Dementlieu is a domain of twisted fairy tales. A truly urban domain, it's focused on social horror - rather than being threatened by isolation, you're threatened by the many people around you. Saidra D'Honarie, the Darklord, has a story that is a strange mix of Cinderella and Masque of the Red Death.
There's an element of psychological horror to it - Dementlieu is all about people lying about their identities and being terrified of being found out.
I don't know that there's any real specific mention of them in the setting, but I feel like a reasonable monster to use in Dementlieu is Doppelgangers.
Doppelgangers are a classic trope of horror, and I think often work quite well in gothic and psychological horror. Personally, I've always had an ambition to make them - if not the literal stat block then the broad concept of them - central to a lengthy Ravenloft campaign.
But how do we build an adventure that focuses on them as the main monsters? I will note that it's a little limiting that there's only a single Doppelganger stat block at CR 3, though it wouldn't be too hard to re-skin various humanoid stat blocks to offer alternative versions of them.
For a single Doppelganger to be a major threat, the party needs to be quite low-level, though I think we could also have a group of them working together. That being said, this is a monster that thrives arguably more in non-combat situations.
Let's come up with a fun story:
The Doppelganger wants something: maybe there's a Mist Talisman that allows them to travel back to their home domain, which isn't Dementlieu. Let's say they're actually from Hazlan, a product of bizarre magical experiments. They've been trapped in Dementlieu for decades.
The talisman is an Eye of Hazlik amulet that is owned by a Francois DeMer, who is our party's main questgiver.
Francois talks about how his older brother, Guillame, was a powerful and wealthy arcanist, and provided the family with a degree of comfort and financial security by offering his services to the city. However, ten years ago, Guillame vanished, and the DeMer family has been hemorrhaging money ever since, forced to scrimp and save while trying to maintain their wealthy appearances.
Francois was sure that Guillame had died in the line of duty, but a few days ago, he glimpsed his brother in the marketplace. But when he ran to approach him, his brother seemed to vanish into the crowd.
Then, a day later, Antoinette, one of the scullery maids at the DeMer estate was found with her neck broken behind the manor house.
Francois fears that it is his brother's ghost, coming back to ruin the house. Francois is initially reluctant to admit it, but his brother was a bully and a brute, and prone to violent outbursts. Before he left the last time, he and Francois had gotten into a terrible fight, and Francois revealed that he had drawn up papers to have Guillame taken to an asylum and had the manor's deed transferred to himself. Francois fears that his brother died and now, still angry over their dispute, was now a vengeful ghost.
In fact, the Doppelganger is trying to gain access to Guillame's old arcane laboratory. The Doppelganger, whom we'll call Slate (as in Blank Slate,) came to Dementlieu to deal with the local arcanists who were spying on the magical developments of Hazlan and stealing the powers developed there. Slate was essentially there on a counterintelligence mission, and did kill Guillame as part of this mission, but not before Guillame had destroyed the arcane device that Slate would use to return to Hazlan.
Now, Slate primarily just wants to take the Mist Talisman locked away in the DeMer estate, but each attempt to infiltrate has led to discovery, forcing him to kill so he can cover his tracks.
The party can try to scour Port-A-Lucine in an attempt to find the guy, or they might choose to stake out the house and guard it from infiltration. the DeMer estate has, I think, a number of household staff, including kitchen maids, a butler, perhaps a couple of footmen and maybe a valet who travels with Francois, and then perhaps Francois' wife and two children. With this many people, it's impossible to just fully lock down the house, and doing so will only delay the eventual confrontation with the "ghost."
To amp up the unease, Slate will likely clock that the party has come under Francois' employ, and will attempt to interact with them under the guise of various other people of the city. Using their no-component Detect Thoughts, Slate will be able to potentially delve into the PCs' memories and begin trying to isolate them by appearing as figures from their past.
Slate's strategy is twofold: he wants to draw defenders away from the house so that he can secure the amulet, and he wants to peel off members of the party and ambush them individually.
Thus, it might actually be best to weave this adventure in with other things the party might be doing in Dementlieu - perhaps Francois has become something of an ally to them, and the strange goings-on taking place here cannot be resolved immediately. Give your players enough time to let their guard down a little and have some downtime to go to the city markets where the party might not all be there together.
Slate is not limited to appearing as Guillame - he might appear as members of the DeMer family or the staff. If your players are game for it, you might consider having him secretly replace one of the party members and just having your player actually play as Slate for a bit, until they're discovered (or perhaps once the PC who is being impersonated is free of whatever confinement allowed Slate to replace them, they show up to reveal that he's an imposter.
On a certain level, Slate isn't necessarily wrong to just want to get home, but you want to play him as a spy and assassin - he might just be on a mission, but he's willing to do monstrous things to achieve his objectives. To him, it's nothing personal, but that doesn't make him any less of a murderer.
I think there's a lot of potential in Unsettling Visage, the Doppelganger ability to frighten a target. Especially if this is early on in a campaign (given that they're CR 3, we're still probably in tier 1) you could tease an element of a player's backstory by having him use the face of a figure from their past. While in theory the Doppelganger would need to have successfully delved with Detect Thoughts to learn about this figure, this is Ravenloft, baby! Sometimes things being creepy and disturbing is just the will of the Dark Powers.
Moving on, next we'll be covering a zombaclypse adventure in Falkovnia, and see if we can get a different take on it.
No comments:
Post a Comment