, and it seems either an overkill or a redundancy, given the Holy Symbol's +4 to the turning character's level. Having the two together does give you a fearsome +8 to your turning attempt, which may be a nice stacking power.
So let's give the Holy Symbol a few different powers, mostly offensive anti-undead in nature. Let's bolster the healing, protection, and defensive qualities of the Icon.
First, the +4 to turn attempts arguably should go to the Holy Symbol. It specifically targets undead, as opposed to boosting the cleric's level. The Holy Symbol's other two powers are somewhat limited only to vampires, which I think overspecializes it. Perhaps its latent power is that it causes 1d6 hp damage (no save) to any undead that touches it - not just vampires or sunlight-sensitive undead. Its once-a-week power would be a sunburst that, in addition to its damaging effects against vampires, would actually do 1d6 hp damage per round to any undead within a certain radius, for 1d10 minutes.
That beefs it up nicely and would explain why Strahd really, really doesn't want to go near it if possible. It keeps the flavor of a Holy Symbol that carries the cleansing power of sunlight, and also is primarily there to arm a priest in his battle against undead.
The Icon of Ravenloft doesn't strike me as being primarily an offensive item. Aesthetically, it stands for the domain and the castle, representing a faith's duty to guide, or the liege's duty to protect. I would give it the power to bestow limited regeneration on the holder against supernatural and natural physical attacks by undead. (So while a possessing priest can be shanked to death by a Ba'al Verzi assassin, he's generally got a better fighting chance against undead enemies.) This might be somewhere in the region of regen/5.
The Icon might, in addition to the +4 bonus levels for turning, also grant negative planar protect on the user. So level drain and negative levels don't affect him.
Whereas the Holy Symbol gives the user the ability to combat undead, the Icon gives him the ability to withstand their attacks in turn. Note, though, that intelligent undead might be able to find a way around this. Strahd von Zarovich himself might be unable to drain a cleric holding the Icon. He might even be unable to throttle the cleric with his bare vampiric hands. But he could easily pick up a sword and hack the cleric to death that way - because the Icon doesn't protect against a swordthrust, even if the wielder is undead.
Of course, the Icon would retain its ability to cast Cure Moderate Wounds once per day, allowing the holder to help others in addition to protecting himself.
So we have two fairly powerful items now. But this still begs the question - why does Azalin (who still can't really touch them himself) want the two items in his possession? He's willing to go back far enough in time to steal them before Strahd becomes fully vampiric (or maybe immediately) after.
Here's my take on them again.
Give the two items a profound power when they're held by the same person. Make this power subtle, but potentially gamebreaking (or at least hinting at gamebreaking). That would explain why Azalin needs them.
The best I can do is this: anybody who is Lawful Good and who is holding them together is able to ignore the background rules of the entire demiplane of Ravenloft. That's right. No need to make Fear, Horror, or Madness checks. Undead don't gain +1 turn resistance around him. Even undead darklords lose their mighty +Wis bonus turn resistance. All spells, divine or arcane, can be cast normally, with the normal effects, as though they occurred outside the Demiplane. People holding the items could even conceivably leave the Demiplane at will.
Needless to say, this combined power is highly secret and nobody except Azalin knows it... and Azalin needed decades upon decades of theoretical and practical research to even suspect this was the case.
The explanation for this power would be: Something terrible happened to the faith of Andral during the massacre in Strahd's castle at Sergei's wedding. The Dark Powers, at their moment of creating the Demiplane itself, had infused Strahd, their first darklord and avatar, with a considerable fraction of their power as the natural order collapsed.
The priests of Andral, present at the wedding, though powerless to intervene, held aloft the Holy Symbol and the Icon. At the moment that Ravenloft began to be formed, Andral's power infused the two holy symbols and remained there. Even though the faith of Andral faded away in the following decades, the two magical items are the pure spiritual conduit connecting the Demiplane of Dread back to the Prime Material Plane Barovia that still exists there.
Thus, a priest of Helm might find his spellcasting powers reduced in the Demiplane of Dread, because outer deities' powers are blocked and reduced by the Dark Powers. The one exception would be if the cleric holds the two magical items, which represent Andral's channelling power back to the Prime Material.
In game terms, this power is extremely dramatic for Ravenloft (because it allows a PC... and only one single PC!) to ignore Ravenloft's background rules. But most experienced DMs should find that's familiar territory - it basically means that for this one cleric character, they're role playing as though they were on Oerth or Faerun, or any other normal world with no special limitations.
Thus, the actual game play impact is not actually gamebreaking, but the poetic effect is profound. It also would explain why Azalin needs the items - they provide a conduit out of the Demiplane of Dread, and it makes sense that they might figure prominently in any escape plan he concocts.
It being held that the two items provide the only means of contradicting the Dark Powers' control, the question then becomes how Azalin wants to use them. It's all well and good to know that these items let your trusty cleric behave as though he were still strolling through your homebrew gameworld, but what relevance do they hold for an undead lich (and one who can't cast cleric spells, to boot)?
My suggestion is that Azalin has a plan to give them both to a single individual, and then to allow that individual to do something that triggers a Dark Powers check. We've already established that any one person holding both items essentially gets to ignore the Dark Powers. It stands to reason that if you force a Dark Powers check while you're holding the items, it will cause a paradox on a fairly large scale.
To use a mathematician's analogy, it might be the spiritual equivalent of trying to divide by zero, i.e. it makes Interesting Things Happen, Not Easily Reduced to Definition.
(At the very least, it would put the Dark Powers in direct confrontation with a Prime Material deity. Without getting into the theological question of who would actually win, it's a safe enough bet that such an event could indeed weaken the bonds of the Demiplane of Dread, thus allowing Azalin to escape.)
The exact nature of the deed is much more difficult to define. I include my musings on this in a quote box, because a) it's far less solidly defined in my campaign plan so far than the above mechanics, and b) quote boxes help the roving reader's eye.
Azalin's conundrum: The difficulty of getting a Lawful Good person to trigger a Powers Check
Azalin faces a separate challenge in this above hypothetical set of facts in that he needs to find somebody who is A) lawful good, and thus can actually use the ignore-Ravenloft rules power of the two items, and B) nonetheless able to do something that triggers a DP check.
We've seen that people, regardless of alignment, can be duped into doing things that are check-worthy. A Lawful Good character can still be convinced that he is in a fight-or-die situation and end up taking lives unnecessarily. Many stories of first contact between civilizations have ended in similar tragedies because both sides, though well-meaning, misinterpreted the other's stance or posture, leading to bloodshed.
You'd need two sides, both with good intentions, but implacably unresolvable and mutually in opposition. A good example of this is in "Princess Mononoke".
Hypothetical:
The elves of Nevuchar Springs, fairly insular at the best of times, have recently received visions that the End of Times is near, and that the world will unravel, freeing the darklords to unleash their evil on the multiverse. The deciding factor is when the PCs reach the edge of their world, where the land meets the mists. The elves bravely decide to try to stop the prophecy from coming true, and intend to take steps to stop any humans from coming through, even if it means killing them so they can regain the Holy Symbol and the Icon.
The PCs (hopefully with at least one Lawful Good character in the group, carrying the items) make their way to Nevuchar Springs, guided by Hyskosa's prophecy. They have been given different information. They've been told that taking the two items, and Azalin's phylactery, to the edge of the world is the only way to break the lich's hold over the kingdom and free the oppressed people of Ravenloft from their darklords' yokes.
Note that both prophecies are true!
The "End of Times" prophecy does indeed herald the unravelling of the Demiplane of Dread, and the unleashing of the Darklords on the multiverse. However, Hyskosa's prophecy also is accurate - that once the PCs accomplish their task, they will indeed have freed the peoples of Ravenloft from the rule of their darklords, because the darklords will all have escaped the Demiplane to the Prime Material plane.
Thus, it's entirely possible that Lawful Good PCs will meet hostile elves - themselves Lawful Good (or part of their number so) and both sides will fight each other in the genuine belief that they are the only ones standing between the triumph of evil and the salvation of good.
Such confusion, chaos, and needless bloodshed could definitely force a Dark Powers check... especially if the PCs are given some inkling that the elves are not actually evil, and that they are indeed killing innocents (albeit misguided innocents who will do anything necessary to take the items away from them). Any one person on either side who gains control of one or both of the artifacts will likely become a shooting target as the other side tries desperately to regain them.
This scenario needs more work, but it is feasible at least.
Note that Azalin must leave some capacity for free will in the action. He could easily just cast enchantment spells over the possessor and have them hack up a village, and that would certainly trigger a Dark Powers check... but the rules are clear that where a person is enchanted, it's the controlling character who's hit by the Dark Powers check, not the actor. So Azalin has to manipulate people into wanting to kill each other to protect the holy relics.
This answers some of the questions set forth by the progression of From the Shadows, the relevant Grand Conjunction adventure.
However, the most difficult question to answer is about time travel, and how Azalin sets up the theft of the items.
Time travel is rife with dangers. It's a well known risk that you might go back in time and alter things with profound repercussions. If any of these repercussions somehow means that you will not be able to go back in time in the first place, then you're caught in a paradox, which will never resolve itself. The classic example is a man in 2007 who invents a time machine to go back 100 years to 1907, and then accidentally kills his infant grandfather.
This results in a "bow-tie" loop, where the timeline then progresses along path A, with the father never being born, and the time traveller never being born. This will progress all the way until 2007, when it is impossible for a person never born to go back in time. Time snaps back to 1907, when the grandfather is no longer killed, and grows up, marries, and the issue of his loins results in the time traveller... who then proceeds, in 2007, to repeat the sequence of events.
For a reader-friendly primer on this and other time travelling concepts, go to M. J. Young's web page.
First, the entire issue of sending PCs back in time to collect them is fraught with danger.
Azalin1 probably doesn't want to meddle too much with history early on. If his servants kill Strahd at the wedding, for example, the demiplane might never have formed... which then leads to a paradox because the Azalin of the newly-created historical flow (Azalin2) would have never had a reason to steal the icon and holy symbol, and Strahd would never have been killed at the wedding.
It's the same deal as if you go back in time and kill your mother before you were conceived. Strahd played an integral part in forming Azalin1's current motivations - including his desire to escape Ravenloft - and Azalin1 is much too smart to dare to meddle in that. In fact, Azalin1 would probably want to preserve, as far as possible, the sequence of events leading up to "From the Shadows" - which means no killing Strahd, and repeating every single failed experiment.
Thus, Azalin's choice of event for his servants to meddle in is actually quite, quite brilliant. He chooses the Ravenloft massacre, knowing that nobody actually survived the carnage anyway. Thus, his PCs can observe, act, and die without disturbing the flow of history too much.
The only major external change is that one noblewoman stays behind to catch the Icon and Holy Symbol, presumably under Azalin1's mind control. Azalin1 knows he cannot hijack her for too long without lasting historical repercussions, so he'll need to have chosen her carefully. Maybe she would normally ride away with her family, going into hiding in a corner of Barovia, where the Icon and Holy Symbol could be hidden? Maybe she would ride past a waterfall and be able to throw them in there? Either way, Azalin1 probably has only a few hours at most to play with in her existence.
Another possibility is that this woman originally died inside Ravenloft, but Azalin1 possessed her early enough so she walked outside the castle before the drawbridge rose. This now creates a dangerous situation: a woman survived who was not supposed to. She now potentially consumes food, gives birth to children and descendants, and so on, with a possible cascade effect that might forever alter history.
So Azalin1's plan is simple: control her to catch the relics, then hide them someplace faraway, and then unceremoniously kill her before she can do any of these things. This is still far from ideal, because her body decomposes elsewhere, but if we're only talking a few centuries, the knock-on effects are unlikely to be that large. So a few rats in the forest get fat while a few rats in Castle Ravenloft starve. No biggie.
There is pretty much no other way Azalin1 can store the items without potentially huge effects on history. If the noblewoman passes the item on to safekeepers, the safekeepers now can unintentionally (or intentionally) alter history by what they do. Furthermore, Strahd later on enjoys very comprehensive knowledge of his citizens - Azalin1 would not want to take the risk of the Icon and Holy Symbol falling into his hands again.
Undead servants would be the next best choice, as they can lie low for centuries and are unbribeable and harder to detect. But sadly they are impossible for Azalin1's purposes. Skeletons and zombies are virtually unknown in Barovia prior to Strahd's transformation, and the first undead likely do not appear until Azalin2's own arrival in Barovia from Oerth, centuries after the massacre.
The newly-arrived Azalin2 at this point would have no idea that the two artifacts had been stolen because he wouldn't even know what they were. But in order to avoid a paradox, Azalin2 is required to learn about them because otherwise he cannot send PCs back in time to recover them in "From the Shadows". So it is likely that he finds out about them from Strahd2, perhaps over a conversation about the empty altar and the artifacts it once held. This is reasonable since Azalin2, like Azalin1, helps research the Demiplane's nature under Strahd's command.
Logically speaking, it is likely that Azalin2 takes the artifacts with him when he leaves Barovia, but this is not strictly necessary and there are in fact quite a few risks in doing so. Azalin1 might well reason that the sooner these powerful items leave Barovia, the better. Or he might reason that Azalin2 cannot be trusted with them (remember, if Azalin2 ever gives into the temptation to carry out plane-breaking experiments BEFORE "From the Shadows", he could trigger a catastrophic paradox). Either way, Azalin2 either takes the artifacts out of Barovia with him, or he leaves alone and they are delivered to him by Azalin1's servitors later.
Another, less complicated, possibility is that Azalin1 embedded a message in the new Ravenloft reality that he knew Azalin2 would stumble across. You've all heard of these: strange cloud formations, strange whispered words on the wind, strange unexplained phenomena in photographs.
Azalin1 would know what phenomena he researched while under Strahd's employ, and what days he did that, and where geographically. He might have used a subtle Wish to leave a message to himself. Azalin1 would have had to have been very, very careful with this. Remember that Azalin2 has no idea what his future will be like, so Azalin1 can't just say "Do research as normal, and avoid anything I didn't do," because Azalin2's normal research could be very different now that he has these items of power. However, simply doing no research at all is no solution either, because Azalin2 MUST uncover Mordent, he MUST create Zombie and Bone Golems, and he MUST more importantly discover he can walk through the Mists and expect to find a new realm.
Azalin1 could leave a very detailed list of what research to do, what NOT to do, and important milestones for Azalin2 to meet over the next few centuries, at least as far as the two relics go. But this would require a very lengthy message, and Azalin2 might not pick it up. Worse still, Strahd may notice it.
A shorter message (such as a brief cloud formation reading a sentence, or a babbling brook actually speaking an audible message) is possible and far less likely to be overheard by Strahd, but Azalin2's chance of missing it would be much higher.
When all is said and done, it may simply be easiest for Azalin1 to keep the Holy Symbol and Icon out of Azalin2's reach until the events of "From the Shadows". Thus, Azalin2 arrives in Ravenloft, meets Strahd, teaches him magic, researches the Demiplane, etc. etc. just as Azalin1 did.
Azalin1 could arrange for the Icon and Holy Symbol to be kept at a very safe place, perhaps even a pocket dimension or an Imprison spell, sealed by a powerful ward that can only be activated by a watchword. The watchword idea is useable because Azalin2 would have no idea what it is. HOWEVER, Azalin1 would need to find a way of telling Azalin2 what it is.
Not only does Azalin2 have to retrieve the items, he actually has to repeat the entire time travel wish array over again. This is a problem for us, but also a possible solution.
This is where the actual events in "From the Shadows" comes in handy. Remember that Azalin1 sends the PCs back in time more than once, occupying different bodies. Azalin2 would likely choose the same bodies, either through a logical process that Azalin1 used, or through guessing randomly (since all things being equal, history will repeat itself). Each time, Azalin in the game merely observes. The PCs never learn what he's observing exactly. Presumably it's not Strahd, since he's had ample time to research Strahd's actions and probably heard a version of it from the vampire's own lips. No... Azalin is carefully watching for a message from himself. This will explain what he needs to do with the PCs, and the further Wishes he must cast in order to ensure that this hiccup in history continues to repeat itself smoothly (otherwise we risk a paradox loop). This would also provide Azalin2 with the relevant password to retrieve the items from the extraplanar storage set by Azalin1. Now that he has seen the events with the Icon and Holy Symbol actually present, he probably can make a guess as to what his former self set as the password. (Perhaps a detailed chronological description of the death of the first body Azalin1 mindcontrolled... a good mix of the intuitive with the otherwise unguessable.)
Bear in mind that Azalin1 would have had the foresight to work ALL of this - commands to the mindcontrolled noblewoman, messages to Azalin2, storage of Icon and Holy Symbol, and encoded message during massacre – in his first round of Wishes. Although very demanding, with a great risk of miscarriage in the event of inexactitude, Azalin does admittedly have a long time to prepare the exact wording. This alone demonstrates his genius.
This would then allow Azalin2 to leave the PCs to their exploration of his castle, while he took the Icon and Holy Symbol away to a safe house elsewhere in Darkon to examine them.
(Here HuManBing breathes a great sigh of relief and mops sweat from his brow. If you see any flaws in his logical reason re: the time travel justification above, or if you just wish to interrupt his hard-earned peace and tranquility because you're that sort of person, please private message him and we'll talk.)
However, it does have the drawback of removing the items from common use. This is going to cause problems. In Vampire of the Mists, Jander Sunstar and Strahd have a conflict, where the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind is extremely important. Also, the Holy Symbol makes an appearance in House of Strahd.
The second thing Azalin might do with the items is, after he has studied them in the hands of the possessed noblewoman long enough to know what their true powers are, he could allow Strahd to find them again. He could stage a recovery operation at any time, although the risks of this not succeeding are quite high, given Strahd's powers in Castle Ravenloft.
One idea another DM had was to include the adventure House of Strahd right before playing From the Shadows. In addition to the aesthetic pleasure of sending your PCs through Strahd's lair just before sending them through Azalin's lair, this would also provide us with a nifty plot mechanism for recovering the items.
Say Azalin manipulates the PCs into attacking Castle Ravenloft, and they have an NPC ally to help them. This NPC ally can then easily turn out to be a Kargat human agent instead, and he abandons the PCs at the last moment to seize the two items.
The benefits of this technique are that they leave the items in Strahd's possession so they serve the essential function they do in VotM. The drawbacks are that there is a much higher risk of Azalin2's efforts to recover them failing.
Also, in both cases there is the everpresent issue of how Azalin1 gets the message through to Azalin2 to retrieve the items at precisely the right time. Too soon, and Azalin2 may be tempted to try to escape too early, thus making it impossible for him to send the PCs back in time when he's supposed to.
Too late, and the same type of temporal disconnect occurs.
Either way, those are my thoughts on the issue. Azalin has been portrayed as something of a careless tyrant in a lot of the books and adventure modules, and I wanted to give this topic some thought to try to portray him as a very thorough theoretician and genius planner.
However, it does have the drawback of removing the items from common use. This is going to cause problems. In Vampire of the Mists, Jander Sunstar and Strahd have a conflict, where the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind is extremely important.
Hmmm. You could possibly resolve this by staging a second time-travel adventure somewhere along the line -- not necessarily at a time near the Grand Conjunction -- in which the Holy Symbol is recovered from Sasha Petrovich (who wound up with it after VotM) and taken back in time to the day of Sergei's wedding. While in the keeping of whoever kept it in the interim, its powers were enhanced as you describe; then it was returned to the altar in Castle Ravenloft's chapel ... just in time for Azalin's unwilling agents to steal it.
This would also help reconcile the discrepancy between VotM (which claims Sergei was wearing it when he was murdered ... and continued to do so, until Jander destroyed his reanimated skeleton over a century later) and the Holy Symbol's presence on the altar, mere minutes after his death, in the GC module.
Also, there's no need to go to great lengths to explain how Azalin stored and retrieved the items. It's right in Roots of Evil. That noblewoman was stranded in Prime Material Barovia, not the Ravenloft demiplane copy. The artifacts were kept there, out of Strahd's reach, waiting for Azalin to arrive via the GC. (As for the contradiction of having the items show up in Ravenloft history, I'm happy with either the "changed history" or "alternate reality" premise. Originally, the items stayed, and were seen in history. Then Azalin changes history, either creating an alternate past, or simply letting the past re-write itself around the missing objects. But then, Rotipher's "reunification of timelines" through time travel does have a certain elegant charm.)
Of course, I don't mean to poke holes and tell you what you can't do. Go ahead and change things as you like. Just pointing out few canon things that might make it easier to reconcile.
But then, Rotipher's "reunification of timelines" through time travel does have a certain elegant charm.
Glad you like it!
Of course, mine still leaves the HS's subsequant appearance in I6/HoS/EtCR unresolved, but you can't have everything. You can invoke interwoven time-travel plotlines to explain that also, but too much of that might make Ravenloft look like a Gothic version of Doctor Who.
FWIW, I dodged the whole issue IMC by making the retrieval of the Icon the PCs' sole objective, in "From the Shadows", thus omitting the Holy Symbol from the adventure entirely. That simplifies an already grossly-overcomplicated scenario, while leaving the HSoR still in place to fulfill its own destiny as Jander's weapon, Sasha Petrovich's secret charge, Pyoor Twohundredsummers's holy grail, etc.
:OMG! :OMG! 
Really HuMan Being that is pure genius, I've always portrayed Azalin as a machiavelian genius villain in my games, he never takes any chances where he can't work with the outcome etc. But storyline discrepancies have sometimes forced me to make slight alterations to that effect but WOW! that is exactly how I see a real plot by AzalinIn fact I'm writing this down to ensure I never forget this...
You could possibly resolve this by staging a second time-travel adventure [...] in which the Holy Symbol is recovered from Sasha Petrovich (who wound up with it after VotM) and taken back in time to the day of Sergei's wedding. While in the keeping of whoever kept it in the interim, its powers were enhanced as you describe; then it was returned to the altar in Castle Ravenloft's chapel ... just in time for Azalin's unwilling agents to steal it.
That's definitely possible, and it ties in nicely with the two goals of Azalin: 1) to observe the two items held by one person and thus negating the Demiplane's background physics, and 2) to actually steal the two items so he can break free. I really like the aesthetic fact that you also protect the canonical integrity of Vampire of the Mists (in many readers' opinion, one of the best Ravenloft novels worth protecting as canon).
However, the conceptual problem I have is that you risk having two sets of the artifacts in existence in the same time frame. Also, aesthetically I question what exactly would give the items their power at a later date. It still seems to me that the most dramatic answer is to imbue them with their plane-piercing power at the time of Ravenloft's formation.
From a chronological standpoint, this is what might happen under Rotipher's proposal:
Timeline 1:
- High priest of Andral crafts the items, which are modestly magical. (pre-351)
- Items are present, on Sergei's clothing, at wedding. (351)
- Wedding ends in massacre, rapine, and bloodshed. Groom is killed, bride throws herself off balcony after attempted **** by groom's older brother. Ancient wedding customs for make benefit glorious nation of Barovia are upheld. (351)
- HSoR is on Sergei's shambling corpse. Icon, we assume, is left on the altar or wherever it was thrown during the wedding hostilities.
- Jander Sunstar enters Ravenloft (452) and eventually confronts Strahd. The Holy Symbol is key to this confrontation. (post-452)
- Azalin arrives and does some research but does not learn about the Icon and Holy Symbol's importance to leaving the Demiplane. (542) Perhaps the items have not gained the plane-piercing power at this point. Or perhaps Azalin is simply not as knowledgeable about Ravenloft as he will later become.
- Azalin hands in his resignation to Strahd and becomes lord of Darkon. (579) Somehow, further research reveals that the two artifacts are key to his escape. (Perhaps some itinerant do-gooders steal the items and enchant them? I don't like this idea as much as the idea of the items secretly having the powers to begin with.) Azalin probably is upset at his missed opportunity at this point. (post-579)
- Azalin decides to send PCs back in time to steal them. (735)
But then what? Does he send them back to the wedding or to Sergei's corpse or to the wedding? Following Rotipher's suggestion, Azalin does enough research to know that the items need to be used all the way up until Sunstar's confrontation with Strahd. He thus sends the PCs to steal them after Sunstar is safely away from Castle Ravenloft. This then happens (additional changes are in italics):
Timeline 2:
- High priest of Andral crafts the items, which are modestly magical. (pre-351)
- Items are present, on Sergei's clothing, at wedding. (351)
- Wedding ends in massacre, rapine, and bloodshed. Groom is killed, bride throws herself off balcony after attempted **** by groom's older brother. Ancient wedding customs for make benefit glorious nation of Barovia are upheld. (351)
- HSoR is on Sergei's shambling corpse. Icon, we assume, is left on the altar or wherever it was thrown during the wedding hostilities.
- Jander Sunstar enters Ravenloft (452) and eventually confronts Strahd. The Holy Symbol is key to this confrontation. (post-452)
- After the dust settles, Azalin1 from 735 sends several larcenous timetravellers burglarize the chapel and steal the priceless artifacts. Note that this could even take place in the "canonical" time setting for House of Strahd! (That adventure is placed at 528 - Powerful heroes assault Castle Ravenloft and are killed.)
- Azalin2 arrives and does some research. The altar is now empty, somewhat hampering his ability to research them, but he could theoretically learn enough about them from Strahd and supporting texts of Andral's faith. He does not learn about the Icon and Holy Symbol's importance to leaving the Demiplane. (542) Perhaps the items have not gained the plane-piercing power at this point. Or perhaps Azalin2 is simply not as knowledgeable about Ravenloft as he will later become.
- Azalin2 hands in his resignation to Strahd and becomes lord of Darkon. (579) Somehow, further research reveals that the two artifacts are key to his escape. (Perhaps some itinerant do-gooders steal the items and enchant them? I don't like this idea as much as the idea of the items secretly having the powers to begin with.) Azalin2 probably is upset at his missed opportunity at this point. (post-579)
- Azalin decides to send PCs back in time to steal them. He sends them back, not at the wedding, but at the time of House of Strahd, knowing that those heroes died in the attempt anyway.(735)
That could definitely work, with the benefits being that it preserves the canonicity of VotM and also niftily makes use of House of Strahd in its canon timeframe. (As opposed to my earlier idea of running House of Strahd almost immediately before From the Shadows... in that idea, Strahd would capture the PCs and put a Geas on them to kill Azalin.) Again, the PCs would be inhabiting the bodies of people who died shortly thereafter anyway, and so the continuity is maintained. (This is assuming, of course, that they are not strong enough to kill Strahd. Azalin would probably be waiting, ready to hit the OFF button on this experiment if they ever got that close, because even though he hates Strahd, he would not be nearly so foolish as to allow future shocks of that magnitude.)
This introduces another problem - how do the PCs bring the items back from 528 to 735? Azalin no longer has the reliable "noblewoman in red" to help him - she died not long after 351. Also, we don't know for sure, but it's possible that stealing the magical items before Azalin2 arrives in Ravenloft may irreparably retard his research, causing him never to realize how important they are. (I will admit that this is a major flaw with my own proposed scenario, above.)
Explaining these is tricky, but it could be made to work. Azalin1 could himself possess a commoner, similar to the lady in red of 351, and have the PCs throw the items or otherwise get them out of Castle Ravenloft. The commoner, like the lady in red, would shamble to some approved meeting area where Azalin1 would have to rely on some magical means (i.e. means that don't alter the world physically, so no human agents or even undead agents) to sequester the artifacts until 735, Azalin1's time. The artifacts would remain passing normally through time, however, in space, nobody would be able to access them. He would probably wipe the event from the commoner's memory, and then yank the PCs' minds out of the bodies in the Castle, leaving the disoriented adventuers to be mercilessly hunted down by Strahd.
Conceptually, the timing of this is questionable. Ideally, Azalin1 would send PCs to Barovia to steal the items at a time after 579, i.e. after Azalin1 has already left the domain and has done all the research he needs to do. An enterprising DM might simply re-write the date of House of Strahd to occur after that time. But if you're going to do that, then you might as well allow Azalin1 to wait until the very last minute before triggering House of Strahd - stealing the items 5 months before the present means that you affect only 5 months of past history. Stealing them centuries before the present day means you alter centuries of history, increasing the potential for a paradox.
Another canon problem is that we can't immediately account for Sergei's handling of the Holy Symbol. However, it's entirely possible that Sergei, being so holy and pure, does not count as "undead" in the sense of "travesty of life". It could be that a holy power is sustaining his life-after-death, rather than an unholy power, and thus Sergei is not vulnerable to the power of the Holy Symbol. If this is acceptable to a DM, then it's entirely possible that Sergei's corpse could have picked up the Holy Symbol of its own accord, either to shield it, or perhaps as a means for Andral to constantly remind Strahd of the enormity of his crimes. (A bit like Irik's ghost haunts Azalin.)
Certainly, Sergei von Zarovich is one of the few characters in history who would be justified as returning as a "good" undead creature.
However, just for the sake of completeness, what happens if Azalin1 then sends the PCs back a second time to plant the items at the wedding? There are a variety of reasons he might want to do this. Imagine if the items really do get more powerful with time and the post-452 items are the ones he needs, not the 351 items. He might still have to test the latterday items at the exact moment the Demiplane was formed. Thus, he'd want to send the PCs back, holding the items, and put them in the possession of somebody who is lawful good so Azalin1 could see whether that person is under the effect of Ravenloft or not.
There is a problem with this.
We've looked at ways that Azalin might be able to bring items forward in time. Namely, he stores them somewhere very deeply hidden, and time passes normally for them and they eventually are retrieved. The items do not themselves travel in time. Notice that in From the Shadows, the time travel only involves consciousness and spiritual "souls". No material items are ever moved back or forwards in time - they are merely sequestered in space so that nobody can find them, and time passes for them naturally until they are recalled.
Now we need to send the items back in time, physically, from the 731 hands of Azalin (or possibly the 528 hands of the commoner who caught them thrown from Castle Ravenloft). This is a pretty tall order. First, it involves the creation and destruction of matter between time periods. The time period of 528 would have lost a net amount of matter, and the 351 period would have gained it. Secondly, the matter happens to be entirely identical in appearance to matter currently existing in 351. Temple staff are likely to notice that there are two sets of Andral's artifacts lying around, if they stay there for any longer than the briefest of periods.
Let us assume for the time being that it is possible to move matter through time. (Azalin will have essentially trumped most of our understanding of physics by doing so. In addition to, you know, having trumped our understanding of biology and medicine by being a lich, and our understanding of energy conservation by being able to cast spells. ;) )
Italicized changes are carried over from Timeline 2. Changes made in Timeline 3 are bolded. Items1 are from 351, and Items2 are from 528.
Timeline 3: The Broadway Musical
- High priest of Andral crafts the items1, which are modestly magical. (pre-351)
- Items1 are present, on Sergei's clothing, at wedding. (351)
- Items2 materialize out of thin air at wedding. Azalin would want to get them out of there as soon as possible after the required observations are complete. These would probably consist of having a LG character hold them after Strahd starts his rampage, and perhaps casting a few spells and/or trying to turn undead.
- Wedding ends in massacre, rapine, and bloodshed. Groom is killed, bride throws herself off balcony after attempted **** by groom's older brother. Ancient wedding customs for make benefit glorious nation of Barovia are upheld. (351) Items1 are left lying where they fall. Items2 must be brought back to the present, assuming that the test was successful. If you accept the theory that Azalin1 could have sent the items back in time at all, then you could probably assume by extension that Azalin1 can snatch them straight back to 735 again without messing around with the Lady in Red nonsense.
- HSoR1 is on Sergei's shambling corpse. Icon, we assume, is left on the altar or wherever it was thrown during the wedding hostilities.
- Jander Sunstar enters Ravenloft (452) and eventually confronts Strahd. The Holy Symbol1 is key to this confrontation. (post-452)
- After the dust settles, Azalin1 from 735 sends several larcenous timetravellers to burglarize the chapel and steal the priceless artifacts. Note that this could even take place in the "canonical" time setting for House of Strahd! (That adventure is placed at 528 - Powerful heroes assault Castle Ravenloft and are killed.) Would Azalin need to return the Items2 to this time frame so that they can be retrieved more conventionally by the commoner? Doing so would solve the "loss of matter" problem, but would likely be more trouble than it's worth, as he'd have to equip the PCs with the items shortly before Strahd kills them all AND return the items to more or less where they took them from.
- Azalin2 arrives and does some research. The altar is now empty, somewhat hampering his ability to research them, but he could theoretically learn enough about them from Strahd and supporting texts of Andral's faith. He does not learn about the Icon and Holy Symbol's importance to leaving the Demiplane. (542) Perhaps the items have not gained the plane-piercing power at this point. Or perhaps Azalin2 is simply not as knowledgeable about Ravenloft as he will later become.
- Azalin2 hands in his resignation to Strahd and becomes lord of Darkon. (579) Somehow, further research reveals that the two artifacts are key to his escape. (Perhaps some itinerant do-gooders steal the items and enchant them? I don't like this idea as much as the idea of the items secretly having the powers to begin with.) Azalin2 probably is upset at his missed opportunity at this point. (post-579)
- Azalin decides to send PCs back in time to steal them. He sends them back, not at the wedding, but at the time of House of Strahd, knowing that those heroes died in the attempt anyway.(735)
Either way, it could work if the DM's ready to do some creative improvisation. Personally, I have difficulty accepting the idea that you can thrust objects and matter back or forwards in time. If that was the case, then Azalin might as well send the PCs' bodies back in time with them. Also, the presence of two sets of Items at 351 troubles me.
This could be written to be in keeping with canon and the conceptual science of time travel by having the PCs go back to 351 purely for observational purposes. They are there to put the two items in the hands of somebody who's lawful good and to see if the powers of Ravenloft affect him or not. (Remember in From the Shadows, there's a dramatic scene where the high priest is holding the Holy Symbol, and it repulses Strahd. With a little rewriting, you could have it that all that Azalin wishes to do is get the PCs to put BOTH objects in the high priest's hands when Strahd's rampage begins.)
Then of course you have the question of how Azalin retrieves the artifacts, and a second time travel trip could work. If he sends the PCs back in a House of Strahd adventure, safely close to 735's timeline (I'd say not more than a decade before it, to be sure) then he could use the commoner trick to hide the objects and retrieve them himself. Or, the PCs could bring the objects back to Darkon with clear instructions written from Azalin1 to Azalin2 about what to do.
(Another benefit of having the theft occur shortly before the present is it eliminates much of the impatience that Azalin2 may feel in twiddling his skeletal thumbs waiting for the correct evening in 735 to come about before doing the experiment. If he preempts the experiment, then we have a paradox.)
Now for the comments of that most Gonzo of Rons, Gonzoron.
Haven't read everything yet (it's long! but good so far). But just as a note: in the From the Shadows module as written, only the Holy Symbol is the goal. The Icon is just a red herring.
You are absolutely correct. I should have been clearer that my proposal was a departure from FtS' sequence in that respect.
(I)n Roots of Evil(, t)hat noblewoman was stranded in Prime Material Barovia, not the Ravenloft demiplane copy. The artifacts were kept there, out of Strahd's reach, waiting for Azalin to arrive via the GC. (As for the contradiction of having the items show up in Ravenloft history, I'm happy with either the "changed history" or "alternate reality" premise. Originally, the items stayed, and were seen in history. Then Azalin changes history, either creating an alternate past, or simply letting the past re-write itself around the missing objects.
The problem with this proposal, as I see it, is that "letting the past re-write itself" is highly dangerous unless you're sure the revision will be very limited. Azalin's concerns are that 735 in Timeline1 must be fairly similar to 735 in Timeline2. He already strongly believes that without Strahd, Ravenloft would cease to exist, otherwise he would have killed the vampire long ago. Stealing the items before Strahd has his encounter with Sunstar (if you consider that to be canon, which I will admit my earlier proposal did not) is highly dangerous as there's a good chance that that conflict could come out very differently. Azalin would have to meticulously plan every facet and possible change in his actions because if anything happens to disrupt Azalin2 from carrying out the time travel experiment in 735, both Azalins will be trapped in a forever alternating "bow tie" of events.
The man's already angry enough at being trapped in the Demiplane. Being trapped in a closed temporal loop of infinite recurrence that was created by his own doing would be simply too much. He'd have to go lie down. ;)
Really HuMan Being that is pure genius, I've always portrayed Azalin as a machiavelian genius villain in my games, he never takes any chances where he can't work with the outcome etc. But storyline discrepancies have sometimes forced me to make slight alterations to that effect but WOW! that is exactly how I see a real plot by Azalin
In fact I'm writing this down to ensure I never forget this...
I'm glad you like it!
I work hard at making everbody's favorite Ravenloftian lich look smart!If you do write this all down, make sure you don't repeat the dozens of spelling mistakes I made... especially getting "Andral" mixed up with the entirely-wrong "Anval". :P
Seriously, I'm impressed you've thought this through so carefully, HMB. It's an intricate, overlapping plotline that has several points at which PCs could get involved.
Just a couple of considerations crossed my mind, reading it through:
First, there's no reason that Azalin has to be the only one with an interest in the HSoR, or who might be tampering with the past. Madame Eva, for example, could have delivered the HS from Jander's time backward to Sergei's wedding, to help ensure that the Grand Conjunction would unfold in a manner that didn't shatter Ravenloft and release the darklords from their cages. Likewise, groups such as the Keepers of the Black Feather might be determined and/or desperate enough to risk undoing the Land of Mists' history: something Azalin is unwilling to endanger his own butt to do, but a group out to do good might see as a vast improvement over the Dark Powers' literal reign of terror, even if it means they have to sacrifice their own pasts to accomplish it. You could even say that the ones who moved the HSoR back in time come from some horrific possible future -- the very one that would have come to pass, had the Conjunction unfolded as apocalyptically and inexorably as Hyskosa predicted -- and are striving to de-rail the terrors to come, by ensuring Azalin short-circuits the GC with his own meddling.
Second, about the issue of Sergei's skeleton wearing the HSoR as an undead, I'm afraid his remains were just a skeleton, not anything special. At no time in VotM did his body (which the elf saw several times) ever give any indication it was sentient or wanted Jander's help. When Jander at last realized who the skeleton in the chapel belonged to, he tore it apart with his bare hands in seconds, and sensed he'd somehow laid an unquiet spirit to rest. Aside from that, Sergei himself hadn't known the "Priest's Pendant" he'd inherited from High Priest Kir had any magical properties, but treasured it merely for its sentimental value, as the token of a recently-deceased close friend. Thus, even if he had returned as a Restless Dead, or some deathless equivalent, he wouldn't have known he had to guard the Holy Symbol for some future benefactor to claim. And besides, if he had returned in such a state, why wouldn't he have simply shambled downstairs on the morning after his murder, and put an end to Strahd himself, once and for all? It's not as if he didn't have every reason in the world to do so, be it out of revenge, justice, defense of innocents or even pity.
Heck, it could even that the Dark Powers re-animated Sergei's corpse as a mindless skeleton specifically to prevent that from happening, come to think of it.
The adventures From the Shadows and Roots of Evil already show that Azalin has no sentimental attachment to his original body. It's uncharacteristic for him or any lich to have any interest in "saving their hide" because the said hide is so easily dispensible and replaceable.
In your other point, I agree with you wholeheartedly that Azalin would never dream of going back in time and killing Strahd, but I disagree with you on the reasons why. It's not because he would have been "killed" when he ran into the Mists. In theory, running into the mists would merely have meant that he would have lost his pursuers as usual and then made his way back to Galdriesh to muster a counterattack.
The main reason why Azalin1 would not want to go back in time and kill Strahd, is that if Azalin2 doesn't go through the exact same trials and tests of patience with Strahd, he might never get round to doing exactly what Azalin1 does. It is crucial that Azalin1's time travel experiment, when it occurs, is recreated by Azalin2, otherwise there is a very good chance of a bowtie loop forming.
This is even more evident if Azalin1's actions prevent the formation of the Demiplane in the first place. Say Azalin1 sends PCs, whom he met in Ravenloft in the year 735, back time to 351 to kill Strahd just before the Demiplane forms. They kill Strahd.
Thus, Ravenloft never forms. Azalin comes into being at a certain point in time on Oerth, and he never goes to Ravenloft at all.
It would then be impossible for him to meet the PCs in Ravenloft, and to send the PCs back in time to kill Strahd, so by the year 735 (or its equivalent in what would have become Ravenloft) the time travel never occurs. [Note: this is not entirely true. Azalin2 can still recreate this by recommencing the experiment on Oerth at some point, sending some people back to 351 and killing Strahd on Prime Material Barovia. However, he has no reason to do so, because Azalin2 never knew Strahd, never heard of Prime Material Barovia, and very likely doesn't have the slightest clue why this one lousy wedding shoot-up is so important to his predecessor, Azalin1. So for all intents and purposes, it's impossible because it requires very direct intent to cause, and Azalin2 has no reason to have the intent required.]
Meaning... Strahd survives!
Hence, bowtie. Strahd survives, so Ravenloft is formed. Azalin3 becomes identical to Azalin1, running into the Mists and arriving in Barovia, etc. etc.
Azalin1, if he's smart (and we all know he is) would not particularly enjoy this prospect. Of course, he knows it will spite Strahd by including HIM in the bowtie loop too, but such a victory would be Pyrrhic because 1) Azalin is also trapped, and worse still, 2) Azalin and Strahd would never notice that they were thusly trapped.
Or: Why HMB shouldn't type about time travel late at night.
...
Wait a second. This has just given me an idea of the Time of Unparallelled Darkness. Remember we were wondering what on Earth (or Oerth) could possibly be more tragic and catastrophic than the Grand Conjunction? (When dozens of malevolently evil darklords escaped and terrorized other Prime worlds.)
What if... the Time of Unparallelled Darkness is Azalin creating a bowtie loop?
That would mean, not only does Ravenloft exist forever, but there is no way of undoing it! The tragic events that comprise Ravenloft's sum existence would repeat themselves over and over again without cease, and nobody would ever be able to move themselves out of the bowtie loop in order to destroy Ravenloft or to cause it to follow a different timeline.
Thus the damned souls who inhabit Ravenloft are not only condemned to whatever crimes they commit, but they'll keep doing it over and over again!
I'd have to check the theory of this. But it's possible that Ravenloft, temporally, could become like a black hole. Newcomers could still enter it, because other realms are not affected by the time travel, but when they do, they must leave before the bowtie loop occurs. If they do not leave before it occurs, then they will be forced to repeat their actions over and over again.
Wow.
This is some pretty profound stuff.
I may have to go lie down.
Further edit:
I have changed my mind. First, we'd need to know what Azalin1 did. Examples are tricky, but it's possible Azalin1 did something so profoundly shocking to time (and likely stupid, from a self preservational viewpoint) that subsequent Azalins will do something different each time.
Thus, there will never be a bow tie loop.
Azalin1 will do something, which the next Azalin will not do. Thus, the next Azalin must be Azalin2, then Azalin3 deviates, then Azalin4 deviates, and so on towards infinity. Thus, the Ravenloft timeline never repeats itself.
This makes it tricky but not impossible to solve.
Say the Time of Unparallelled Darkness occurs, say, roundabout 745. Azalin decides for whatever reason that he is going to totally screw over the Demiplane and he is fed up with the Dark Powers and wants to take them with him as well.
He triggers a massive time travel inconsistency leading to a paradox, in the year 745. This is so major that it causes an instant reversion from 745 to an earlier time (whenever he chooses to base the time travel experiment's target - this could be as early as 351 Barovia... or possibly even earlier, if he wants to screw with Strahd's ancestors).
Future Azalins would react slightly differently and you never get a "repeat" performance by Azalin. So it looks like the Demiplane is pretty screwed, right?
Not entirely. A group of PCs who understand what's going on could find out exactly what they need to do to stop it. This would be very hard to do, and would likely require magic on the level of Epic level spellcasters to accomplish. (It takes only a certain amount of expertise to totally ruin a machine... it takes a much higher level of expertise to then go about fixing it to 100% efficiency again.)
The PCs must be careful because their time travelling is more or less compulsory, AND they can't have any major futureshocks occur because of their actions. Finally, there's a "time limit" (however that word is used) because if their plan lasts even the tiniest fraction of time BEYOND the bowtie loop's end, then they will instantly become part of the bowtie loop and will never be able to get out again.
There are a few other scenarios where the Time of Unparallelled Darkness could absolutely and irrevocably screw over the entire campaign setting. Azalin is possibly smart enough to actually make them happen, but he may not want to.
1. Azalin1 could screw over history in a way that Azalin2 would do the same thing, but earlier, and likewise. This would create the final time limit for the bowtie loop to cycle indefinitely earlier and earlier in the timeline, narrowing the potential time for any PCs to save the world. Estimating that even the best-prepared Epic level PCs will have a minimum amount of time needed to accomplish a carefully crafted spell to stop Azalin's effects, all Azalin needs to do is to make sure that at some point future-iterative Azalins push the bowtie loop cycle to BEFORE that time.
Say the PCs need at least 72 hours' work minimum to undo Azalin's work. Azalin1 throws a monkey wrench in history in 735, affecting 351. Azalin2, acting on his own volition and totally ignorant of Azalin1's intents, does the same thing just a second earlier in 735 and so forth.
After a certain number of iterations of history, AzalinX will do his meddling at a time when the PCs simply physically cannot ever hope to stop him. (Here, X is a large number a little above 1.21 x 10^10.) This will permanently lock Ravenloft's existence into a small stretch of time where there is a bowtie loop.
It's possible that Azalin himself also has a limit. Azalin is not epic level, so it's likely going to be a longer time limit than a party of Epic level PCs. This levels the playing field somewhat. Say the PCs need 72 hours' work at least to derail Azalin's plot. It's probably fair to say that Azalin himself needs more than that, because he's only one actor - albeit a very knowledgeable one - and he's not Epic Level. Say Azalin needs at least 144 hours' work to complete his massive perturbation of time. Thus, AzalinX is a finite number. We know it will start at a period of time roundabout 735 minus 351 and whatever days, hours, minutes, and seconds are in between, and each iteration will reduce this by a set amount (which I arbitrarily set at one second above).
Azalin's iterations will reach the period of time, but with a margin of 144 hours' work minimum. PCs will have one single shot at getting in, guessing the changes he plans to make to history, and getting back out again. If they botch it, they can try again, but they will have to also contend with PCs1's efforts, because they're now PCs2!
If the other worlds in the multiverse are not included in the bowtie loop, you could conceivably have the entire multiverse observe a frozen Ravenloft stuck in time at 745, occasionally sending would-be bands of Epic level PCs to try to break its frozen path.
Time travel is best left to liches with computer-sized brains.
2. Alternatively, if the DM is feeling very nasty, you could argue that Ravenloft's flow of time affects THE ENTIRE MULTIVERSE. There are reasonable grounds to allow for this, because during one single stretch of time in the Grand Conjunction, Ravenloft did indeed reach into every single world in the multiverse. Thus, Azalin1's actions stand to trap every single world in the multiverse in a bowtie loop, provided that the start of the altered history occurs before the GC, and the end of the altered history occurs after it.
If this happens, the PCs risk being entirely and irrevocably "I-can't-use-that-word-in-polite-conversation"-ed because they literally get only one shot at it. Assuming that Azalin's future iterations do NOT cause any further instabilities (i.e. the iterations become self-repeating past a certain finite stage), then any attempt to meddle with time MUST SUCCEED on the first go, otherwise even other worlds will be caught in the loop and the whole roleplaying universe will be forced into the bowtie loop.
Once you fail in your attempt to stop Azalin, there will be nowhen left for you to retreat to that isn't also affected by the bowtie loop. You will be forced to relive the failure of your attempt to stop him again and again... although there is slight consolation that you won't actually realize it each time, so at least you won't get bored.
If Azalin does something like this, he is truly An Evil Bastard. And so's the DM too.
A final note: in the 2d ed. Legend and Lore book there was no mention of whether Deities are in fact able to escape the usual flow of time. Deities appear to do things in the usual order (or perhaps we just think they do because if they don't, there's hardly any way we can disprove it, because we move forwards in time and perceive things that way).
If a deity is able to be caught in a time loop, then that might make Azalin one of the most important people in the multiverse, because he will go down in history as the one who irrevocably broke it.
(Well, given the bowtie loops, he'll go down in history... then go back up instantaneously, and then back down again, ad infinitum.)
Zeus: Ah well, time to get a new one. *sigh*
Notes:
1. It is perfectly reasonable to say that deities operate outside of time. Thus, even if Azalin wrecks this multiverse on a drunken time travel bender, the gods can order a new one from Wal Mart.
2. Even if you grant that the process of shortening the time period of the bowtie loop through consecutive iterations is conceptually possible, it doesn't mean that it's practically possible. Bear in mind the following: future iterations do NOT have the previous knowledge gained by their earlier iterations. They're essentially wandering through the time as though they were confronted by the series of events cold, with no preparation. Just because it's theoretically possible that Azalin1 gets Azalin2 to push earlier the date of his Big Experiment, doesn't mean that it's logistically possible.
Maybe Azalin1 knew that he had a really important other experiment to do at a certain point in time, and there's no way that Azalin2 can be made to miss or postpone that experiment. All sorts of things could go wrong with the plan to infinitely push earlier the final limit of the bowtie loop... and bear in mind that it MUST ALL BE PLANNED by Azalin1. He cannot rely on future iterations of Azalins to second-guess his original intent. That means he must plan out what all 1.21 x 10^10 Azalins will do, when, and why.
Unless Azalin is a god, he probably doesn't have the processing power necessary to do this. I don't mean god in terms of intelligence, either. I mean he probably needs such a large amount of time to calculate this that it's completely infeasible. Look at the first few posts of this topic, and you'll find that we are just discussing possible ways of making Azalin2 do what Azalin1 wants. (And we're already fudging a lot of stuff there to be most favorable.)
Now repeat that process by 1.21 x 10^10 (minus one) and you have an idea of how much forum space might be used. At the very least, assuming Azalin might be able to replicate what this thread has just surmised in one calculation per second, it would take at least another 384 years, assuming he was lucky enough to hit upon just the right calculations first time.
If he had to go through wrong calculations laboriously, increase that time of 384 years by a geometric factor or possibly an exponential factor. (My maths skill breaks down at this point and I can't remember if it's supposed to be 1.21 x 10 ^ 10 factorial, or whether it's supposed to be (1.21 x 10^10) all to the power of (1.21 x 10 ^ 10). Either way, we're looking at a truly staggering increase in computational time, possibly going into the many many billions of years.)
Of course, if Azalin could ignore time, he could set up a limited time travel where he zips back and forth working on a different calculation each iteration. Thus instead of taking however many aeons to calculate it, he could get it all done in a second. This would have the truly ironic metaplot of a lich using time travel to work out how long it would take him to work out how to use time travel!
At this point, Austin Powers might say he's gone cross eyed, and Basil Exposition might tell him (and you) to not worry too much about the science of things and just enjoy the ride.
3. By necessity, there are huge sweeping generalizations here in the ToUD posts and I don't expect them to hold up to close scrutiny the way I hope the Grand Conjunction analysis does. This is merely an exploration in previously uncharted reaches of Dangerously Subversive Ravenloft Theory
The amount of time I have spent on this question has actually reduced me more or less to a fragmentary remains and a skull that howls for sustenance now and again.
The cobwebs are nice though.
Or maybe, in Strahd's absence, the alternate-history DPs would have to wait another century or so, to locate a substitute "premiere darklord" for their new project. Ergo, Firan Zal'honan might wind up being the alternate-history Ravenloft's Strahd, with Darkon as the alternate Core's nucleus in place of Barovia....
Can you imagine how much it would infuriate the lich to know that his time travelling meddlings have resulted in HIM becoming the DP's favorite pet, while Strahd escapes back to Prime Material Barovia?
If the Time of Unparallelled Darkness scenario ever needs a "happy ending", then one possibility is that Strahd either dies or is allowed to live on as a human, while Azalin becomes the main captive in Ravenloft.
:evil smiley:
I love it! Great idea, Rotipher!
Heh heh. I wonder which one would insult Azalin's ego more: to actually become the "new Strahd", or to simply die an old man and be forgotten by history...?
Even if you assume the implausible, and allow that Firan2 somehow knew that Firan1 became Azalin and the ruler of a massive kingdom, he would probably have counted himiself lucky to die a mortal's death rather than live undying in a state of mental stasis.
Now, consider the opposite. If Azalin2 becomes the grand Darklord of Ravenloft, he will be just as angry as he was as Darkon's ruler, Azalin1. This on its own would be unbearable for him.
Now if you assume further that Azalin2 somehow learned of the situation that Azalin1 had lived in, he probably wouldn't be angry at that so much as the fact that he ALMOST got free, but then brought insult upon injury by botching the job, and becoming the biggest plaything of the Dark Powers instead of just its largest domain's ruler.
Well, dying an old man wouldn't be a problem for him, on its own. It appears he really didn't want to die and leave Knurl to an incompetent successor. If his son had been as ruthless as himself, or at least shown some interest in rulership (neither of which Irik showed) Firan Zal'honan would have been happy enough.
Except that Azalin had already killed Irik at the time the DPs contacted him to help him become a lich. He'd used magic to extend his life for so long that he was no longer capable of fathering another child, and was desperate to prevent Knurl from collapsing when he died; that's why he accepted the mysterious voices' "gift". If he hadn't had that opportunity, Knurl would have been left leaderless, which was by far his greatest fear at the time.
Of course, the fact that Azalin himself had killed, not only Irik -- who must've had some interest in Knurl's fate, else he'd not have aided its dissidents -- but also every halfway-capable underling in his own government, lest they try to usurp the throne, he conveniently forgets. Let's face it: NOBODY, his son or otherwise, would have lived up to his standards of what made a "competent" (read: tyrannical as himself) ruler, unless they were also ruthless enough to constitute a threat to his own power.
However, I personally don't see the merit of characterizing Azalin as a Stalinesque purger-of-ranks. That theory does not find much to support it in King of the Dead, where he comes off as admittedly harsh, but fair. He sets out rules and laws and those who transgress them are punished. He puts his trust in a foreign 2-i-c, who later comes to betray him.
The Stalinesque persona finds more to support it in I, Strahd: The War Against Azalin - but I have always held that novel to be inherently unreliable, as it was written mostly from Strahd's viewpoint and by an author who clearly identifies far more closely with Strahd than she did with Azalin. Elrod clearly states that she considers Azalin to be an inept and self-destructive ruler who kills off all the capable help around him and digs himself into a trench that way. The novelization is consistent with this view. In fact, it's hard to see exactly how Strahd's farfetched plan to assassinate Azalin's Kargat leaders could succeed unless Elrod artificially dumbed-down Azalin's people... this is either a skilful author's literary flourish, allowing Strahd to glorify and exaggerate his own military service, or a less-than-skilful author's attempt to make a somewhat lacklustre plot device work properly. (I personally favor the former interpretation, myself.)
We do know that Azalin has a multi-tiered secret police which he allows fairly free rein, in the Kargat. We know that Lady Kazandra is very competent and Azalin hasn't replaced her or executed her for her skill and competence. (Likewise with Tavelia... even though in retrospect he probably should have.) We do know that Azalin maintains a large network of information gatherers throughout the Core and that he otherwise is aloof and disinterested in most affairs, preferring to spend his time researching the Demiplane's properties.
Compare this to Strahd, who we've only ever seen personally overseeing (in a loose sense of the word) the spying activities of the Vistani. He has a fairly impressive commander's air about him, but he appears to be unable to keep from seducing (or raping, depending on the level of free will involved) women who work with him - q.v. the tax collector in I, Strahd and the female lycanthrope in Vampire of the Mists.
Of course, these liaisons are strangely out of character for somebody like Strahd, and in my campaign I do not portray him as that. Likewise, Azalin's sexual assault of a female Kargat member in Tower of Doom is a thoroughly silly and uncharacteristic event that I prefer to write out of history altogether.
Azalin is definetly a genius, that's why he judges fairly and keeps competent people around. He knows happy citizens are easier to control then unhappy ones. As well, any shemer of Azalin's caliber is smart enough to know that killing off competent and useful minions is completely idiotic. Especially if you can read the minds of everyone in your domain and change their memories at will. He knows how to keep everybody in control and happy
Really, seems to me a guy like Azalin would actually very rarely need to exercise any sort of control or force to keep those under him in line, in fact Darkon seems to me as one of the better places to live in the Core (relatively...). The reason he DOES he's capable of doing everything he does is ESPECIALLY because he does not have to worry about his domain becoming a thorn in his side and can turn his concerns elsewhere.
Azalin is definetly a genius of frightning level, events like the Hour of Ascension or the Grand Conjonction should be clear indications that he is definetly not a fool ( even if his plans fail, they have always transformed the demiplane for ever, manipulating the Grand Conjonction even with his entropic curse was clearly a mark that his mind is deadly sharp)
Yup... Azalin is the MAN!
But was he really as even-handed as he believed himself to be, as a mortal ruler on Oerth? Consider his treatment of his wife -- behavior he considered "justified" by her reluctance to bear the child of a man who'd coldly forced her into marriage and never seen her as anything but a brood mare -- and then consider what kinds of mistreatment that same callous attitude would "justify", in his mind, towards his subjects in Knurl. Consider that his rule was unforgiving and heavy-handed enough that his own son turned against him, rather than see his friends (who, given Irik's own nature, would hardly have been evil-aligned) crushed in purges which Irik deemed criminally unnecessary. Is it really only the Strahd books, whose portrayals we should consider to be slanted by the moral misperceptions of their protagonists?
Don't just judge Azalin by how he acts, when he feels secure in his control over Darkon: judge him through Irik's eyes, that saw him when he still felt vulnerable, and dealt with that insecurity by counterattacking before he had even been threatened. It wasn't only Irik who was up there on that executioner's dias, after all, and if Irik considered them morally worthy to be his friends, I for one dispute Azalin's standards in claiming their sentences "justified" as necessary to maintain order.
P.S. Sorry if I sound defensive there; I just think people get far *too* worked up over Azalin's machiavellian genius. Ravenloft is FULL of machiavellian geniuses, yet there was a loooong time when absolutely *everything* that happened in the setting was depicted as a part of his schemes. Things have improved under Arthaus -- rather ironically, given how their WoD games cast nearly all of IRL history's progress as various supernatural beings' messing around or feuding {roll eyes} -- but I still think there's a tendency to overplay Azalin's importance and brilliance at other darklords' expense.
These don't jive with my ideas of what any lich should be like. In my mind I have a vision of something that has gone through death and come out the other side irrevocably changed, and one that is usually patient in the extreme, profoundly forward thinking, and has fallback plans after fallback plans set up.
Azalin, as portrayed, is more like a stroppy schoolmaster.
Some people have criticized Roots of Evil for being too complicated, which to me is rather like criticizing Michelangelo's David for being too marbley. If RoE is incomprehensible, then that's a decent criticism and there's stuff you can work with to change it. But to say it's too complicated seems to be the exact opposite of what a lich's plots would be like.
Compare this to Strahd, who you'd expect to share much of the same passions as humans. Vampires are sensual and sensuous beings, and the human desires of love and hate, satiation and hunger, are all reflected in some way in their characters.
But a lich should be distinguished entirely by their intellect, and perhaps TSR's and WotC's writers (being non-liches themselves... as far as we know, anyway) fail to really show Azalin's brilliance in my opinion. Azalin, or any lich for that matter, should have far more in common with Hannibal Lector or HAL 9000 than they do with the old staple villains whose aims and torments are easily understood.
Greyhawk had a similar problem in the adventure Vecna Lives! where various supposedly brilliant Greyhawk archmages and wizards actually behaved in a fairly stupid manner. I'm not accusing Ravenloft of being the sole setting with this problem. But I do think there are ways to improve it.
The core rulebook itself shows Azalin to be a genius and whose plots always contain circles within circles, manipulating others so that they end up doing what he intended them to do. Yet the adventures he's appeared in feature copious railroading and other plot-by-force devices. I'm proposing a few changes that show, without changing too much of the adventures, how a canny DM can really let the PCs know what order of intelligence they're dealing with here.
I differ from Rotipher in that I think people in the Core (or at least in Darkon) might well suspect that Azalin genuinely is behind everything. Such a belief wouldn't be out of keeping with the Iron-curtain Stalinesque template that some people seem to apply to Darkon at any rate.
Of course, take everything I've said with a generous pinch of salt. I'm writing from the viewpoint of a somewhat-aggrieved DM who feels that liches and other plot-intensive types of villains get short shrift in the D&D world, and vampires and other action-intensive villains get munchkinized bonuses. Take a quick comparison between the lich and vampire templates, and the inherent ability bonuses they get, to see what I mean. Even the Libris Mortus introduces an NPC who sits down and compares whether he should become a vampire or a lich, and overwhelmingly prefers vampires.
I personally apply the Dicefreaks' lich template, which allows power ranks of liches similar to age categories of vampires.
Except that Azalin isn't, and shouldn't be, your typical lich. Why? Because your stereotypical lich makes a miserable darklord, being too distant from human feelings to evoke any kind of Gothic irony or melodrama. If Azalin were a typical lich, he wouldn't care about Irik's fate any longer, having long since left any attachments to his mortal life -- and thus, his fatherly responsibilities -- behind. It's not as if he has to care what happens to Knurl any more, after all; he's not so blind as to believe his old kingdom is still there, waiting for Irik to rule it properly. Nor would a "standard" lich -- one that's long since forfeited everything that made it human -- bother to maintain a counterproductive grudge against Strahd (which Azalin clearly still does, in "Roots of Evil"; watch the sparks fly, every time they're on-stage together!), once it became clear there was no advantage to be gained from it except revenge.
There have been several liches in Ravenloft, who do fit the stereotype -- cold, calculating, emotionless and brilliant -- yet none of them became darklords. Azalin doesn't even think of himself as a lich, you might have noticed: his ties to his mortal life are too strong, and too important to him, for him to become as 'beyond' human as they. It's the persistance of his human weaknesses -- and, with it, a capacity to make mistakes, however seldom -- that makes him a viable darklord, and creatures like Phantom's Bane "just another monster".
And I never said it wasn't reasonable for the people of Darkon to think their king is behind everything that happens. Paranoia is par for the course, in Ravenloft. But for a while there, nearly every adventure or conspiracy that arose in the setting really was declared to be Azalin's doing, and that's just too much to believe, IMO. There are other villains out there who come up with an idea of their own once in a while, for cryin' out loud, and I'll forever appreciate that the Arthaus Gazzes gave every darklord some kind of an agenda to pursue.
As for what Azalin's personality should be like, we'll have to agree to disagree. If anybody else is reading this and is interested enough to take either side, then that's fine. For those who prefer an emotional Azalin who doesn't behave in a particularly genius fashion, there's plenty of canonical sources that will satisfy that portrayal.
Also, your point about every plot being about Azalin doesn't strike me as being even numerically sound. So far, in published adventures, there are a handful in which he makes a direct appearance, and these are:
From the Shadows
Roots of Evil
Death Unchained
Death Ascendant
Requiem: The Grim Harvest (maybe)
You might argue that the preceding four adventures in the Grand Conjunction sequence come about with Azalin's intercession (in some adventures that is the claim, in others he's just an observer). Even taking that generous appraisal, you end up with nine adventures featuring Azalin, four of which never mention him or show him in action.
The Kargatane web site lists 32 2nd-edition adventure books, which include multi-adventure books like Chilling Tales, and Book of Crypts. You might possibly count the Werner Ruscheider adventure as being an Azalin adventure, because one of his unnamed vassaliches appears in it, but even that would only bring up the number to 9 adventures out of 32. The vassalich in this adventure is acting as a rogue agent, without Azalin's specific diktat.
John W. Mangrum posted an outline of Death Undaunted, the adventure that restores Azalin to power, but which never got published. That brings the total up to 10 out of 33 (and that's not considering the adventures that are 3rd ed, or the large number of novels - 4 of which to my knowledge feature Azalin - King of the Dead, Lord of the Necropolis, I Strahd: TWA, and briefly in Tower of Doom).
Azalin's not behind every plot or adventure. He is behind a non-trivial fraction of them, however. This is not out of keeping with my conception of a schemer and a manipulator.
To give Rotipher her dues, I do also believe that supposedly Macchiavellian darklords like Boritsi, Dilisnya, and d'Honaire have really gotten the shaft as far as attention and page count goes. They feature in very few novels, no adventures, and are almost written out of the campaign setting by omission.
Another example of how with D&D villains, it's easier to write for muscle than for brainpower.
Those of you who like Azalin may be interested in this short story. I wrote it, so I do not pretend to be a neutral observer. But it's not too long and if you were able to read all my ramblings above, you might find the short story far more palatable.
It's at the Fraternity of Shadows website, at this URL:
http://www.fraternityofshadows.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4337
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Also, since this board no longer has a search function, bumping is pretty much the only way to retrieve old threads.