Ravenloft is a horror setting, and to a degree what you want to try to achieve as a DM in that setting is terror and horror, to spook your players and make them feel that they've got to run, run, run if they want to survive.
But D&D is also about heroic adventurers who kill monsters. My philosophy when it comes to fantasy is that since the earliest fantasy fiction, which includes humanity's earliest myths, we've come up with the scariest monsters to embody our fears, and then we make the most ridiculously badass heroes to kick those monsters asses - we conjure our fear to dispel it. And frankly, if you look at the history of humanity in general, rising up from just being some not-terribly-strong, not-terribly-fast apes, to the point where the chance of any of us getting killed by a predator like a lion or a bear or a crocodile is minimal, well: humanity did become badass. Indeed, our concerns in modern society are less about how much we fear the monsters that we evolved to - predatory animals - and more how our strengths are so broad that we threaten nature itself, and the scariest monsters are other humans who would turn that violence against its own species.
You could argue that the monster-hunter narrative dates back to Gilgamesh. But I think it's interesting to look at how the genres of horror and of heroes intersect. There's almost an arms race.
Taking two classics of Gothic Horror, namely Frankenstein and Dracula, the former was written 79 years before the latter, which is something that's easy to forget given how clumped together they are in the modern consciousness. In fact, the Bela Lugosi movie of Dracula was made only 34 years after the novel was written, while Frankenstein's film adaptation (which came out the same year as Dracula - I guess 1931 was a freaking awesome year for monster movies) was 113 years after its source material.
The stories are very different. But one of those differences is that in Dracula, there's an expert who leads the fight against the vampire lord. Abraham van Helsing is a brilliant scientist, and given that this is set in a world where vampires are real, it's all very scientific for him to know how one deals with it - stakes to the heart, etc.
Van Helsing is not really an action hero in the original book (there are younger characters who play that role) but over time, he's become the template for badass vampire (or more generally monster) hunters, and serves as the obvious inspiration for Ravenloft's Rudolph van Richten just as Dracula is the inspiration for Strahd von Zarovich.
While Van Helsing is probably the prototypical gothic monster hunter - the kind of guy with a black doctor's bag filled with wooden stakes, silver bullets, and small vials of holy water that are the perfect shape and weight for throwing like grenades - I think you might look to Solomon Kane as someone who kind of codifies the trope. Created by Robert E. Howard (whose Conan the Barbarian I'm sure you've heard of,) Kane is the protagonist of a series of pulp novels, and between his slouch hat, brace of flintlock pistols, rapier and dirk, and dressed all in black, and tell me he doesn't look exactly how you'd picture a monster hunter. Look up the critically reviled Hugh Jackman movie Van Helsing (2004) and you can see that they've just taken Solomon Kane's wardrobe and given it to Abraham Van Helsing.
I have not actually read any Solomon Kane stories nor seen any film adaptation, nor that aforementioned Van Helsing movie, but I, frankly, freaking love this trope.
And I think that in part it's because I've always loved the aesthetics of horror while liking the optimism (or at least lack of nihilism) of epic fantasy.
Oh, and obviously Geralt of Rivia from The Witcher is another example of this trope, though more truly medieval instead of 18th/19th century.
Anyway, my point:
The players in a Ravenloft campaign are well-positioned to become this sort of badass monster hunter character type. While it's not official content, the popularity of Critical Role has given Matthew Mercer's Blood Hunter class a lot of exposure, and I think the primary fantasy behind this class is to play this kind of dark monster hunter. I also think the Ranger's Monster Slayer subclass is built to embody this as well.
But what's cooler than an individual or small band of adventurers who go and hunt monsters? How about a whole army? A multiverse-traveleing, super powerful army of monster hunters who have insane powers and can stand up to monsters without flinching.
Allow me to introduce the Ulmist Inquisition.
Now, I believe the Ulmist Inquisition dates back to earlier editions, but what we get in Van Richten's is still some really intriguing lore.
The story goes that before Strahd fell to evil and became the first vampire, he had an ally named Ulmed, who fought alongside him, fighting evil (I'm really interested to dig into whether Strahd was always an evil man or if there was a turn, but that's too big for this.) When Strahd did fall, Ulmed was devastated. He retreated back to the city of Malitain, which was a city-state that exists on the world from which Barovia was taken (and boy do I want to know what, if anything other than maybe mist, exists there now!) and founded the Ulmist Inquisiton, and his three friends each founded a different order. Ulmed had psionic abilities, and these were passed down through training and asceticism to the members of the various orders, who use psionics to fight evil across the multiverse.
In Van Richten's there's a stat block for a member of each of the three orders, which are all CR 8, and each is equipped with a silver sword (because they're not idiots) and various psionic abilities.
The Inquisitor of the Mind Fire has psionic abilities that can either stun foes with psychic damage or mind-control groups of foes (as long as they're not immune to the charm condition) to fight for them for a turn.
The Inquisitor of the Sword can blink around the battlefield like crazy - teleporting 60 feet every round as a bonus action and then another 30 after both of its melee attacks (and also heals every turn thanks to a psionic control of their metabolism).
The Inquisitor of the Tome can shoot force bolts from afar and can also create a vortex of psionic energy that sucks foes into its center, knocking them prone and dealing force damage to them. (And can also potentially deflect attacks back on the attacker).
I think these are the types of stat blocks you'll generally not use for the party to fight, but one could represent a super-helpful NPC that might accompany the party on dangerous missions. They each have super-useful at-will spells through their psionics, including dispel magic, sending, etc., as well as a few that depend on which order they're a part of.
In fact, I almost feel like one of these guys is a great "call in the cavalry" kind of stat block if the party is heading toward a TPK. Let's say your party has decided to fight the loup garou at level 5 with no silver weapons - consider throwing one of these guys in to cover their retreat.
That being said, these are single-minded monster hunters who could easily take things too far. I would particularly say that if you have any Reborn, Dhampir, or Hexblood party members, one of these could show up as an ill-informed menace who sees the party member as a monster to put down. After all, "Inquisition" is practically synonymous with unchecked zealotry and horrors committed in the face of an organization that claims to be righteous.
The Ulmist are described as hunting evil across the multiverse, and their headquarters are outside of the Mists of Ravenloft. I think you could play it as if any mission into the Mists is a one-way trip - a suicide mission. But I also think you could do something interesting if the Ulmist are one of the few groups that actually know how to get out of the Mists - maybe an Ulmist Inquisitor is the party's ticket out of the Domains of Dread.
It also means that you could easily throw these into any setting - not just Ravenloft. Maybe they can show up in your Planescape campaign, or delving into the depths of Khyber in Eberron, or fighting the Red Wizards in Thay.
Anywhere there are terrifying monsters to fight, you can have the Ulmist Inquisition to show up having done their homework and ready to take care of business.
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