The Elements of a Ravenloft Domain

 I'm going to be up front here that this is basically a neophyte's breakdown of what will basically be a chapter in the upcoming Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft. It's the most excited I've been about a D&D book in a while (I'm a bit torn, because the collector side of me want to get the limited edition, which my local store only charges 5 bucks extra for, but I think I might like the art of the standard cover better) and I've been thinking a lot about the possibility of running a Ravenloft campaign (though one that I think I'd make pointedly limited in scope, maybe having it only run to level 10 or 11.)

Ravenloft is built out of many different miniature worlds - regions like Barovia, Falkovnia, Dementlieu, etc. are all partitioned off by the Mists. In previous editions, there was a sort of "continent" that connected the various realms, so that if you found a way to traverse the mists, you could step into another domain. On one hand, this opened the possibility for the various domains to war against one another, and set up figures like Strahd and Azalin as rivals for supremacy over their miserable world.

On the other hand, I think that this continent, known as The Core, pushes the setting to be a little too much like other fantasy settings. WotC has announced that in 5th Edition, the Core is shattered, and each domain is an island adrift in the mists, which I think is thematically a lot more appropriate (though it also doesn't bar any interactions between domains.)

I think it is important to the Ravenloft setting that you are not in the Prime Material Plane. While its presence in either the Ethereal Plane or the Shadowfell does mean it's in one of the Inner Planes, which tend to have a more familiar relationship to things like space and distance, the fact that you're not in the mundane, physical world means that things don't have to behave in entirely realistic ways.

The Dark Powers, mysterious and unseen beings that make the Domains of Dread function, are essentially the intelligence of the Ravenloft setting - the land itself is aware and thinking, and it wants to scare you.

The alignment, per se, of the Dark Powers is an enigma. On one hand, you could see the Domains of Dread as a prison for the material plane's worst monsters, sealing them away so that they cannot continue to harm their home worlds. This could make the Dark Powers seem like good guys. But on the other hand, the way that the Mists drag potentially innocent adventurers into their worlds, and those who are dragged along with the Dark Lords (the evildoers around whom the prisons are formed,) makes the Dark Powers seem at best callous in their lack of surgical precision.

In fact, it almost seems as if the motivation for trapping the Dark Lords is not to keep them from harming the worlds from which they are taken, but simply to torment them endlessly, which implies that the Dark Powers are vindictive and cruel at best, or worse, they might gain something out of the torment they cause.

So, how do we put together a domain?

I think there are two questions to consider to begin with. The first of these is what subgenre of horror you want to explore. Gothic Horror is the bedrock of Ravenloft, but many of the tropes of Gothic Horror have been remixed and reinterpreted to create subsequent subgenres, so it's worth looking at even if you want to do something more like Cosmic Horror or another variant.

Secondly, who is your darklord?

While the trappings of the genre will be very important for fleshing out the overall environment, and some of the themes you can play with, the darklord at the center of it all is key.

While some domains might have multiple darklords, you'll want to have at least one. We'll assume you have a single darklord, though they can have lieutenants and henchmen who can have their own interesting personality, so don't feel like you have to have just a single interesting villain.

The darklord must be monstrous in nature - physically dangerous to any ordinary person. Vampires are great for this, given that they are intelligent and mostly human-like, but robbed of the human traits necessary to be good, like empathy and humility. A darklord needs to be relatively intelligent - at least at a humanoid level of intelligence - because it needs to have had the knowledge to be responsible for the evil acts that got it trapped. A fiend, for example, isn't going to make for a great darklord because their evil is part of their nature, and not a choice made that the darklords would seek to punish. Again, intelligent undead in general work well in this case, because they have that vestige of humanoid free will, but have transformed in such a way to no longer be able to return to that humanity.

Humanoid villains also work here, for the same reasons, but you'll want to ensure they are empowered in some way - they have some magical ability, or some kind of mutation brought on by mad science, which has made them formidable (granted, you could run a purely tier 1 Ravenloft game, but even then, you'd want to have a villain who's at least scary enough to pose a threat to a group of level 1 players.)

But while the physical nature of the villain is important, the key is their personality. The nature of the Dark Powers' torment of their darklords is that the darklord is trapped in an endless quest that is always frustrated by failure. Strahd's quest is to find the reincarnation of his "beloved" Tatyana. But because he has mistaken obsession and a desire to possess her for love, even when he does find her, her attempts to escape lead to his killing her, beginning the cycle anew. Strahd blames himself for his failures, but not in an empathetic way that would cause him to stop this horrific pursuit, but only by considering his strategies and tactics for getting what he wants to be wrong.

Strahd is a compelling villain in part because he presents the illusion of having some sort of redeemable side. His brooding nature and his passions might trick you into thinking that there's a good person somewhere deep down. The truth is that he will never change, and will only manipulate and gaslight others into questioning his villainy. Strahd, more than anyone, is convinced by this trick, and that leads us to a good concept for any darklord: that they are the hero of their own story.

Really this is a good thing for any villain, as the vast majority of people don't think of themselves as bad guys, even as they commit evil acts. There's rationalization, delusion, or even just compartmentalization that they use to avoid any feeling of remorse that might lead them to change for the better. This is true for evil people in the real world, but Ravenloft heightens this to supernatural extremes. Strahd is a complete narcissist. To clarify what I mean by that, narcissism is not simply a self-adoration, but it's a kind of solipsistic worldview in which only the individual's desires, beliefs, and even sentience exist - all other people, in the narcissist's mind, exist solely in how they can serve the individual's needs. This can manifest with overwhelming praise and adulation for those who help them that can then turn, in an instant, to bitter hatred the moment someone does something that the individual doesn't want them to do.

Strahd, for instance, presents himself with an air of magnanimity, but if the players get in the way of his attempt to take Irina (the woman he believes is Tatyana's reincarnation) they become his nemesis.

So, to review: the darklord needs to be someone in a Sisyphean loop, which is how the domain persists, and their impossible task is the cause of most of the ongoing strife in their domain. Furthermore, they need to be powerful enough to keep the realm afraid of them and doom any attempt to overthrow them.

Next, let's talk about the realm itself:

Because Ravenloft's domains are focused around and built for the various darklords, the domain should reflect the darklord's personality. You can play with variants on the themes of their character flaws, having little microcosms of the cruelty that drew the Dark Powers' interests. Furthermore, you can also have some horror come out of the responses people take to the unassailable power fo the darklord.

In Barovia, there is, for example, a haunted ruin populated by the spirits of a group that opposed Strahd. There's also an area where a well-intentioned person has been constructing terrible monstrosities in an attempt to give Strahd a replacement for Tatyana that can survive his rages, hoping (vainly) that this will break the loop.

In Curse of Strahd, at least, they introduce a rather chilling concept: there is a small, finite number of souls to go around in the domains of dread. As such, most people you meet don't have souls. In many ways, they're examples of the philosophical zombie, which actually suggests that the darklord's narcissism isn't, actually, 100% wrong. However, unlike the philosophical zombie, the people without souls do seem different - disaffected, cold, and uncaring. Also, the souls that do exist within these realms are trapped there, which is why the same people (like Tatyana) keep getting reincarnated, forced into Strahd's Sisyphean loop over and over, only they're the boulder.

The isolated nature of the domain should make the place feel oppressive. Locals will treat the adventurers as interlopers, sure, but there's also a certain level on which they might treat the party as the new inmates at the prison. Cynicism and pessimism are likely the baseline mood for most people within one of these realms.

However, beyond that baseline, you can have a certain zeal that might arise. Locals within a domain might be loyal to the darklord, or they might just try to keep their heads down and engage in depressive behaviors like excessive drinking to try to escape their misery. But you can also get a lot of mileage out of a militant resistance to the darklord.

On one hand, you can use these as potential allies for the party, and I don't think it totally breaks the vibe of Ravenloft as long as they don't stand a chance (at least without the party) of actually overthrowing the darklord.

But another thing you might consider is that the actions of the darklord have spurred a rebellion that is just as dangerous. Real-world history has plenty of examples of religious hysteria and moral panic leading to evils greater than anything that inspired them in the first place. Thus, you can have a fiery inquisition is far too quick to execute people suspected of collaborating with the darklord. The party, being outsiders, could easily be mistaken for agents of the darklord, and have to fend off a zealous inquisition.

While this behavior could arise on its own, you could even have the Dark Powers stirring the pot to ensure that this kind of thing continues. Or, you could even have the darklord himself using this inquisition as a method to sew mistrust among their enemies.

I'm very curious to see how the new book outlines the steps needed to create a domain of dread. As someone who really prefers homebrewing stuff, I think that I'd be likely to do so if I run a Ravenloft campaign.

Yes, Armorers Are Fun

 Tonight, when my roommate's D&D game he runs for co-workers only had three people show up, they decided instead to run a one-shot and I joined in as the fourth player. One of the players, who also plays in a few other games I'm in, including the one I run, had a level 18 character rattling around, and so we rolled up high-level characters for the night.

I actually wound up rolling up a Wildfire Druid at level 18 but decided that there were too many spells to choose from for a character I hadn't leveled up the slow way, and so instead made the tank-focused artificer that I'd always wanted to play.

Our party actually wound up being pretty melee-heavy. We had the evocation wizard at the back while we had a paladin, my artificer, and a battlemaster fighter.

We did, admittedly, have some free rein on picking our magic items, which allowed both the paladin and fighter to pick up belts of Fire Giant strength (aka 25 Strength, for a +7 bonus.) The items I picked for myself were actually not very combat-focused, because I was an artificer anyway - the entire class is built around cherry-picking magic items.

So, I had the following:

Enhanced Weapon on my built-in armor weapon

Enhanced Defense on my chestplate (armorers get to infuse different pieces of armor separately starting at level 9, and also get to infuse two more items as long as those are part of the armor.)

Goggles of Night on my helmet (weirdly, everyone rolled a human)

Repulsion Shield on my shield.

Winged Boots on my boots.

Ring of Protection (on a ring)

Cloak of Protection (on a cloak)

And I used by last infusion on a ring of water-walking just in case (it didn't really come into play, even though we wound up fighting a foe who could swim.

Between all those things, I had an AC of 25. I was also a variant human and took Tough as my level 1 feat, and so I had 201 hit points.

We fought The Curator, an archfiend from Tome of Beasts 2 who is basically a large frog-devil who likes to collect souls. The fight only lasted about two rounds and change, so I only got two turns. But I've got to say, between landing Faerie Fire on him (with a +3 all purpose tool my DC was 22) and then hitting him twice with my thunder gauntlets, which then gave his attacks disadvantage against targets other than me, I think I managed to do a good job at support. After the paladin, wielding a Holy Avenger, crit and dropped a max-level divine smite, doing 93 damage in a single attack, the Curator did wind up attacking her despite the disadvantage, but missed on one of those thanks to the effect.

Meanwhile, the fighter had grappled the Curator (he was built all around grappling) and dragged him toward me and the paladin, and while she blasted him away with smites, the wizard (learning a little late that fire was not great against devils) finally wiped him out with a Sunburst.

Level 18 characters are very powerful.

Anyway, I'd love to play one of these in a long-running campaign so that I could do things like use downtime to build an airship for the party, but it was nice to see that my super-tanky character concept seems to actually work.

Flavors of Horror, Part 3 of X: Cosmic Horror

 The universe, as in our own very real universe that you and I are currently occupying, is astoundingly enormous. No human being has ever gone farther away from their home than those astronauts who circled the moon (give Michael Collins some credit as the first person to be that lonely in history while Neil and Buzz were on the surface.) And yet our planetary system is just one among several within our solar system, itself just one among an absurd number in our galaxy, which is itself just one among an absurd number of galaxies.

Likewise, the human race has only been around for about 300,000 years. By contrast, the Earth is 4.54 billion years old. And even within that 300,000 years. Human civilization, on the other hand, is generally held by historians to only have existed for about 5,000 years. The entirety of humanity's recorded accomplishments exist within a 1.7% sliver of our species existence and the entire span of physiologically modern humans is just .007% of the planet's existence. The universe itself, dating back to the Big Bang, is thought to be 13.77 billion years, which means that there's more than twice the amount of time before this planet formed than there has been since it did.

Space dwarfs us and time dwarfs us, and there is a certain existential dread that bubbles up when you realize just how utterly minuscule and insignificant you are in the face of the cosmos.

That is cosmic horror.

Or, rather, I think that's the emotion that inspires cosmic horror. At the core of the subgenre is the notion that everything we, as a species, has accomplished is insignificant, and could be washed away in an instant. Furthermore, humanity's identity on Earth is one that is built upon the assumption that we are the apex of evolution - that no other creature on this planet has ever matched our imagination and intelligence. Though we are a young species, our accomplishments are unprecedented, as is our power.

Cosmic horror imagines that this assumption is incorrect.

I think it's notable that some of the most iconic figures of the Cthulhu mythos are not, though they might seem to be, actually extra-terrestrials. Cthulhu himself is from Earth.  The bizarre barrel-shaped creatures from In the Mountains of Madness and their Shoggoth servants that turned on them are from Earth. Any sense of actual human supremacy is exposed as a lie, that our seeming dominance of the planet is just a momentary interlude between the reigns of far greater beings.

Cosmic horror, particularly the works of H. P. Lovecraft, have been a major influence on the fantasy genre. In particular, Lovecraft was a contemporary of Robert E. Howard's, the author of the Conan the Barbarian stories, as well as other serialized heroes like Kull and Solomon Kane. It was actually these pulp-fantasy figures, rather than Tolkien's high-minded fantasy epics, that were the primary inspiration for Dungeons & Dragons. Howard incorporated some of the Cthulhu mythos into his Hyperborean Age inhabited by Conan, and the earlier Atlantean age that was home to Kull (I believe both were set within the same fictional history.)

And in D&D, the figures that resemble parts of the Cthulhu mythos are reflected in things like aberrations, Elder Evils, and Great Old Ones (the latter of two can often be conflated, though I'd argue there could be subtle distinctions - a Great Old One, I think, might not be evil because it is too alien in its mindset to hold any actual contempt.)

There is a great deal of overlap, though, with demons. Of course, D&D has its fair share of fiends. Devils I think most generally match the portrayal of evil as depicted in the Western/Christian model. They are corrupters and more often have the classic horns, forked tongues, hooves, and tails. Demons, on the other hand, are somewhere between that and Lovecraftian horror.

In particular, Demogorgon, one of the most powerful of the demon lords, borrows an element of the King in Yellow, a figure created by Robert W. Chambers, which Lovecraft incorporated into his mythos as a being called Hastur. The original story, the King in Yellow, is about a play that drives anyone who sees it insane. The King in Yellow has a sign - an abstract symbol - that has the same effect upon people. Demogorgon, likewise, has a sigil that can induce madness in those who see it.

While the more explicitly cosmic horror monsters and the more classical demons do overlap quite a bit in their use as monsters in a D&D story/campaign, this actually just gives you the opportunity to pick and choose which you want to use. Indeed, Tharizdun, a Greyhawk deity who is also something of a broader, setting-agnostic one, is more or less a Great Old One himself, and it's said he created the Abyss in the first place, so the connection between him and demons is there already - the otherworldly madness a stark contrast to devils' more classical Mephistophelean mold (though one tin-foil hat theory I really enjoy is the notion that Asmodeus, the evil god at the pinnacle (or nadir, rather) of the infernal hierarchy (who is basically The Devil as opposed to a devil) might, in fact, be a Great Old One as well, and the whole bureaucratic business of Hell is actually a cover for some other, more eldritch plot.)

While cosmic horror has, at its core, these very disturbing questions about the relevance of humanity and the machinations of unknowable, unspeakable ancient evils, the truth is that most of their stories are grounded in a more mundane environment.

The Lovecraftian protagonist is typically someone who is well-educated and rational. Scientists, explorers, or just well-to-do but highly educated men of means are the usual viewpoint character for a Lovecraft story. Oftentimes, the story takes the form of some kind of personal account of an investigation of some sort. In The Call of Cthulhu, the narrator has received the research materials left to him by his recently deceased uncle, who has been compiling notes on the bizarre worldwide cult to an entity called Cthulhu. The final vignette of the novella describes a ship that discovered an uncharted island which turned out to be the sunken, now risen city of R'lyeh, where Cthulhu was in some kind of death-like hibernation before his crew accidentally awoke the titanic monster, leaving the few survivors traumatized to the point of suicide.

The Shadow Over Innsmouth is the account of a man who decides to take a tour of the northeastern coast of Massachusetts to see if he can track down stories of his own ancestry, only to become trapped in a hostile and dilapidated town where the people have interbred with some sort of bizarre fish-like people known as the Deep Ones, worshipping some underwater entity known as Dagon, and chronicles the narrator's attempt to escape the mob of deformed residents who want to capture him for mysterious purposes.

Lovecraft himself is a deeply, deeply problematic author, as his stances on race were considered bigoted even in the 1920s. It's ironic, given that the core of the subgenre for which he is the quintessential author is built upon humanity's irrelevance, that he should favor the white anglo saxon over the other insects that could be swept away at any moment if the Old Ones sneezed in our direction.

Still, countless authors have deconstructed this bigotry, even transforming inhuman aliens into relatable creatures with whom we can have a relationship of mutual respect (man, Star Trek is awesome,) but also reconstructing it by approaching the subgenre from places that are not solely the domain of the white man.

Horror is often built upon the disempowerment of the protagonist. Ironically, cosmic horror does not require this, because it, instead, goes the route of having monsters that are so powerful that there's nothing we could possibly do that would even grab their attention, much less harm them.

However, it also typically has a hierarchy of power, and therefore the monsters we face, while certainly frightening in their power compared to ours, might themselves be the tiny fleeing prey of a far greater monster. This actually allows a cosmic horror story to contain monsters that can be fought by an adventuring party, while still retaining the sense of dread that comes from knowing there's something much scarier out there.

All that being said, I generally think the best cosmic horror stories are the ones in which the "monsters" are either on the periphery or not even present. Instead, the antagonists can be other humans (humanoids in D&D, but you get it) who are convinced that they understand the eldritch powers at work and can profit from them.

I highly recommend the game Bloodborne for this. While in typical From Soft, Dark Souls fashion, the story is very obscure and must be pieced together from item descriptions and such, what eventually becomes clear is that the setting's primary religious organization is actually the attempt to build a society around the use of "blood" of a Great One. Yharnam, the city the game is set in, has descended into total chaos, but in the midst of this is a schism between the scholars of the School of Mensis and the church's leading elite, the Choir. By the time you arrive at either's headquarters, disaster has already struck - the Choir's headquarters have been overtaken by Beasts (essentially werewolves, but as revealed later in the game, the result of these eldritch experiments) while the School of Mensis attempted to commune with the Great Ones and died when their brains were essentially overloaded by the power of the things they sought to communicate with.

Thus, a humanoid antagonist in a cosmic horror story is one that will likely cause their own destruction - the heroes are more concerned with preventing collateral damage, as these experiments that the villain wishes to perform will likely cause massive harm if not apocalyptic destruction for the rest of the world.

Cosmic horror often adopts an aesthetic found in other late 19th/early 20th century genres. This often includes the detective story, with the twist that uncovering new knowledge is not the way to correct some injustice, but instead will expose the protagonist to truths so disturbing that they will break their entire worldview.

Notably, not all cosmic horror stories end as bleakly as The Call of Cthulhu or The Shadow Over Innsmouth. Sometimes, like Van Helsing in Dracula, the rational, scientific mind can prove capable of overcoming the monster, such as in The Dunwich Horror.

Personally, I think you could make an argument that surreal horror is a variation on cosmic horror. This would be exemplified by creators like David Lynch, whose works like Twin Peaks deal with unexplained and dream-like terrors, but emphatically raise more questions with each potential revelation of the logic behind it all. In Twin Peaks, the entities of the Black Lodge are clearly alien and terrifying, but there's a dream-like familiarity to them.

Surreal horror might deserve its own post, though I'll be frank that the broken logic of surreal horror can be difficult to adapt to a game like D&D. Still, it's my favorite horror aesthetic, and so I think deserves some exploration.

Flavors of Horror, Part 2 of X: Slashers

 Ravenloft is most often associated with gothic horror, as best exemplified by the adventure that started it all, with the evil vampire Strahd and the classically-gothic setting of Barovia. While many other regions of Ravenloft are built on those tropes, there's a lot of potential to explore other horror subgenres.

In American culture, one of the most popular horror subgenres of the last 40 years is the slasher film.

Arguably debuting in 1960 with Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, the genre really began to take its true form with movies in the 1970s - 1974's Texas Chainsaw Massacre, 1978's Halloween, and then 1980's Friday the 13th, and 1984's Nightmare on Elm Street.

The formula for a slasher film really became codified in 1980s, and then were deconstructed in the 1990s by one of genre's architects in Wes Craven's Scream - one of the many 1990s deconstructions that sort of has its cake and eats it too.

The slasher film is an enduring formula, but what is that formula, exactly?

First and foremost, while the protagonist is usually one of the potential victims, the true star is of the movie is the murderous villain. In fact, these villains are so iconic that we would later have things like the bizarre Freddy vs Jason crossover.

The iconic nature of these villains is largely accomplished through the design of unique, unusual costumes. Jason Voorhees (who isn't even in the original Friday the 13th until the jump-scare ending) is never seen without his trademark hockey goalie's mask. Michael Myers, of the Halloween series, is always wearing his bizarre bleached-white William Shatner mask. And Freddy Kreuger's face is not hidden, but it's disfigured with terrible burns, and he always wears his trademark striped sweater, his hat, and his bladed gloves.

These movies generally have a cast of archetypes. In fact, another deconstruction, Cabin in the Woods, plays with this notion by having the organization running the story using mind-altering chemicals to transform otherwise nuanced characters into the archetypes (like turning Chris Hemsworth's smart academic who happens to also have an athletic build into a dumb jock). These films generally try to intentionally alienate us from the characters in order to soften the horror of seeing them brutally and gorily slain. The exception tends to be the primary protagonist, even though she (because it's usually a she) also tends to conform to a particular archetype: the "Final Girl."

In a weird way, despite the genre being profoundly transgressive, the final girl archetype is often a weirdly conservative ideal. This (again, usually female) figure is virginal and reserved in temperament.

Also, of note, the victims are usually young - either teenagers or those in their 20s. In part, this is used to justify irrational and reckless behavior that gets them killed, but it also coveys a sense of helplessness - the limitations on youth make them more vulnerable to the killer.

And I think it's this last reason that it's really tough to pull this off as a genre in D&D.

There are basically two ways to make a monster horrifying. One is to make it more powerful, while the other is to disempower the potential victim. D&D, structurally, is all about empowering the players. You survive long enough, and you begin to learn powerful magic or peerless fighting techniques that can lay waste to hordes of demons, or take down nearly god-like powers.

The Slasher genre's monsters are typically less about devastating power, and more about the inability to destroy them. Jason, Michael Myers, and their ilk can be shot, stabbed, exploded, burned, and they somehow always manage to survive and continue their murderous rampage. But in their implacability, they also tend to be slow, and their weapon is typically nothing more than a big knife of some sort - generally, evading them is the best solution in the longterm.

If I were to stat up a classic Slasher monster, its damage output wouldn't be particularly high - after all, it only has to do four points of damage to take out its typical victim - a commoner. But it would have a lot of HP and resistance to most damage, and possibly some sort of regeneration or rejuvenation trait.

When your protagonists (the party) are all from walks of life dedicated to being able to kick monsters' asses, the monster needs to be a little more than just a big dude with a knife, because it's hard to distinguish that from any other D&D monster.

One method I've used to try to recreate this idea is denial of equipment. I ran a one-shot around Halloween last year in which the party (all level 1) woke up packed in crates in the attic of a large house. The party could explore the house, which was filled with creepy things and the remains of previous parties who had been slaughtered by the monster, which allowed them to find some basic equipment (all, notably, less powerful stuff, like maces instead of war hammers, except for a musket with some bullets) but as soon as they reached the front hallway, the monster - a murderous dwarf named Bloody Oleg - entered with a greataxe and began chasing them. They could kill Oleg, but he'd always come back with a little more health, and so they needed to bring him to a ritual room in the basement where he could be permanently killed.

(Yes, the premise was borrowed from one of the Haunts in Betrayal at House on the Hill.)

But I think what made this work was the sense of disempowerment - a slasher is scary only if the potential victim doesn't know how to fight back. And again, that's a tough balance to strike for a game that's all about making the players feel powerful.

Flavors of Horror to Explore in Ravenloft, Part One of X

 Yeah, they just announced the book and it's not coming until mid-May (making it a couple weeks early for me to get it as a birthday gift to myself) but I have gone down a deep rabbit hole of obsession over the potential for Ravenloft content.

Anyway, as a setting based in horror, I thought it would be interesting to explore the possibilities of what kind of places we might find or design to fit within the Ravenloft setting.

The emphasis for Ravenloft has historically been gothic horror. But how, then, do we really define Gothic Horror? And is that truly all of Ravenloft, or are there other horror subgenres that we can touch on?

First off, Gothic Horror is typically associated with the 19th Century. That being said, the classics of the genre are extraordinarily wide-spread. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the novel that arguably created the entire science fiction genre along with the Gothic Horror genre, was published in 1818. Bram Stoker's Dracula, on the other hand, came out in 1897. While Frankenstein and Dracula are, arguably, the most iconic figures within the genre, but consider how different the same distance of years looked in the 20th Century - the end of World War I compared with the year that Final Fantasy VII came out.

Granted, I think that these two icons of horror are likely better-linked by the Universal Horror films of the 1930s

Stoker's novel takes an unusual approach to form, composed of letters, diaries, and newspaper articles that, collectively, tell the story of the vampire Count Dracula, who seeks to corrupt and turn the innocent woman Mina Harker. The collection of heroic men who save her (yeah, gender dynamics were not super evolved in the 1890s) includes their expert, Abraham Van Helsing, whose rational worldview and breadth of scientific knowledge arm the heroes with the tools they need to defeat and destroy Dracula, saving Mina from the damnation of undeath.

That this embrace of rationalism and science is part of one of the iconic works of Gothic Horror is sort of ironic given how the genre started. Mary Shelley, along with her husband Percy and their friends (including Lord Byron) were part of the Romantic movement. The Romantics were a response to the previous style in vogue, which had been a literary style defined by an almost fussy precision with language and a hyper-rational manner of description. The Romantics embraced the emotional, with characters whose motivations were passions (often un-virtuous passions) rather than carefully-deliberated ethical decisions.

Also, fun fact, the same friendly competition to write "ghost stories" that led to Frankenstein also led to a fragment of a story by Lord Byron that became the basis for the first English Vampire novel, so maybe there is a deep connection after all.

Amongst American authors, you cannot talk about Gothic Horror without mentioning Edgar Allen Poe. His stories, like Masque of the Red Death, The Tell-Tale Heart, the Pit and the Pendulum, and maybe my favorite, the Casque of Amontillado (though damn if Tell-Tale Heart isn't awesome as well,) along with the Fall of the House of Usher and his poem, The Raven (which the first Simpsons Halloween episode adapted fantastically,) are crucial to the canon of the genre.

So, then, how are we to define Gothic Horror?

Monsters are certainly a common trope to most horror, but there is a common element to basically all gothic monsters - they are all some sort of perversion of humanity. Vampires are human in shape, but they are entirely uninhibited. Vampires are usually portrayed as hedonistic, but they are just as uninhibited in their wrath and violence - all restraint and respect is gone, and they simply take what they want. This makes them a bit seductive - after all, wouldn't it be nice to just be able to take whatever you wanted, however you wanted it? There's almost a Nietzschean superman aspect to the vampire - and Nietzche was a creature of the 19th century.

Frankenstein's monster (who, by the way, is also a Frankenstein as he takes his "father's" last name) is particularly tragic because his evil is not inherent, but what was taught to him by a neglectful creator. Though he is built of the parts of several dead people, Adam is a unique, new individual. But by showing him nothing but hatred thanks to his unsettling nature, Viktor Frakenstein ensured his creation would become the monster he saw him as.

Werewolves don't, I believe, have quite the same iconic exemplar, apart from Lon Chaney's Wolf Man (but we're talking literature for now.) Still, they represent a certain abandonment - the beast within humanity, some deep animalistic instinct that manifests monstrously as a transformed body and a bestial mind. Robert Lewis Stephenson's Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde explores similar themes, along with themes related to the Nietzchean superman - a timid scientist creates a serum that transforms him into the hulking brute, and the allure of being free of those inhibitions allows him to remain a monster.

Man, I guess all of Gothic Horror is about the desire to break out of a repressed culture!

Well, hold on. We haven't touched on Poe.

In Poe's works, there's often only the suggestion of the supernatural. Of the stories I mentioned a few paragraphs ago, the only really explicitly supernatural event occurs at the end of Masque of the Red Death, when the terrifying visitor's mask is removed and only empty robes fall the floor, the Masque representing the plague's ability to strike both the poor in the town below and the decadent nobles in the castle above.

But the Tell-Tale Heart's still-beating heart of the man the narrator murders could simply be a hallucination based on his overwhelming guilt. The Raven's seeming connection to that narrator's grief over his lost love is probably all in his head.

Poe's focus is not so much monsters that represent the corruption of human morality, but the fallibility of the human mind, and the possibility that madness can alter someone's behavior to transform them into an all-too-human monster.

It's still about the breakdown of reason and rationality, but where the British works externalize that to physical monsters, Poe's focus is internal fracture.

And that, finally, takes us to the next subgenre: cosmic horror.

There's no author more closely associated with Cosmic Horror than H. P. Lovecraft. Lovecraft's work is often difficult to read as he was considered particularly bigoted even within the context of the 1920s. The casual, matter-of-fact way that he spouts racist canards, tropes, and slurs can be shocking and take you out of the narrative, which is unfortunate given that he also created some of the most enduring and fascinating horror concepts in the genre.

Lovecraft was a massive fan of Poe's, and even name-checks him in some of his early works. The notion that one's mind cannot be trusted is a common trope within his work.

But in many ways, Lovecraft was, like the Romantics a century earlier, reacting emotionally to the scientific developments of the era. In the early 20th Century, the fundamental understanding of how the universe is structured and works was overturned by Einstein's theories (the more you learn about physics, the more mind-blowing it is that A: Einstein came up with so many ideas and B: that they turned out to be mostly right).

In the face of a universe that was now known to be so profoundly old, so profoundly big, and in which the relationship between space and time on a cosmic scale was actually so different than the relatively intuitive Newtonian model that had preceded Einstein inspired a kind of existential dread that Lovecraft turned into horror fiction. If humanity was so small and so recent, what other things might lurk out there that are so much grander than we are?

Much as Mary Shelley had effectively created science fiction by having Victor Frankenstein as the original combination of ambitious innovation without thinking through the implications, Lovecraft helped to create the notion of the callous and powerful alien. (H.G. Wells of course had really pioneered the alien invasion genre with War of the Worlds, though despite the technical victory for Earth at the end of it, I think you could say that that work was also one of Cosmic Horror.)

But I think what distinguishes Lovecraft from the alien-invader stories that became particularly popular in B-movies in the 1950s, though, is that his emphasis was on a breakdown of the rational. Lovecraft connected the ideas of extraterrestrials or prehistoric lost worlds with the tropes of fantasy, fairy tales, and myth. He imagined that these alien beings might as well be gods, given their level of power, and then extrapolated the idea that the gods we humans worship are only naive fantasies - that on a cosmic scale, the only things that could have such a level of power would be utterly unrecognizable and incompatible with the human psyche.

In a weird way, Lovecraft more or less seeks to recreate the feeling of hiding from monsters under your blankets as a little kid - you'd rather just not know they were there, capable of destroying you any moment, than to test reality and potentially confirm their presence.

We've got a lot more horror genres to talk about here, so I might have to make this a multi-part post. But before I lose the thread entirely (can you tell that I don't write multiple drafts of these?) I wanted to talk about how these tropes can apply in a D&D setting.

Being a fantasy game, there's already a certain abandonment of the rational - you already live in a world of magic and gods whose existence is provable. But there's also another approach to take: after all, a rational person who entered a world with such things would simply have to adjust to new data - science has no "canon," and therefore any information that contradicts previously-believed theories simply means that the theories need to adjust to account for the new information.

I think it's clear that any gothic horror villain should be some perversion of humanity - which could mean a monster like a vampire, werewolf, ghost, etc., or it could mean an actual person whose behavior has begun to stray from what is acceptable (like, to use an example from the upcoming book, someone who decides they'd like to hunt other people for sport.)

There's something appealing to becoming a monster, even if, when you think about it, it's actually horrifying. But the monster can use that to their advantage. Giving the monster appealing attributes, even making them kind of likable, will go a long way. I think Strahd is a great example of this, because he's a villain you can empathize with - which might lure you into thinking there's some good in him. The horror, then, comes from the fact that he's actually a complete narcissist, and that his "love" for Tatyana is nothing more than a toxic desire to take control of another person. (Weirdly, I think the portrayal of Thanos in Infinity War and Endgame actually works in a similar way - throughout Infinity War you see him constantly arguing that his plan is actually altruistic, and that he's really just a good guy who can see what others can't. But, in fact, once we see things from a different perspective in Endgame, we can see how this is really just a self-serving narrative he's using to allow himself to pursue ultimate power, and that he's ultimately, yes, just a narcissist.)

In fact, a self-serving narrative might be one of the major common elements between the British gothic works and Poe - Montresor in the Casque of Amontillado and the unnamed narrator of the Tell-Tale Heart give themselves weird and off-hand justifications for their murderous actions. The former claims that Fortunado insulted him and thus deserved to be walled-up in the wine cellar, and the unnamed narrator claims that his victim's blind eye contained some sort of evil, which sounds like some major BS.

Thus, I think that any gothic horror antagonist should have some kind of justification for their actions. In their minds, they are the hero, not the villain.

Now, things get complicated with Cosmic Horror.

Tonally, the two can be very similar, especially if you lean into the cults-and-conspiracy vibes common to cosmic horror. However, the worst monsters in cosmic horror are anything but human-like. Indeed, the scariest thing about them is that we have no frame of reference for what they are or what they want. The bizarre barrel-shaped star-fish-headed creatures from At the Mountains of Madness are actually closer related to plants than animals, but they are intelligent, and seem to have vivisected some of the researchers that the narrator finds - and they're not even the actual monsters of the story!

Lovecraft's monsters are of the "kill it with fire!" or the "run away screaming" variety, when they're not "hope I have a psychotic break and can't remember seeing this" levels of terrifying.

However, there is an avenue to connect this with the tropes of gothic horror, as Lovecraft often did: the monsters themselves are too alien for us to even understand as "evil" per se. However, other humans (or, given that it's D&D, humanoids) have different ways of reacting to these monsters. For some, the promise of power might be worth selling out the rest of humanity to get it. Some might seek transformation, to abandon humanity and become something more like these alien beings. Others might act purely out of a misunderstanding of what the effects of their actions will be.

I think you can layer the tropes of Gothic Horror with those of Cosmic Horror in this way. One manner would be to have a gothic figure of evil whose narcissistic worldview makes them believe they can handle what mere mortals couldn't, and threatens to unleash something a whole lot worse than vampires or the like.

The other is to invoke Nyarlathotep.

While beings like Azathoth, Yogg-Sothoth, and such are so vast and powerful that it's hard to imagine they truly want to do harm to humanity (if they're even aware of us,) Nyarlathotep is the horrifying exception: a Great Old One who does, in fact, take actions intended to directly affect us. Granted, Lovecraft was creating an entire mythos in which there was no separate category for demons or the like - his Nyarlathotep is a kind of cosmic Mephistopheles.

But that also means that you can play with these tropes using fiends as well as aberrations. (In fact, Demogorgon, the demon lord, has some elements of his lore borrowed strongly from Robert Chambers' The King in Yellow, a work that heavily inspired Lovecraft and whose eponymous figure was appropriated into the Cthulhu Mythos.)

The monsters in Lovecraft can be the source of the kind of madness that animates the villains of Poe's horror stories.

In fact, the Ravenloft setting itself is, in its own way, somewhat cosmic in its horror. While the Darklords are center-stage, the mysterious Dark Powers remain emphatically unexplained, which could suggest that there's something even more terrifying going on underneath all the predatory vampires and zombie hordes. (Hey, you ever play Bloodborne?)

This far in, and we've only really addressed two subgenres of horror. These are also limited to Western culture. Horror, as a genre, is pretty universal given that fear is a pretty universal emotion. In fact, the line between horror and other genres can be a blurred one - indeed, the entire fantasy genre (and the myths that the genre grew out of) are about overcoming monsters symbolic of real-world fears.

One I think I'd like to touch on (though I have very little familiarity with it) is the Japanese Kaidan, which are ghost stories. I highly recommend the movie Kwaidan (which is just an archaic transliteration of Kaidan), by Masaki Kobayashi).

30 Domains in Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft

 Ravenloft, as a setting, is quite different from most because while it is all within the same plane (or rather, demiplane, as 4th and 5th Edition canon places it as a sort of partition of the Shadowfell) the lands are not exactly physically related to one another the way that, say, the major cities of the Sword Coast are.

While there is a continent, of sorts, referred to as the Core, on which many of the famous realms exist, each realm is separated by the Mists of Ravenloft, which act as an ethereal gateway as well as a boundary that prevents people from escaping. It's also the way that people arrive in the realms, and these Mists do not follow the normal rules for spatial relationships - they can arrive anywhere (well, I think anywhere in the Material Plane, other than the Phlogiston, which will only be relevant if you're doing a Spelljammer campaign) and sweep you into these realms of terror.

We've gotten a list of some of these 30 realms, so let's go through them:

Naturally, Barovia will be included. This is the realm of the Vampire, Strahd von Zarovich, who is trapped in an endless cycle. He drove the woman he is obsessed with to suicide when he killed his own brother - her fiancé - out of jealousy. Now, every generation he searches for Tatyana's latest incarnation as her soul is trapped in Barovia just as he is, but every time she is reincarnated, when he finds her, he always winds up killing her as she resists or he is overcome with bloodlust. Within Curse of Strahd, you resolve to help Irena, Tatyana's latest reincarnation, escape Strahd's grasp.

But we already know a lot about Barovia thanks to the expanded lore in Curse of Strahd, so let's move on.

Dementlieu is ruled by Saidra diHonaire, and is where a twisted fairy tale inspired in equal parts by the courts of the Feywild and Edgar Allen Poe's Masque of the Red Death. Here, an endless decadent party continues while death and darkness stalk the realm.

Lamordia is home to Dr. Viktra Mordenheim, who chases her creation, Elise, across the land. Mordenheim is a take on Victor Frankenstein, and both the good doctor and her creation pose threats to the party, along with some of the mad scientist's other experimental crimes against nature.

Falkovnia is a land dominated by the tyrannical Vladeska Drakov, but which is now undergoing a plague of zombies, and endless and unwinnable war against the undead.

Kalakeri draws from Indian folklore (and was written/designed by an Indian-American writer, which... is for the best). This realm is the site of a constant war between three Darklords who each wish to dominate the region.

Finally, Valachan is a dense jungle in which the darklord, Chakuna, hunts people for sport - kind of a "The Most Dangerous Game" situation.

That's only six, though, meaning we only have a fifth of what is mentioned. There are plenty of other established regions that I'm sure will show up.

I am curious how detailed they will be with these settings. The Explorer's Guide to Wildemount I think really spoiled us for granular detail, giving us at least a paragraph and one or two quest hooks for every city, town, or even small village in the whole continent. I'd love it if we were able to get the same sort of characterization for the various settlements in, say, Lamordia that we do for towns like Krezk or Vallaki in Barovia, but I wonder how much room they'll have in the book for that.

Personally, the realm I most hope to see (even though canonically it might have dissipated given that its darklord escaped) is The Burning Peaks, which was a realm fought over between the evil Lich God Vecna and his lieutenant/nemesis, the vampire Kas. Vecna's side of the realm was called Cavitius, and was a massive, haunted desert wasteland with a city that stood inside an enormous skull.

The book will also have guidance on creating one's own domain in the setting, which is something I really appreciate as someone who prefers to homebrew settings. I'm curious to see what they say about the magical mechanics on Ravenloft, like how the realms relate to one another and how the threshold of the Mists can be crossed.

While I think I'd be most interested in running a straightforward campaign, I do have a concept for a campaign called (working title) Ingothicous Basterds (seriously, need to work on that) in which Van Richten recruits the party following the events of Curse of Strahd, to try to convince the other darklords to attend a big party at Castle Ravenloft after you've backed the crypts with enough explosives to destroy the castle with all the monsters Monster Mash-ing within.

The book will have a section about tailoring a horror game to the sensibilities and sensitivities of the players - one thing to consider is that horror, as a genre, isn't inherently an adults-only genre. Scooby-Doo is an example of a spooky mystery that's still perfectly appropriate for younger and/or more sensitive audiences. While most people I play with would automatically try to check in with players and make sure that people are having fun as the top priority, having tools like soft and hard limits and a general framework for players and DMs to talk about what they're comfortable having at their table is a good thing to have written into the official rules, even if it's a more philosophical chapter.

Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft

 Yes, the new D&D book, coming out May 18th, is Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, a campaign setting book for the classic, gothic-horror-themed setting first introduced in 1983, and then formalized into its own setting in 1990.

With Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide, Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica, Eberron: Rising from the Last War, Mythic Odysseys of Theros, and Explorer's Guide to Wildemount, this makes it the 6th Campaign Setting book to come out for 5th Edition D&D (7th if you count Acquisitions Incorporated).

The announced features are as follows:

The core of the book is the setting, which is the Demiplane of Dread, an extraplanar part of the Shadowfell that is composed of several locked in realms, each ruled by a Darklord who is also its primary prisoner. The realms are bounded by the Mists of Ravenloft, which draw in people (aka adventurers) and trap them there. The Darklords are trapped in an endless loop of failure and frustration, which they take out with monstrous acts toward the people in their domains. Van Richten's will detail 30 such realms, including Barovia, the setting for the Curse of Strahd adventure. Each realm takes on a different classic horror vibe. I don't have the names of all of them (which are weirdly hard to find on various wikis, despite many being long-established) but there's one themed around mad science and flesh golems (aka Frankenstein,) there's an Egyptian-themed one with mummies, and several others that have their own takes on classic horror stories.

One of these realms, Falkovnia, has apparently undergone some changes in this edition. Previously ruled by a figure named Vlad Drakov, clearly a take on Vlad Tsepesh, aka Vlad the Impaler, aka the real-life Vlad Dracula, this realm was mostly devoid of the supernatural (apart from its mystical isolation) in which its tyrant waged endless wars that always ended in defeat. Apparently, that realm has fallen to a full-on zombie apocalypse, and will represent more of that vibe in 5th Edition.

With 30 domains, I'm a little skeptical we'll get Wildemount-level detail on all of them, but as someone who likes to do a lot of homebrew even in established settings, I'm happy to get many ideas to work with.

Most exciting for players are new player options.

These include the new "Gothic Lineages," which take the place of your racial characteristics. You could be an elf or a gith or a tiefling, but these lineages give you a new identity. Assuming it's the same as the three released for playtesting in Unearthed Arcana, these three are the Dhampir, Hexblood, and Reborn.

Dhampir are half-vampires - perhaps your mother was turned when you were in the womb (like Blade!) or a vampire tried to turn you but the process was interfered with, or you bargained with a vampire to gain some aspect of their power. Either way, you gain vampiric attributes while still being able to walk in the daylight and potentially retain a good alignment.

Hexblood are connected to Hags. They might have been taken as a child by a coven or might have some curse on their bloodline, or they could have, again, bargained for this. Hexblood have some Hag-like attributes, as well as this weird sort of bone-like crown around their heads.

Reborn are people who died and then were brought back somehow, in some kind of mix between benign resurrection and necromantic undeath. You could play as a walking corpse - maybe you had previously been under the control of a necromancer or lich (WoW's Forsaken would 100% use this lineage to convert a character to D&D) or you were altered by some sort of horrific plague, or a resurrection went wrong. Alternatively, you might be a construct built from the remains of many different people or creatures. While you are a unique individual, the memories of the component people who make up your body might bleed into your consciousness.

Each of these lineages allows you to have two creature types at once - humanoid and other. Dhampir are Humanoid and Undead. Hexblood are Humanoid and Fey. And Reborn are either Humanoid and Undead or Humanoid and Construct. While some spells, especially healing spells, don't work on Constructs or Undead, the rules for these hybrid creature types is that if either part of you is eligible for the spell, it will work - essentially the "humanoid" part of you can be targeted. But it does also, I think, mean that Cure Wounds and Negative Energy Flood will both heal you if you're humanoid/undead.

Moving on!

The next character option is two subclasses. Again, we got these in Unearthed Arcana, which is the College of Spirits Bard and the Undead Patron Warlock.

The College of Spirits essentially has you use some form of fortune telling - typically something like a Tarot deck, though you could also use a "spirit board" (aka a Ouija board) or some other divination tool. This allows you to expend Bardic Inspiration dice to get various different effects you can then use to aid allies or hinder foes, based on the random roll/draw.

The Undead Patron makes your patron something like a powerful lich, a vampire, some ancient spirit, etc. (The Obzedat Ghost Council from Ravnica seems like they'd be a super-cool collective patron.) You get various ways to empower yourself by embracing undeath, and gradually gain the power to make your body merely a vessel for your powerful spirit. This one, I think, has a ton of potential, given that many of Ravenloft's Darklords are undead - you could derive your power from the very villain you are struggling against.

Finally, there's something called "Dark Gifts." We don't have anything very explicit here, but these seem likely to be a little like Supernatural Gifts found in Theros, but with a very clear trade-off of power and downside. (In fact, I think you might be able to get some of these in the Amber Temple in Curse of Strahd.)

For DMs, one of the most exciting things, in my opinion, is that there will be a chapter on how to build your own homebrew domain. I don't know how this guide will be structured, but having some guidance on what elements to include and how to build tension should be very fun to read.

Next: we're talking horror, and what's more central to horror than its monsters? Like any campaign setting book (except SCAG) there's going to be a bestiary - and I'm super excited for a new influx of undead and aberrations and the like. There will also be some guidance (though this could just mean new stat blocks) for horrific takes on existing monsters. As a pre-established example, there are things like Strahd Zombies, where if you cut off a limb, that limb keeps coming after you (a bit like the variant troll rules.)

I don't recall if this was an official example or a hypothetical one, but someone suggested Goblins with xenomorph-like inner jaws that can reach farther and infect the target, transforming them into one of them.

Ravenloft is apparently the first of three classic settings that will be getting 5th Edition releases in 2021. While I imagine at least one of these will be another standard fantasy world, I'm hoping they really push this otherworldly theme (give me 5th Edition Planescape and/or Spelljammer, please.)

New Ravenloft Book All But Confirmed

UPDATE: Amazon's webpage has leaked the title of the book and a brief description: Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, which, I'll note, I predicted would be the title (not that it wasn't obvious.) The amazon page describes the book as a campaign setting book, and teases the following:

It will detail an "expanded Domains of Dread" with each domain given its unique flavor of horror, story hooks, and cast of characters.

It will give you guidance for creating your own D&D horror settings, with optional rules and advice for running a game that's "ghastly in all the right ways."

It will have rules to create characters with lineages tied to vampires, undead, and hags (the Gothic Lineages we saw in UA,) horror-themed subclasses (the Gothic subclasses in UA,) the Investigator background, and "Dark Gifts" that seem likely to be sort of like Theros' divine gifts but with a dangerous trade-off.

There will also be an expanded bestiary and a collection of mysterious trinkets (not sure if this is the "Gothic Trinkets" from CoS or if it's magic items).

And there will apparently be a standalone adventure that can either be run on its own or dropped into an existing game.

Read on for the older post.

 Wizards of the Coast has a page on Amazon for an upcoming book, and they just posted this image on twitter.

The image is a "spirit board" (aka Ouija, but that's a brand name.) The... uh, thingie with the lens you use with a Ouija board, whatever that's called, hovers over letters spelling out "The Mists Beckon."

This is almost certainly the announcement of a new Ravenloft book.

Combine this with the "Gothic Subclasses" and "Gothic Lineages" that have come to Unearthed Arcana in the past year, and the evidence seems to be stacking up.

The Ravenloft setting takes place within a place called the Demiplane of Dread. While I believe this was originally said to be located in the Ethereal Plane, the 4th Edition creation of the Shadowfell gave it a new home, and I believe the canon location of it is now in the Shadowfell.

Ravenloft is a gothic-horror themed setting, but rather than simply being a normal world of the Material Plane, it's actually a place bounded by magical rules and dark powers (known as the Dark Powers) that create a sort of endless punishment for the Dark Lords who inhabit the Domains of Dread.

The most famous, and first of these Dark Lords is Strahd Von Zarovich, the vampire who rules over the land of Barovia. Curse of Strahd, one of 5E's first published adventure books, recreates the original Ravenloft adventure from AD&D, but Strahd is just one of several Dark Lords in this realm.

The Mists of Ravenloft are a mystical barrier that prevents anyone from leaving these realms, and so a Ravenloft adventure typically involves a group of adventurers who get trapped in one of these realms and must find a way to escape, usually requiring a confrontation with the realm's Dark Lord.

One of the common elements of the setting is the Vistani people, who are... well, they've generally carried a lot of the problematic baggage of old Gothic Horror, namely racism against the Romani people.

In Ravenloft, the Vistani are an itinerant culture who have the unfettered ability to cross the Mists - returning to the material plane or journeying between the various realms of the Domains of Dread. While they can be allies for the party, many of them are said to serve Strahd (and I presume other Dark Lords, though their original connection to Ravenloft was through Strahd.)

This, unfortunately, brings in a lot of hateful old canards about the Romani people - that they cannot be trusted, or that they have magical curses they can place on you. It's not exactly the sort of positive representation that a historically oppressed people deserve.

WotC has been making an effort lately to try to address some of the racism that has been baked into a lot of D&D (something that they inherited from their source materials, to be fair, but we in the modern day have a responsibility to choose what cultural tropes we pass on).

My hope is that they put in a lot of effort to fix these issues. Because the overall Ravenloft setting is really cool.

While I think it's not impossible that this could be another adventure book, I think that 5th Edition already has a fantastic Ravenloft adventure, and given the shift in focus to sourcebooks, I am relatively confident that that's what we're looking at: a Ravenloft sourcebook.

What, then, can we expect from this?

5E's campaign setting books, with the exception of Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide, follow a certain format.

Generally, they start with character creation. We typically get a couple subclasses, some new races, and sometimes some extra sort of affiliation the player can have - things like Guilds, Dragonmarks, Gods in Theros, etc. Then, we get something more for the DM (though useful for players writing a backstory,) which describes the world and its various locations.

Following that, things get a bit more DM-focused. We usually get a few magic items to throw into the mix, and then an extensive bestiary, giving us more monsters.

In terms of player options, I think we're likely to see these Gothic Subclasses (likely rebalanced - much as I'd love it, I don't think an Undead Warlock is supposed to do 2d10 with each Eldritch Blast attack), namely the College of Spirits Bard and the Undead Patron Warlock.

We're also probably going to get those Gothic Lineages - given that Ravenloft owes more to Edgar Allen Poe, Mary Shelley, and Bram Stoker than it does to Tolkien, there's less of an emphasis on a bunch of fantasy races, which makes variants on humans work a bit better (please give us playable werewolves!)

In terms of bestiary, getting more variants on lycanthropes, vampires, hags, and various undead creatures would help out a lot in this setting. It'd also be cool to get a bunch of Dark Lord stat blocks, similar to the Demon Lord and Archdevil ones in Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes.

Other campaign setting books have also given us a short adventure (or four, in the case of Wildemount) to introduce the setting, which I think seems likely.

Anyway, we can expect plenty of new information once the announcement actually comes (likely tomorrow.) Until then, I'm going to be pretty excited and then start ranting about how the next one should be either Planescape or Spelljammer.

Is Shadowlands Heading For a Sharp Left Turn?

 Due to the cycles of WoW storytelling, it's rare that we get really big surprises. The first couple expansions were built around iconic figures we would face as final bosses, with Illidan (who got upstaged by Kil'jaeden when they realized that the final raid probably shouldn't come in the first patch,) Arthas (as always, I don't count Halion as Wrath's final boss, even if he was chronologically the last to be released in a 3.X patch,) and Deathwing. When Mists of Pandaria was announced in 2011, the details were very thin, but shortly before its release, we found out that Garrosh would be the final boss of the expansion, in the Siege of Orgrimmar.

That's the last time, though, that Blizzard has been totally up front about what an expansion's story is going to do. In Warlords, the fact that Archimonde would be our final boss was withheld. In Legion, we did find out we were going to Argus prior to 7.2's release, as a little quick teaser of 7.3 in that year's Blizzcon. And in Battle for Azeroth, N'zoth's status as final boss was intentionally obscured.

I'll confess that I'm not sure I love the way they've done this. Indeed, the presentation of the Jailer as a very clear final boss for Shadowlands was a bit refreshing - assuming that's actually the role he'll play.

At Blizzconline, many developers have hinted that the conclusion of the 9.1 raid, Sanctum of Domination, will be a massive lore development - one that they claim will shake the entire Warcraft cosmos. That's a pretty big deal.

But what does it mean?

In the past, most raids have had something of a pause between them. Looking at Castle Nathria, the conclusion to that raid is one of pretty unambiguous victory, where we capture Sire Denathrius within his sentient sword Remornia and imprison it within a tower under the watchful gaze of the Naaru Z'rali. Denathrius was apparently meant to die in Castle Nathria, but the developers loved the vocal performance by Ray Chase that they wanted to keep him on-hand - or at least that's the story they're telling.

In Legion, which I generally think is the expansion to beat for greatest ever (though Wrath is its rival - when judged within its own 2008-2010 context) the major "tier" raids ended with big events. The Nighthold saw the resurrection of Illidan Stormrage. The Tomb of Sargeras saw the opening of the gateway between Azeroth and Argus. And Antorus, the Burning Throne, saw the imprisonment of Sargeras along with the wounding of Azeroth.

Tomb of Sargeras in particular ended its events with a major crisis (engineered by Illidan to force a decisive conclusion to the endless conflict with the Burning Legion - because Illidan is hardcore Chaotic Neutral.)

Even though we knew we were going to Argus in 7.3, the reveal at the end of Tomb of Sargeras is a fantastic shocker - after we defeat Kil'jaeden as he flees back to Argus, Khadgar struggles to teleport everyone away before the Fel energy within the Deceiver destroys the ship everyone's on. Illidan uses the Sargerite Keystone that Demon Hunters helped him steal in the DH starting experience (meaning about a decade earlier, as that takes place during the Black Temple raid) to boost Khadgar's spell - or so it seems. So it's a great shock when Khadgar looks up and sees Argus in the sky above Azeroth, and the sense of horror at how much Illidan has just raised the stakes is palpable.

Ok, but enough recapping: what might we expect to happen in 9.1? Will the end of Sanctum of Domination be as jaw-droppingly crazy as the end of Tomb of Sargeras? And if we expect Shadowlands to have three major patches, can we afford to have such a major development at the end of what is effectively still Act One of Three?

Setting aside my worries that Shadowlands will only have two major content patches (it better have three or more! Surely Blizzard learned their lesson with Warlords?) let's talk about what might happen here.

The Maw has, seemingly, been set up as the ultimate final challenge to overcome, and is home to the expansion's Big Bad. While we've had Castle Nathria as a fairly substantial intro raid, it's a little surprising that we're getting to this so early. After all, we didn't go to Icecrown Citadel first in Wrath. Indeed, even if we were to compare it to Tomb of Sargeras, which was set up as what looked like the ultimate final raid for Legion, that one came as the second tier raid, or the third of four "big raids" (meaning with more than three bosses.)

Also, of note, is that not anywhere have they suggested that we have any meaningful encounter with the Jailer within Sanctum of Domination. While I had entertained the notion that Sylvanas might wish to try to usurp the Jailer's power, it really doesn't look like she has the opportunity or power to do so. Therefore, I think our confrontation with the Jailer must come later, and could very likely be the final boss fight of the expansion.

But that makes it weird that we're going to Torghast. After all, Torghast is essentially his castle within the Maw, which his his domain. To compare it with Wrath of the Lich King, it'd be like if we went into Icecrown Citadel first and fought Kel'thuzad, and that we had to go elsewhere to fight Arthas.

Our motivation to go there is, at least in part, to rescue Anduin. So, what is his fate?

It's clear from the cinematic trailer for 9.1 that Anduin is being controlled, rather than being corrupted. The Jailer speaks through him, and after he stabs the Archon, he has a moment of lucidity, in which he appears horrified at what he has done, before the runes on his armor flash and the Jailer's control is reasserted.

What's fascinating about Anduin's situation is the parallels with Arthas. When Arthas became a Death Knight, his skin was leeched of color, and he gained wrinkles that made him look like he hadn't slept in weeks, and his golden blonde hair turned white. All of these happen to Anduin as well while under the Jailer's control and with his illusions dispelled.

And this raises an interesting question: is this what Arthas was meant to be?

We know the Helm of Domination and Frostmourne were both created under duress by the Runecarver. Notably, when Arthas was first corrupted, it was only with Frostmourne, while the Helm of Domination (and the rest of the armor) remained within the Frozen Throne, inhabited by the spirit of Ner'zhul. Initially, Arthas acted as the Lich King's champion, and helped to decimate Lordaeron but also, notably, betrayed the Burning Legion and helped Illidan defeat Tichondrius. It wasn't until Illidan returned with his Blood Elf and Naga allies (coerced into this by Kil'jaeden) to assault the Frozen Throne that Arthas would become the Lich King himself.

But even the Lich King's intended role is now thrown into doubt. In the lore as originally received, Kil'jaeden created the Lich King by attaching Ner'zhul's soul to the armor (and Frostmourne, though I feel like this was a little inconsistent, even if Frostmourne was always implied to be brought to Azeroth within the Frozen Throne.) Kil'jaeden wanted to use the Lich King to create the Scourge as shock troops to soften up Azeroth for the Legion's invasion.

With the Jailer added to the lore - a figure who seems more on the scale of Sargeras than Kil'jaeden in terms of power level - the source of the helm and the sword is now shown to be something quite outside of the demonic forces of the Burning Legion. And it seems that he, too, meant for the Lich King to be his own champion within the world of the living.

The Lich King's rebellion against the Legion seemed to create a different, wholly independent faction on Azeroth - still a villainous one, but one that opposed another villain. Now, however, one wonders if Ner'zhul's decision to turn against the Legion was his own idea, or one programmed into the Helm of Domination itself. Not that the Scourge should be its own thing, but for it to be the vanguard for the Jailer, rather than for the Legion.

In that sense, the Lich King is not sovereign, but servant to the Jailer, who is the sort of Death Overlord.

Thus, it could be that Anduin is being compelled to act as the Lich King was meant to. Both Frostmourne and the Helm of Domination were shattered, and Bolvar proved that a Lich King could choose not to serve the cause of Death if one had a strong enough will. In Anduin's case, though, Lich King 2.0 now includes a system to prevent even the most righteously-minded, good-natured person from resisting the Jailer's direct control.

That we will eventually free Anduin from this is something I anticipate, though it remains to be seen whether we will accomplish that in 9.1.

What, then, would the big reveal be? What major development could happen?

The Jailer will not be there for us to fight in SoD. Sylvanas will, and I think she might wind up having a tragic end. She appears to be regretting her alliance with the Jailer, perhaps moved by Anduin's words, but if there's anyone who has dug herself too deep, it's Sylvanas Windrunner. Even if she wanted redemption (and I don't know even she thinks that's possible for herself) I don't think the world would be willing to give it to her. Maybe the Venthyr.

But there's a reason why Tyrande Whisperwind is currently in Torghast.

I think Sylvanas might make a move toward redemption, but Tyrande will cut it off - slaying Sylvanas before she has a chance to make things right.

Let's get back to Tyrande in a bit.

The Jailer is looking for "keys," one of which Anduin retrieves from the Archon (apparently not killing her, according to Blizzard.) What could these keys actually be for?

Given that the key he takes is a glowing rune in the shape of the Kyrian symbol, I suspect that there is one for each covenant. But I heard somewhere (and I really don't remember where) that there are five keys he's seeking.

And that reminds me of Il'gynoth, who has two quotes (one from Emerald Nightmare, one from Ny'alotha) referring to sets of five that will "open the way" or "light our path," one of which is keys. Sure, I had assumed these were the Pillars of Creation given their importance in Legion. But maybe this was something farther down the line.

But that raises a question: The Jailer seems to know what he's doing. We can tell because he's not telling us, and generally, the less we know about a villain's plan, the more likely it is that they'll succeed at it. But if that's the case, why would Il'gynoth, a creature of Void, be so eager for the Jailer, a creature of Death, to succeed?

Now let's get the Nathrezim involved.

There is a book one can find outdoors above Sinfall (it spawns sporadically) that reads as the account of an agent sent to infiltrate and manipulate the other major cosmic forces - Life, Light, Disorder, Void, and Order - on behalf of Death. There are many hints that the author is one of the Dreadlords, aka the Nathrezim. And much as been made of the fact that Nathrezim and Castle Nathira and Sire Denathrius all seem linguistically connected. Also, with his horns and hooved feet, pale skin and long ears, Sire Denathrius looks like he could be related to the Dreadlords (also the Accuser literally refers to him as "The Lord of Dread" - this is either a hell of a troll or some really major telegraphing).

Blizzard has actually said we're going to touch on the Nathrezim in 9.1, though we know almost nothing else about their role here. They did hint that someone might break Sire Denathrius out of his prison. Could be the Dreadlords do it?

And hey, if the Nathrezim really have succeeded in infiltrating the other cosmic forces, they have the perfect person to send: Lothraxion. While when he was first introduced, it looked like he had been redeemed by the Light, if the Nathrezim weren't even loyal to the Fel/Disorder in the first place, perhaps he's a triple agent, actually serving Death. But a light-redeemed demon might be the very thing that would cause someone like Z'rali to let her guard down.

All of this really rests on the following question: what does the Jailer actually intend to do?

In theory, the most obvious failure state for the heroes of the Warcraft cosmos is that when the Jailer takes over the Shadowlands, it turns the whole plane into the Maw, and all souls are destined for eternal torment. That is, naturally, a very bad thing that we should try to prevent.

But consider this: the Jailer rules the Maw, but he's also its main prisoner. He was cast down into it after some sort of fall from grace - like what might have happened to Sargeras had the rest of the Pantheon prevailed against him.

The Maw seems made in the Jailer's image, but perhaps Zovaal doesn't actually like it there. What if he's not looking to expand the Maw to make everything like it, but instead to absorb everything else?

Do the keys he's collecting allow him to escape simply the Maw and to enter the rest of the Shadowlands? Or is he planning instead on a total conquest of the cosmos entire?

Now, the "five keys to open the way" might suggest that these keys will allow the Void to be taken up by Zovaal, for him to absorb that power like a freaking infinity stone.

Ok, remember Tyrande?

For a long time, we had a sense that the Holy Light was good and the Void was evil. Given that the Naaru have generally helped us while the Old Gods are... terrifying, it made sense. Sure, we had weird edge cases like Sir Zeliek and the whole Scarlet Crusade, but these seemed to be cases in which the Light was being wielded in some remnant of goodness, just being kind of twisted by weird circumstances.

The first time we saw a real reversal of this narrative was actually in Spires of Arak. There, the Outcasts used shadow magic (which is Void magic) against the oppressive class that wielded the Light. While the source of that shadow was truly evil, it blurred the lines a bit.

However, never was there a bigger moment to rethink the Light than "The Gift Refused" cinematic, in which X'era tried to forcibly rewrite Illidan's being, replacing his Fel power with the Light. Illidan destroyed her for this, and I think it's notable that Velen, whose power is derived from the Light and who is a pretty unimpeachably good guy, basically said "yeah, man, I get it." Then, the introduction of the Void Elves suggested that perhaps the Void was not just evil, but misunderstood, and that inversely, the Light could be misused and harmful (which seems to be what happened on alt-Draenor, which saddens me dearly because I loved Yrel and hate that she seems to have become a villain.)

The Night Elves worship Elune, but while they seem to be unique among the people of Azeroth in that belief, we've now found that people on other worlds also worship her, like Therinax and Qadarin did in life.

Elune's precise nature, though, has been hard to pin down. She seems to have some connection to the Titans, as evidenced by the Tears of Elune, as well as Eonar's hideout on Elunaria, and even the fact that the Tomb of Sargeras, which had been the primary temple to Elune, was built over a Titan facility.

But she also seems to be connected to the Holy Light - Velen noted the similarities between the worship of Elune and that of the Naaru, and Khadgar believes that the Naaru were straight-up created by Elune.

And, of course, Elune has connections with Life. Cenarius is said to be the son of Elune and Malorne, the latter being a Wild God.

But hey, what about the Night Warrior?

The Night Warrior is a dark aspect of Elune. And generally, magically speaking, if we're talking about darkness on a cosmic scale, that could imply that the Night Warrior involves the power of the Void.

If Tyrande arrives to slay Sylvanas, which seems to me like a real possibility, she will do so with the power of the Night Warrior - a power that seems beyond what anyone else in Azeorth has wielded, except perhaps Sylvanas' use of the Jailer's magic.

Could she be, unwittingly, bringing him the power of the Void?

Now, one final thought:

If my theory is correct: that Zovaal the Jailer is trying to take the powers of the various cosmic forces... is he the first to attempt this?

Zovaal is referred to as the fallen brother by the other Eternal Ones. But the Winter Queen also, at one point, refers to Ysera as being her "sister's" pet. And the Winter Queen sure doesn't seem to show a lot of love in that reference.

What if Zovaal is trying to do what Elune had already done? What if Elune collected the various powers of reality to become a true Goddess, in a way that even the Titans never did?

If this is the direction the story is heading, it could mean that the Shadowlands expansion is going to soon become about something much larger even than the afterlives realms of Death.

Checking Back in With Il'gynoth, Pre-9.1 Edition

 Il'gynoth appeared twice as a raid boss in the last two expansions. In Legion, it was a blobby, misshapen mass of corruption in the heart of a world tree within the Emerald Dream/Nightmare's version of Un'goro Crater (notably, in a place where there is no such tree in the waking world.) Upon slaying it there, Il'gynoth claimed it was journeying to Ny'alotha.

And lo and behold, when we came to Ny'alotha, the Waking City, we fought him as one of the bosses in that nightmarish fleshscape. In this case, Il'gynoth looked quite different - more of a demon-like form coming out of a pool (I think using the skeleton from the Sunwell Plateau Kil'jaeden fight.)

Anyway, the evil monster is most famous for its cryptic, prophetic whispers. For those of us who are big lore-hounds, these whispers are like catnip.

The reveal of the Shadowlands has opened up a lot of new possibilities for interpretation. While we've had the rest of Legion and all of BFA for some of its first appearance's prophecies to come true, the latter iteration of him has had only the events of the first patch of Shadowlands to be reflected.

So, I'm going to, using WoWPedia's list of quotes as my guide, go through each whisper and speculate on whether this is something that has already occurred or if it's something that might occur, and wonder what and who it might refer to.

Big caveat: just because it sounds prophetic doesn't mean it's actually true. Beings of the Void like Il'gynoth basically see infinite different branching universes as equally real, so there's no guarantee that any of these are our timeline, not to mention that Il'gynoth could be aiming to deceive us. But let's get into it!

Starting with the Emerald Nightmare version, some of these will likely already have happened:

"Flesh is his gift. He is your true creator."

This ought to refer to Yogg-Saron, who wove the Curse of Flesh into the Titanforges of Ulduar, which then acted like an infectious disease that mutated the Titanforged into existing races.

"To find him, drown yourself in a circle of stars."

This is N'zoth - we fight Azshara in a room literally called the Circle of Stars, and by defeating her and draining the power of the Titan locks, we released N'zoth from his prison.

"The king of diamonds has been made a pawn."

Nice chess pun, eldritch abomination! This refers to Magni, and likely N'zoth's attempt to use the Heart Chamber he opened to infect the World Soul.

"The lord of ravens will turn the key."

This remains ambiguous. My best guess for the Lord of Ravens is Khadgar, as he's essentially the Guardian now, and wields Atiesh, inheriting Medivh's raven aesthetic. But I don't know of any keys he really turned, and we haven't heard much from him since Legion.

Actually, come to think of it, the 9.1 trailer does have Anduin retrieve a "key" from the body of the Archon (who I think one of the Blizzard folks said is actually still alive?)

"The boy-king sits at the master's table. Three lies will he offer you."

Oh boy. While he's probably in his 20s at this point, Anduin is the most likely candidate for boy-king. Given the very recent reveals of his current status - having been placed under some kind of mind-domination to serve the Jailer as a new Arthas-like Death Knight - I think the master could be the Jailer. Now, if we consider his surprise attack on the Archon to be a lie, maybe that's one of three (though he doesn't seem to actually lie to her in that scene.)

"Her heart is a crater, and we have filled it."

Ignoring the present tense, while this originally looked like it could refer to Jaina, it sounds a lot more like Tyrande. Given the dark aspect of the Night Warrior, perhaps there is something void-y to it. I'm not really confident about my reading here.

"Five keys to open our way. Five torches to light our path."

I thought this could refer to the Pillars of Creation, which we used to open a path into the depths of the Tomb of Sargeras. But five torches? Not sure. Teldrassil's burning certainly seemed torch-like. Now, keep this one in mind, as there's a whisper from Il'gynoth's later appearance that seems to refer back to this one.

Again, with 9.1's trailer, we know the Jailer is seeking to collect "keys" for some nefarious purpose. While it seems more likely there will only be four (one per covenant,) perhaps there's a special fifth one he'll need?

"At the hour of her third death, she will usher in our coming."

Maybe the most intriguing of them all, this has fueled speculation about female characters who have died twice and are alive again. Sylvanas seems disqualified given that she's actually already died three times (first by Arthas, second by herself, and third by Lord Godfrey). But we also have figures in the Shadowlands who, if we kill them there, would at least have a second death. Helya seems like a prime candidate here, not only because she has died twice (first by Odyn, second by us) and is once again active and likely to fall to us again, but also because she's a master of planar magic, and could be a hell of an "usher" for powerful forces.

But the other question, then, is who's coming is "ours?" Until we're told otherwise, Azeroth's Old Gods are all dead. I mean, could this be the Void Lords?

"From the earth, he draws strength. Our earth. Our strength."

If I had to guess I'd think that this refers to some sort of shaman - Thrall obviously being the most prominent one. But it also seems to imply that this shaman (if it is one) would be prone to corruption. Not sure.

"Its surface blazes bright, masking shadows below."

I'm at a loss. Elune, maybe? Perhaps a hint at her darker, Night Warrior side?

Anyway, those are the Emerald Nightmare ones. Let's move on to Ny'alotha. In this case, other than the subsequent bosses in that raid, the only content to follow these prophecies has been Shadowlands, so these are less likely to have already been paid off.

"Before the last shadow falls, the father of sleep shall savor his feast."

I don't know about what last shadows falling means, but we've definitely encountered the Father of Sleep - aka Mueh'zalla, the Loa of Death, who is an ally of the Jailer and whom we help Bwonsamdi overthrow. Does this suggest he'll escape Bwonsamdi's custody, or is that it?

"The golden one claims a vacant throne. The crown of light will bring only darkness."

If you've got an alliance character, go talk to Turalyon, who is currently sitting on the throne in Stormwind. He talks about acting as regent-lord, but also suggests that, given the victories in winning Stromgarde back (P.S.: the Alliance canonically won both warfronts,) that they should consider taking back more lost territory. Turalyon's zealotry looks like it could cause a lot of problems, so keep an eye on him.

"When their mistress beckons, nine ravens take flight. Each seeks a prize to earn her favor."

Oh man, yeah, no idea. We do have another reference to ravens, but who could be a mistress of nine of them?

"The vassal of life disguises treachery. Beware the eyes of green."

Given the way that The Winter Queen seems skeptical or dismissive of us when we ask her to save Ysera's life, only relenting after Aralon (whom she knows understands the grim necessity to allow some spirits to pass away so that the rest can live) joins the pleas, I could certainly see Ysera as a vassal of life. But her eyes, notably, are not green, but instead now glow with the blue anima of Ardenweald. Not sure we've seen what we need to for this one.

"Five lanterns now darkened. The flames they seek will light the Master's way."

Again, five light sources - though this refers to lanterns instead of torches. And these lanterns are darkened - perhaps disempowered? But the flames these lanterns seek will light the Master's way. If my understanding of the boy-king prophecy is correct, Master has been used to refer to the Jailer. But I really don't know. Again, I refer you to the possibility that it involves those keys in the Shadowlands, but it would also seem very odd if the Jailer was Il'gynoth's master.

"The cunning ones kneel before six masters, but serve only one."

Well, a Blizzard developer mentioned we'd learn more about the Nathrezim in 9.1, and the book that you can find at Sinfall seems to imply that the Nathrezim are connected to Sire Denathrius and have been infiltrating and manipulating other cosmic forces for a very, very long time. They seem to have studied the void specifically to pit Sargeras, the demons, and the Old Gods against one another, and it also implies that Lothraxion might be a spy as well. This sure seems like it would be that.

Finally, when slain, Il'gynoth says:

"Those who pass beyond... will drown... within the dark..." which I think could just refer to the fact that anyone who died during Battle for Azeroth went to the Maw (except some trolls that Bwonsamdi diverted.)

Blizzard claims that 9.1 will see some massive lore reveals and developments, and the way they talk about the finale of the Sanctum of Domination raid, it sounds as if we're going to get a shocking ending at least on the order of Tomb of Sargeras' Argus in the Sky (with Diamonds?)

This prophetic stuff, of course, doesn't need to pay off soon, and in fact, some of it might never pay off. That being said, it's very fun and satisfying when it does.

9.1: Chains of Domination

 With the start of Blizzcon, we have the trailer for 9.1, entitled "Kingsmourne," (which I guess means my "Shalamourne" name only lasted a day).

The trailer has a brief recap of what's going on in the end of the Torghast quests, but we get some real new developments:

So, um, that just happened.

We see Elysian Hold, the headquarters of the Kyrian. The Archon is discussing the fall of Denathrius and the needed efforts to restore the Shadowlands when Kleia arrives with good news: a benevolent king from Azeroth has arrived to lend aid.

Already, my alarm bells are going off. A living king coming to Bastion could mean someone like Genn Greymane or... hold on, I guess there really aren't that many kings left. Danath Trollbane counts, right?

But no, it's pretty obvious that it's Anduin, which... is worrying. Because Anduin's trapped in the Maw, isn't he? Getting turned by the Jailer and Sylvanas to do their bidding?

And we're not the only ones worried: we see Uther being taken away by his guards (presumably after some supervised meeting in the Hold before he goes back to his heavenly jail cell) and when he looks at Anduin, he looks utterly disturbed. He reaches to the wound in his soul where Arthas stabbed him, and it's obvious that from the look on his face, for a split second, he's convinced that Arthas is walking by him.

It's not Arthas, though. It's Anduin. Parallels between Arthas and Anduin have been a running motif in a lot of the cutscenes we've gotten over the past few years. In many ways, Anduin is what Arthas should have been. But now, well...

Anduin approaches the Archon and requests that she give him one of a set of keys. The pretense slips away swiftly: the Archon realizes that the person speaking to her is not the one who is meant to inhabit that body. She demands that the Jailer release his grip on Anduin's soul, but before any of the nearby Kyrian can act, Anduin pulls out his new mourneblade, chains the defending Kyrian guards just as the Jailer did to Thrall, Baine, and Jaina, and dives toward her, stabbing her through the chest, the sword drinking her soul and also, presumably, the key - which takes the form of an ethereal version of the Kyrian covenant symbol.

Anduin has also transformed, his skin pale and showing age lines, and his eyes glowing blue while his hair is sapped of color. It is, in fact, almost exactly the sort of transformation between the key art for Arthas representing him in Warcraft III, first when he was a paladin, and then as a death knight.

But Anduin, momentarily, snaps out of it. With his sword still buried in the Archon's chest, the color returns to him and he looks mortified at what has just transpired. But then, the runes on his armor glow again, and the cruel smile returns to his face.

We see him arrive at the Jailer's and Sylvanas' side as he produces the Rune he took to the Jailer, who now pulls a massive landmass down into the Maw with his chains.

So, there we go: the domination of Anduin is complete, and they've turned him into a weapon against the covenants. Furthermore, that's another of the Eternal Ones down - and in fact, might be the first two truly die, as Sire Denathrius is still sort of alive within his sword and the Primus is only missing (and possibly is the Runecarver.)

Things are not looking good, despite our recent victory in Castle Nathria.

Pre-Blizzcon Speculation and What Comes in 9.2 and Beyond?

"Leak" usually implies that someone surreptitiously and without permission gained knowledge of what a project team is working on and then shares that with the public. Today/yesterday's (it's late) "leak" of the 9.1 patch's content, thus, might not really qualify given that it was Blizzard itself that posted things to its own press release site. This was likely an accident, or less likely, an intentional hype-building strategy.

The info's out there and given that it comes from Blizzard itself, its credibility is very high.

But what does it mean?

Spoilers ahead, as this is not actually announced content yet:

Blizzconline Leak: Chains of Domination and BC Classic

 Well, I've got to imagine it sucks when something this big that you've been working on leaks online. Still, with the info out there, I have to say I'm pretty excited about what this entails.

As a big old disclaimer: none of this is official, and while I think it's unlikely for much of it to change, given how soon Blizzconline is happening, this is still stuff that Blizzard has not pulled the trigger on announcing.

This is coming from MMO-Champion's main page, so it's a pretty reputable source.

If you want to let the announcements speak for themselves, I'll put a spoiler cut here:

What Does 5E D&D Need?

 This year will see the 7th anniversary of 5th Edition Dungeons & Dragons. It's the most popular edition of the game ever, bringing in legions of new players (myself included).

The exact history of all the editions is a little complex, but my basic understanding is that you had the original first edition and then Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (a sort of revision to that first edition) that lasted from the 70s inception of the game through the 80s (the edition the kids in Stranger Things are playing is, I believe, AD&D) while 2nd Edition proper launched in 1989, and would be the "modern" edition of the game through the 90s. 3rd edition launched in 2000, with a heavy revision called 3.5 that came in 2003. Then, in 2008, 4th edition came out. This one I think was less popular, and so they announced their work on 5th edition in 2012, with a 2014 release.

Presumably, there will at some point be a 6th Edition. But I do wonder a bit about whether we're really itching for such a shake-up.

Indeed, we don't really know what a 6th Edition would look like - I've never gone through an edition changeover, but I think a fair number of systems can either be replaced or seriously changed. I see a lot of older players who often get tripped up by things like ability checks versus saving throws (something that in 5th edition look very similar to one another but are importantly distinct rules-wise).

Given 5th Edition's popularity, though, I don't think they're in a rush to move past it. But I do think that there are some new things they might need to look into when it comes to publications.

One thing I think we can expect to be constant is adventure books. While I've never been as eager to DM a published adventure as I have been to simply run my own, for many people this simply is how D&D is played - you run a character through the latest book and wait for the next or just run Curse of Strahd again because it's just so freaking good.

Adventure books are fun, and even as someone who likes homebrew campaigns in homebrew worlds, I'll often get them more for inspiration than anything else (also I feel like if I ever have kids, or perhaps ever become a cool uncle, I could dazzle some little ones with this treasure trove.) But, apart from some new items (that often play directly into the adventure's specific story) and monsters (likewise,) they don't tend to really add anything permanent to the game that could be used in other contexts.

The core three books are generalized to work for any setting - the DMG even has suggestions on how to build a setting that might be quite different from the Great Wheel cosmology that is the default. We've had four books that add to this.

Two are monster books - Volo's Guide to Monsters and Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes. For the most part, these can be seen as expansions to the Monster Manual. However, while the MM is perhaps the most straightforward book in the edition - it's monsters, monsters, and monsters, and not really anything else - these two also spend a lot of time on lore as well as throwing in some player options like playable races.

Two are more general rules-expansions. Xanathar's Guide to Everything and Tasha's Cauldron of Everything have less of a central focus. Probably the closest thing to a focus for them is the additional subclasses they add to the game (and in Tasha's case, reprinting a whole class introduced in the Eberron campaign setting book in a setting-agnostic format.)

If I were to advise an ambitious newcomer that had the same goals that I did when I started playing the game on what books to buy, I'd tell them to obviously start with the core three, and then get these four next (and, again, possibly Curse of Strahd as a suggestion on how you can build a campaign.)

The campaign setting books are my next-favorite releases, because of the broad possibilities they offer.

But I also wonder if there aren't some types of books we could see that would bring in something 5E is missing. What, then, are we missing?

The first, and most obvious, I think, is guidance on building adventures for high-level characters.

Mordenkainen's went out of its way to give us lots of monsters with high challenge-ratings. We got many Archdevils and Demon Lords who can serve as campaign bosses, but also plenty of more generic statblocks that nevertheless represent very powerful creatures - like a Drow Matron Mother, one of the most dangerous humanoid stat blocks that exist.

Still, I think that there could be better guidance on building adventures featuring such creatures. Consider, for instance, that a Lich is a classic main-villain. With a CR of 21 (or 22 in a lair), a Lich on its own is meant to be an appropriate challenge, according to Xanathar's encounter-builder, for a 6-player party of 16th-level characters.

But a Lich has, on average, 135 health. Yes, it's got spells like Finger of Death and Power Word Kill, but I guarantee you that if it rolls crappily on its initiative, 6 level 16 characters are going to tear this thing apart before it gets off any of those spells, even with legendary actions.

So rather than just throwing high-CR monsters at the party, having a book about strategy and building encounters and challenges that will make your villains feel like real threats without simply being overpowered stat-wise compared to your party would be really cool (in Descent into Avernus, when I played, our level 11 characters were able to beat Yeenoghu for real before we could be saved by cutscene magic, as is intended in the adventure.)

I want a book called Vecna's Guide to Villainy. Give us things like dynamic encounter spaces (I find that players really enjoy dealing with crazy fight locations) and even suggestions on how a villain can use suites of spells to give the heroes a hard time (Nystul's Magic Aura looks pointless from a player's perspective, but consider that your lich can cast it along with some illusion magic so that the evil-sensing paladin will think that the lich is just a friendly old wizard.)

Next:

I'd love to get some guides to planar adventures. This actually winds up working well as another "high level play" book, given how spells like Plane Shift, Etherealness, and Dream of the Blue Veil start to become available to higher-level players.

A 5th-edition guide to the outer planes would be a lot of fun (and allow a Planescape book to focus more on Sigil and the Factols). Likewise, I actually really love that the various D&D settings take place within the same multiverse - just as I'm trying to build up to a planes-hopping leg of my Ravnica game, I'd love to have some guidance on building an adventure that would, for instance, have the players travel between the Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk and Dragonlance.

Overall, as I write this, I think the general vibe is that 5th Edition runs very well in tiers 1 and 2. When you get into tier 3, it becomes harder to challenge your party thanks to the power that becomes available to you. Unfortunately, I feel that the general response has been to have most adventures/campaigns end around those levels. But those high levels are supposed to be the reward for sticking with characters for so long - not that it isn't fun, but surely when you chose to play a wizard at level 1, you envisioned that character eventually commanding crazy, world-bending magic - the sort of thing that doesn't become available until the later levels.

With so many people playing and with years of familiarity with the 5th edition rules, I think that pushing things into higher-level play with some publications that help fine-tune such adventures would be really cool and welcome.