Rolled 2, 4 = 6 (2d6)

>>97640573
He'll be back in.. lemme check

>>97640583
Mm. Six days. Go easy on him, he had a bad time.

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>>97640583
>>97640594
Its Barovia, when in the hells has anyone had a good time here. As for Caradoc, I'm going to kill him, then I'm going to resurrect him and kill him again.
I will see you in a week hence Strahd. You better be here with Caradoc or I'm going to string you up by your cape on a flag pole.
Also tell Azalin to stop kill stealing me. You don't have to be a dick to be a lich.

>>97640573
>got played for a fool by Strahd then trapped in his domain for three decades as he impotently can't defeat the wild elves

>>97641473
being fair EVERYONE is trapped in Ravenloft lol, that's part of the issue with being a Darklord, you either enjoy the gilded cage or you get pissed because of it. Be it a red wizard of thay or a literal fucking house, youre fucked till you can escape, goddamn Ravenloft.

>>97641765
Are there any darklords who enjoy their stay?

>>97641968
Ehhhh, its kinda a reoccuring theme that nobody really wants to be in Ravenloft unless youre looney.

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>>97640573
>Where the fuck is Caradoc?
The Amazon.

>>97640573
What edition we playing?

>>97642502
1st ed Pathfinder

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>>97641968
Sort of yes, kinda not really. The point of each Darklord is that the Dark Powers are meant to be essentially edging and cucking them constantly in terms of what they want. Strahd wants Tatyana so they repeatedly respawn her and then kill her just as he finds her. Azalin Rex wants to get the fuck out so they show him a way and then remove it at the last second. Repeat this pattern with pretty much every Darklord. There are a couple that manage to just have a 100% good time though like Malken, who is the split personality of Sir Tristen Hiregaard. Basically Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde type situation where Tristen is LN and Malken is a straight up serial killer that taunts Tristen via his murders. Tristen is not having a good time at all but Malken is loving it. I can't think of any others off the top of my head that are such a clear-cut case of a Darklord having fun and not being at all troubled with his situation though.

>>97656118
Holy shit the absolute milkers on that dwarf

>>97641968
It’s like the Greek Tartarus. They are ironic punishments. They have all the power of their domain, EXCEPT for the one thing they truly want, and they’ll never break out.

>>97656118
Kino

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>>97657467
They're meant to be but some of the Darklords get an easier deal than others, at least in terms of being tormented by the Dark Powers.

>>97658126
5e did these NotEnglish ladies so dirty

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>>97658313
5e did all of Ravenloft dirty. You know you fucked up when there's 4e modules for Ravenloft that are more respectable than everything they added to the setting in 5e.

I remember in one of the Ravenloft novels, Strahd punching an ancient red dragon in the head until he shattered it's skull. Probably the best RL novel I ever read

>>97658407
There were 4e modules?

>>97658126
Lol have you seen what they've done to Lady Isolde? They massacred the goth angel waifu.

>>97641968
>>97656118
There was that werewolf who just wanted to sail up and down the river, so the Dark Powers went "well fuck you too" and gave the domain to his son. I think he's still happily sailing his boat.

Vecna supposedly learned to not be even mad while he pretended to be mad while playing 4d chess while planning his escape.

Baron Ulrik Von Kharkov and Arijani don't even seem to be under a curse, they just eat good and occasionally crap their pants at a sign of the one very rare thing that can kill them.

I think that vampire who runs a nuthouse kinda enjoys it?

>>97641473
Soth just stuck to his castle having a bunch of banshees sing for him. The Dark Powers found him so boring they just let him go and gave his domain to some rando.

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>>97658709
There were quite a few 4e modules. I highly recommend Sunderheart; it's my favourite of the bunch.

5e is just all-around bad times for Ravenloft. I genuinely struggled to extract even token concepts worth keeping, like the idea of Barovia having a percentage of the population without souls is a nice idea for a completely new Domain. Dogshit for Barovia.

If a Darklord doesn't play along the Dark Powers yeet them. Soth got thrown out because he literally sat in front of a mirror all day fantasizing.

Nathan Timothy was an itinerant serial killer and yeah he came out ahead with the Darklord deal by most accounts but chances are the authors intended to do some shit with his son coming after him at some point.

IMO Vecna doesn't count because he was forcibly removed from Ravenloft as part of the transitional metaplot of Die, Vecna, Die!, so rather than getting out of his own accord it really was just authorial intent and writer fiat.

Baron Ulrik von Kharkov was blissfully unaware that he was originally just a panther, then got polymorphed as part of a long term plot to assassinate someone. After they did that he was re-polymorphed back to a human and set aside as a future assassination asset, at which point he fled and got Misted. Then he did a stint with the Kargatane, escaped from them and became a Darklord. His whole narrative theme is that he's torn between two existences, that of the feral beast instincts driving him and the reasoning man he's become.

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>>97658709
Arijani's curse is that he's literally a planar being stuck in Ravenloft. Planars fucking hate the Demiplane of Dread; they're acutely aware at all times of their state and it's extremely upsetting to them regardless of specific Planar subtype/variety. Some take it even worse than others; Baatezu for example fare especially badly over time because their nature compels them to return to the Nine Hells and contribute to the Blood War, which they physically can't. Arijani might be living like a king in a way that many Rakshasa would desire on the Prime Material Plane but he's still ultimately a prisoner. This is ontop of Arijani also being a traitor to Rakshasa, so he's outcast from them and condemned to rule what is metaphysically a backwater shithole.

Soth also doesn't count really because the real reason he was removed from Ravenloft was due to legal strife in regards to the IP rights of Dragonlance and the Hickmans' usage of him in Ravenloft. So they basically wrote an exceedingly slap-dash excuse for him to be thrown out. I consider it in the same category as Die Vecna Die! causing Vecna to be let out from Cavitius.

Assuming you mean Dr. Daclaud Heinfroth of Dominia, since he's the only "Vampire" running a madhouse but he's a Cerebral Vampire which is a very shitty subtype of Vampire really. His whole thing is that he's not just an incompetent doctor but also a liar; his treatment of patients is meant to cure them but invariably ends with them going mad and then dying soon after which fucks him up even moreso because he has a family malady of mental illness which he's afraid his inability to cure will condemn him to suffering for eternity as an insane Vampire. The fear of going insane alone is enough to be a pretty sufficient source of amusement for the Dark Powers.

>>97658523
Fuck, I meant Lord Soth, not Strahd. I was so excited to post in a Ravenloft thread that I didn't pay attention to my post

>>97658893
Rakshasa weren't explicitly considered planars in 2e, Arijani was even born on the Prime Material Plane from a human mother. Probably why he was born chaotic evil. (You'll notice in 2e that, unlike any other fiends or angel, he doesn't have a corruption radius.)

He literally fucking lol'd watching the other rakshasa being slaughtered in a war against humans that he caused, that's why Ravana personally intervened, and then he bamboozled Ravana, killed him and lol'd some more, and no other rakshasa could kill him if they even meet. That's why I think he doesn't give a fuck.

Still concerning other planars, the Gentleman Caller seems to be having a gay ol' time just trolling Lady Isolde, and Malistroi apparently enjoys enough on the ending of Circle of Darkness where he just takes over G'Henna.

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>>97659337
Sure and that's relevant if you're running 2e Ravenloft. I hold 3e as the standard and adapt bits and pieces from 4e that I like, like Sunderheart, so by that measure he's a Planar and therefore completely fucked. Entirely depends where you wanna draw the line in the sand. Even without that angle he's still a betrayer to the whole Rakshasa race and persistently under threat of having his rule pre-emptively terminated. So that's plenty enough to annoy him as a Darklord such that he's unable to get fully comfortable. Malken remains the only Darklord I know of that's 100% loving the deal and is entirely happy with things.

>>97659437
Doesn't Malken hate the fact he has to share his body with a goody two shoes knight though?

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>>97659525
Yeah he does hate that. But next to all the rest of the shit he gets up to, I don't think it's unfair to say he's by far the best off Darklord. At least in terms of having fun and not getting fucked over by the Dark Powers.

>>97659525
Probably not, Malken doesn't even care about ruling Nova Vaasa, he's a simple guy. I even had some ideas about him until I read specifically that.

>>97659437
>Even without that angle he's still a betrayer to the whole Rakshasa race and persistently under threat of having his rule pre-emptively terminated.
Unlikely, like I said, Rakshasa specifically can't harm him due to a Wish granted by Ravana himself. I'm not sure there are even any other rakshasa in Sri Raji.
(Didn't read that much from 3e, but apparently they never got to detail Sri Raji, right?)

>>97659684
...huh >>97659678
3e?

>>97659684
Given how Rakshasa operate, that protection amounts to little. Leak whatever his current agenda is and his location to some Advdnturers, sit back, enjoy the fireworks.

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>>97659684
Immune to the attacks of Rakshasa. The Dark Powers will be more than happy to rules lawyer him on that. Does it count as the attack of a Rakshasa if they send human assassins? What about if they find a suitable poison against him? Starting repeated riots of the rabble and directing them to attack the Maharaja? The list goes on and the Dark Powers love nothing more than to twist these kinds of wishes into curses.

>>97659688
Yeah that one's from 3e Secrets of the Dread Realms.

>>97659726
I hate how 5e turned Strahd from a high level ancient vampire necromancer to a run of the mill shitter vampire with basicallt level 9 wizard casting levels, and he's also supposed to be the first vampire in the D&D multiverse in 5e too

>>97659772
Kinda surprised they didn't go with a yaas queen of the vampires as the first one.

>>97659772
5e absolutely shit the bed with a lot of stuff. For Curse of Strahd in particular it cannibalised a bunch of other Domains and shoved them inside Barovia as if they were worried people wouldn't find the literal four decades of content would be insufficient for players/DMs to be interested in. Ontop of that they just rejigged the landscape, removed major landmarks and replaced them with new garbage ones and rewrote how Barovia works entirely from the ground up with their recycled soul feature. The only thing I can say that's even marginally good is that it led to a re-release of the Tarokka Deck but even that is tainted because it's all new artwork rather than the iconic stuff by Talon Dunning and it was printed on dogshit quality cardstock so you can't even really use them.

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>>97659795
They did that for other Darklords. Viktor Mordenheim? Now Viktra. She got a comic, even. (It's certified dogshit.)

Does anyone have the Ravenloft novels? Didn't download them all years ago when the trove was taken down, I only got the Strahd and Azalin related ones.

>>97659801
I know, that's why I'm surprised. To name a few, they also replaced Vlad Drakov and I think Sir Tristen? Missing the point of the references entirely.

>>97660052
Also Dominic D'Honaire from Dementlieu IIRC. I've not looked all that deeply into why they decided to do it but I can't think of any compelling reason to do so from a narrative, writing or indeed any relevant aspects to the whole situation. So I have to assume they did it because someone got bright ideas about fucking with things for the sake of trying to wring extra money out of the setting.

>>97640573
STRAHD ISN'T HERE! HE WENT OUT TO GET SOME BLUH- ...BLUH- ...BLUH- ...ah, shit.

>>97658523
>>97659317
It wasn't an ancient red dragon, it was a small one and a reference to I6 Ravenloft. Going by I6 Ravenloft, Strahd should have at least 4 of those.