#Icon of Ravenloft

[darklordazalin]

Ravenloft Lore Tuesdays

Domain Focus for May: Barovia – The First Domain of not quite the First Vampire Domain Formation: 351 BC

Lore: Folktale - The Icon of Ravenloft

There are many folktales throughout the Demiplanes of Dread and though many of the ones told in Barovia are related to vampires and blood drinkers, this particular tale is in regard to a rather powerful holy object that is considered the ‘sister’ to the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind.

When the von Zarovich family first arrived in Barovia, a dying raven fell at the feet of Mihaela von Zarovich. Although, perhaps, a more than proper response when encountering certain members of this bloodline, Mihaela was said to take pity upon the bird and cradled it in her arms. She prayed to St. Andral to bless the corvid and a moment later, the raven flew from her hands and off into the distant mountains.

The priests of St. Andral declared this event a miracle, though more likely the bird was fatigue and the warmth of a human body was all it needed to regain its strength. Regardless, the priests created the Icon of Ravenloft in honor of this event.

The icon is a silver statuette of a raven with tiny diamonds for its eyes. A powerful object, when in the hands of a cleric or paladin, it can be used to turn away the strongest of undead creatures as well as cure the injured. Of course, those with ill intent are more often than not harmed by merely touching the icon.

The Icon of Ravenloft in Games:

The simplest way to use the Icon in a game is to include it as one of the items the characters need to find before encountering Strahd. It would be very helpful in an encounter with him and you could always give it additional bonuses when combined with the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind. This can be done in any version of the Strahd adventure as they all include the card reading at the beginning.

The Icon itself, if using 5e stats would like translate to either giving disadvantage to Undead saving vs being turned or add a +1 bonus to the Save DC of the Cleric/Paladin wielding it. Also, would be able to cast Cure Wound probably 3 times a day.

If your characters are questing throughout the Demiplanes there are a couple other options – You can run an adventure similar to From the Shadows (2e) in which Azalin sends characters back in time to steal the Icon for him before it is lost. You can use this story to have Strahd hire adventurers to steal it back from Azalin’s Castle or the Black Vault of Il Aluk (or Necropolis depending on what timeline you’re going with). Another potential NPC that would be interesting in owning the Icon are any of the wereravens from the Keepers of the Feather, Van Ritchen, Lyssa von Zarovich, and honestly any individual that worships St. Andral or the Morning Lord. Seeing as the Icon could be anywhere, its an easy item to add as a ‘fetch’ quest in practically any Domain.

[pigeon-princess]

A collection of goofy sketches I've made from our Curse of Strahd campaign

[thyeternalhunger]

Dawn in Flaness

where Azal'Lan overlooks from his castle

[theravenloftwanderers]

Curse of Strahd: The Ravenloft Wanderers

- The wanderers -

- Selari of Tyrus, Aasimar, Paladin

- Mendax Renatus, Tiefling, Warlock

- Ophelia Wellings, Elf, Rogue

Unfortunately had to repost.

Party line up time YUHHHH. So it's about time I gave a brief about the so called wanderers.

Their party was formed at none other then a tavern. None of them seemed to get along their motives questioned by one another quite often. But in a weird turn of events when they panicked they worked well together.

Our DM use to lovingly refer to the party as the band of fuck ups. Mainly because we never came up with a party name until after the campaign finished where it turned into a fun animatic series on my YouTube.

Turns out to be a very fitting name considering the amount of fuck ups accumulated throughout the game and yet by sheer luck the party survived, successfully delivering Strahd to his final moments.

[malzenn]

jo, my warlock/rogue in our ravenloft/cos sequel campaign

i love her, she's so sweet (and unhinged)

[sydney-smith467]

The moment in a d&d session when both you and your character align so perfectly that when you panic at another character getting possessed (DESPITE IT BEING THE PLAN), it’s 100% in character when you pin her against the wall with the intent of tying her up and completely forgetting the rest of the plan until another character comes up like uhhhhhh…..wasn’t that supported to happen?

[pitchmoss]

🔮Mandatory Mods: these are the ones that make the pretty/gameplay mods work.

BG3 Script Extender: The Script Extender adds Lua/Osiris scripting support to the game.

BG3 Mod Manager: What it says on the tin; allows you to organize and import mods to your game.

Improved UI: Changes existing UI to enhance the current modding scene by removing intrusive in-game warning and enhancing character creation options.

Item Shipment Framework: This framework is designed to supersede Tutorial Chest usage by enabling mod authors to easily add new items to the camp chests and player inventories.

Volition Cabinet: A library mod for creator's other mods.

IMPORTANT: When modding on Nexus, don't ignore pop-ups before downloading because some particular mods require some less common support mods to work. I don't list every single one here especially if it's like, a one-off for one mod. (Nexus will give you a pop-up before downloading so you don't miss it)

Be sure to check Requirements and creator's additional info + FAQ when downloading mods. GLHF <3

🐲Gameplay Mods

Origin Themed Weapons & Cloaks: A selection of weapons and cloaks inspired by and for the origin characters. (Not game breaking or over powered).

havsglimt's Class Mods: This creator makes really good looking class mods from existing settings like Grim Hollow's First Vampire Warlock, College of Spirits Bard from Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, Swarmkeeper Ranger from Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, and Graviturgy Wizard inspired by Wildemount's Dunamancy Wizard.

🌈Aesthetic Mods: let’s beautify this game some more!!

Unique Tav Custom Appearance: Gives Tav unique body textures and model, unique face makeup textures, unique face tattoo textures, and also adds body tattoos as an option. I also upscaled the body tattoos because I love you. Now you are very special.

@astarionposting aka MantisMods on Patreon makes fantastic face presets, recreating some of our favorite fantasy characters to play as in BG3. I currently have her OC Presets VOL. I, House of the Dragon Presets, and Ada Wong from RE.

@cedastarions also on Patreon and Nexus, makes a wide variety of face presets for pretty much any style of character in BG3, along with some very pretty Reshades. I have the beautiful Maya and Talia, Solo and Aurora Presets.

Basket Full of Equipment SFW: Over 800 pieces of new armor and equipment, mainly for human-like races. (Not as overwhelming to navigate as it may seem; organized. Compatible with dye mods).

Camp Clothes in the Camp Chest: This mod adds a new wardrobe to the camp chest, housing all camp clothes, shoes, and underwear.

Astralitie makes beautiful, fun mods like: Elven Anthology, Natural & Fantasy Skintones, More Hair Colors, and Feywild Eyes.

Tav's Hair Salon: Collection of hairstyles. Mostly for elf/half-elf/drow/human/tiefling bodytypes 1&2. Not an override, they're additional hairs added to your game.

Icon and Race Patches for Tav's Hair Salon: Adding icons to the hairs and to add compatibility with some custom race mods.

Piercing Improvement: Adds physics to piercings, so they look animated when the character moves.

Extra Dyes for the Fashionable Folk of Faerun: Adds new, unlimited-use dyes to the game! (Yes, they're actually unlimited and also, gorgeous.)

Kryo's Dice Collection: A collection of various dice skins based on the vanilla Behir Blue die. (I've had 0 problem with this)

[anantplayingdnd]

In honor of pride month I want to hear about how queer you made Barovia please and thank you.

For my game:

Strahd is a bisexual king right out of the book, which is awesome.

Rahadin is asexual, but not in like, an ace kind of way. Like in a single-celled organism kind of way.

Ireena is aroace! A decision partly inspired by a certain pool of water (iykyk), and also because she’s a little bit my self-insert. A PC hit on her in like session four and was immediately told, “Do not ever speak to me that way again.” She’s iconic and I adore her.

IZMARK. IZ. GAY. And madly in love with the druid. Unfortunately Izmark does not know he is gay. He believes it is very normal to lovingly stare into your homie's eyes and look down at his lips and imagine what it would be like to kiss him. And it is very normal to comment on how attractive your homie is, cause that's just what bros do.

Vollenta is a beautiful lesbian who refuses to let the fact that she is married to Strahd change the fact that she is a lesbian and nobody will tell her or her pile of bodies otherwise.

Ludmilla is on the ace spectrum. I mean, come on. She's with the guy for power and grant money. She says she loves him, and they're definitely intimate, but she's the kind of girly to take notes before during and after, you know?

Escher. What even needs to be said about Escher. He's Ravenloft's resident twink and proud of it. He's a little lonely and can't stop thinking about the boy he was in love with when he was young, who is now old and grizzled from age, while Escher himself remains the same age he was when he betrayed his lover and chose Strahd instead, but like... he's also pretty and immortal, so who cares?

(Escher Bonus Content: Two moms! They loved him very much and were upsettingly supportive of his decision to become Strahd's newest consort)

Anastrasya: idk she's dead pre-campaign in mine so if you came here looking for commentary on her you will not get it.

Ezmerelda is a trans lesbian! She's gorgeous and I adore her. She's just so confident that she can kill Strahd on her own and I think she's right for that. I knew I wanted her to be a love interest for one of my PCs, and it just so happens that the player in question has a type.

Danika is also bi, and she's very happily married to her wonderful little husband. This hasn't come up in the campaign at all it's just something I know to be true in my heart.

The Abbot: Gender! Fluid! Call them whatever you want. He/him when you want to play on ideas of masculinity in religious circles, they/them when you want to make them seem undefinable, she/her when you want your PCs to reflect on how much mom trauma they all have :)

Sergei is straight but that man loves the queer community so much and he deserves an honorable mention.

Arrigal is gay and very pissed that the party keeps knocking on his wagon door at 3am. His ex-husband/current boyfriend has been coerced into co-parenting a child with the cleric.

Edit: FORGOT ABOUT THE RESIDENT SPOOKY SPECTRAL LADS BUT TO BE FAIR THEY ARE CANON AND MY PARTY ISN’T THERE YET

There's definitely others but these are my versions of the little guys. I am so interested to hear other people's takes on them.

[horrorvillaintourney]

DRACULA SMACKDOWN ROUND 1 MATCH 6: Dracula (Jetpack Dracula) vs. Count Strahd von Zarovich (DnD 5E: The Curse Of Strahd)

PROPAGANDA FOR JETPACK DRACULA:

“They have a jetpack.”

PROPAGANDA FOR STRAHD:

“As THE iconic villain of D&D's Ravenloft gothic horror setting, Strahd is fully just Dracula slightly reskinned for trademark purposes. [...] He checks boxes from history AND the source novel AND pop culture at once. Ancient vampire who slides easily between the full dramatic gothic bitch black and red formal-wear aesthetic and vague Eastern European Armoured Warlord Vibes, check.  Kidnaps, torments and murders people for entertainment.  Has a cadre of subordinate vampire "consorts" and enslaved vampire spawn.  Ancestral castle on a sheer cliff.  Can control and/or turn into wolves, bats and mist. King of the gaslighters, and add a heaping scoop of manipulate & manwhore in for good measure.  Extremely punchable!”

[dndhistory]

495. Tracy and Laura Hickman - I10: Ravenloft II: The House on Gryphon Hill (1986)

Although the Hickmans' name is at the top of the module and they are credited as authors, in the inner cover you get a better credit when it tells you that the module is "based on an outline by" the Hickmans. In fact, the real authors, loosely basing themselves on the Hickmans' ideas, are David "Zeb" Cook, Jeff Grubb, Harold Johnson and Douglas Niles. This is the case because, as we saw when Tracy Hickman gave his farewells at the end of the Dragonlance Legends series, the Hickmans have by now left TSR and started following their own careers in fantasy fiction.

Well, with a title like Ravenloft II, you would presume that this would be a straight sequel to the original Ravenloft... you'd be wrong. Firstly the module feels the need to bring back the most iconic thing of the first module: Strahd. But, if you played the first module, Strahd is dead... so how do you do that? Well, you throw away everything that happened in Ravenloft and make it into a dream. Feels a bit cheap, and it is a bit cheap.

However, the sheer fun of returning to Ravenloft and facing Strahd once again might be enough to make this attractive to a DM and their player, if that is so then you could do worse that this... but really there is enough replayability in the original Ravenloft, with the randomized Tarokka system, that you'd probably have more fun running the original again, then settling for an inferior sequel.

[spiritsession]

Independent DnD oc

Google Doc Spotify Pinterest

Bio and Rules under cut

Sideblog, follows back from Murderreign!

**Icon border by sibylsource

-

Name: Alasdair Greives

Age: 30

Height: 6'4"

Gender: Nonbinary (They/He) (AFAB, but please don’t have your muse know this by default)

Personality: A very animated person with a macabre sense of humor. Can be rather quick to anger and highly defensive when certain nerves are pressed. Doesn’t react well to flirting.

Class: College of Spirits Bard

Species: Dhampir/Satyr

Alignment: Chaotic Neutral

Strength: 8

Dexterity: 18

Constitution: 13

Intelligence: 12

Wisdom: 11

Charisma: 19

**This character has the Dark Gift from the Ravenloft expansion called Gathering Whispers

You are haunted by spiritual beings, whether the souls of the departed or entities from another plane. Their voices endlessly whisper, taunt, or cajole, sometimes rising to unearthly howls. Only you can perceive the spirits, unless you allow them to speak through you. The spirits are intangible and invisible; anyone who can see invisible creatures sees only fleeting glimpses of these spirits as they haunt you.

Spirit Whispers. You learn the Message cantrip if you don’t already know it, and require no components to cast it. When you cast the spell, the messages are delivered by one of your whispering spirits rather than you or the target’s voice. Your spellcasting ability for this spell is Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma (your choice when you gain this Dark Gift).Sudden Cacophony. When you are hit by an attack roll, you can use your reaction to channel your haunting spirits, letting their voices howl through you. If the attacker isn’t deafened, add your proficiency bonus to your AC against that attack, potentially causing it to miss. Once this trait causes an attack to miss, you can’t use the trait again until you finish a long rest.Voices from Beyond. Immediately after you make an attack roll, an ability check, or a saving throw and roll a 1 on the d20, the haunting voices grow too loud to ignore. Roll on the Voices from Beyond table to determine the effect of these voices. Once one of these effects occurs, none of these haunting voices manifest again until you finish a short or long rest.

-

This character will involve themes of child neglect, transphobia, sexual assault mentions, fantasy racism (toward dhampirs), references to mental illness in a derogatory manner (only mentioned due to backstory reasons)

The scorned child of a small forest village, their early years were plagued with heartache and emotional neglect. After disappearing into the woods under mysterious circumstances, only to return completely unharmed two weeks later… with claims of being able to speak with the dead the child was promptly outcasted by the rest of the village.

For the remainder of their youth, they were the subject of isolation, bullying and worse from local villagers young and old.

No matter how many times they pleaded with their mother for protection, help, advice, anything, all she would tell them is that ‘if they wanted it to stop then they just needed to shut up and act normal for once’.

During the years since their disappearance, they’d made no attempt to hide their newfound ‘gift’, finding the idea of being able to gain wisdom or even help those who have passed fascinating. The other villagers… clearly didn’t feel the same.

As time moved on Alasdair grew resentful of the villagers, as well as their mother. They began to cling onto their gift, doubling down and convincing themself that they’d been given this gift for a reason. They were chosen for a specific duty, to record and preserve the stories of the dead.

They left the village, and began a journey as a traveling poet, writing down the stories that spirits would tell them and turning them into poetry to share with the world.

-

▍ ❝   RULE ONE. Crossover friendly; I prefer rping with fandoms i’m familiar with, but i’m open to those i’m not as well. You’ll just have to excuse me for any mistakes since I won’t be too familiar with your muse or their world.

▍ ❝   RULE TWO. Multiverse/Multiship; All relationships will take place in different verses.

▍ ❝   RULE THREE. Do not force ship; Do not try to force your muse on mine and do not get upset if I happen to say no to your ship. Not every ship is going to work, that’s just how it is.

▍ ❝   RULE FOUR. Mun is 25+; Due to the nature of this character, I will ONLY interact with those that are also 18+.

▍ ❝   RULE FIVE. No godmodding; I control my character, you control yours. Do not have your muse auto-hit mine, or narrate anything happening to my character without discussing it with me first. It’s really quite infuriating and can leading to a lot of things happening to my character that my character should have reasonably been able to get out of or would be generally ooc.

▍ ❝   RULE SIX. I am generally pretty quick with replies. I usually respond within 3 days, a week at most. If I take longer then that it means i’m probably busy with other blogs and haven’t checked in. Feel free to send in message if i’ve gone a week without replying and you see me still being active. I might have missed your reply or ask somehow.

▍ ❝   RULE SEVEN. Triggers; Due to the nature of Alasdair's backstory there will be prominent themes of Death, Ghosts, Violence, mentions of SA, PTSD, Mentions of Transphobia, Suicidal Ideology, and more.

[darklordazalin]

Going to be playing in a DnD game set in Sigil, so I drew my PC for it. Vincent Letum Death Cleric of [retracted], Spirit Medium at the Fortune's Wheel, and goth icon who spends his time posing in cemeteries (not really but kind of really).

I usually don't share non-Ravenloft stuff on here but I am very excited to not only be back in Sigil but as a player for once!

[bean-cookies]

My special wizard boy ❤

Frexennosin Arriastis, chosen virtue name: Studious (Stu) - 24 years old, School of Divination wizard, tiefling, scholar, poet, the sweetest cinnamon roll, precious baby brother, bashful bookworm, personification of a feminist counterpoint to Strahd's bullshit, big softie, incredibly horny but always a respectful gentleman, bully magnet, sugar addict, devoted husband, huge fucking nerd, patron saint of hopeless romantics and anxious burnt-out gifted kids, who is very gradually becoming an icon of male body positivity.

This outfit is what Stu is currently wearing while trudging through the wretched bowels of Castle Ravenloft - including his new (*sigh* …cursed) wedding ring.

Not pictured: his wretched little undead tressym familiar, and his tough badass monster-slaying dhampir wife.

[ravenloftbythelamplight]

Was making character icons for fun and I got a little carried away with this first one-

I have not formally introduced this handsome fella but he's an NPC(? He hasn't gotten to actually be an NPC yet but I feel like calling him a "Ravenloft fan character" sounds a wee bit silly) I cooked up: he's the best, he's the worst; he's a silly lil' guy; an entirely mortal, average human with no magic and absolutely no ambitions beyond what his research institute's benefactor has been explicitly told about. No sir, nothing outside of what the paperwork says going on here, nuh-uh. Also, he's great at parties and everyone who works for him gets mandatory paid vacation time.

Both versions without the eye under the cut:

[vulpixelates]

OC TAG GAME

tysm to @nuwanders for the tag!

rules: sort your OCs into the below categories and (optionally) make them in this picrew.

tagging: anyone who would like to participate! this was fun and i love hearing about y'all's ocs 💕 i am just truly terrible at remembering usernames and noticing who likes to do this kinda thing 😅

these all ended up being ttrpg characters bc ofc they did aowifejaoiwf also, i made sure to choose a different one for each even if maaaaybe caerellia might be both my favorite AND the meanest

it's so hard to pick a favorite but if i HAVE TO, it has to be caerellia asperanas. she's my most extra character and i am so utterly obsessed w her and the stories that we tell w her. she's an icon!!

(please excuse this poor approximation of her 😂 she isn't actually gray. i tried to use my own art but it was very blurry sized down for some reason and i didn't have time to fix it aoiejfa)

iris is my latest gal! i made her as an extra character for a modern text-based ttrpg game we play on discord w some pals and she's a delight. she is an ex-hacker who so desperately wants to be a hacker again but she's legally not allowed to touch computers anymore. she and her wife ran away together after she left her life of crime and adopted two kids, and she writes lesbian romance novels.

okay, okay: i definitely have long lost ocs that i made when i was a teenager that i could have included here but honestly, i don't remember them! so i'll go with elen "i'd steal an extra horse for you" arel bc she was my very first d&d character from my very first game AND the first oc i really loved as an adult.

this was tough bc i don't really oaifjeoai like making mean ocs so tatjana is probably the closest to truly mean, mostly just bc she uh. participates in ritual sacrifice and actively discriminates against the undead and finds them to be unholy abominations. 💔 but she's really just trying her best out here in the dog-eat-dog plane of ravenloft.

this one was easy: saga, hands down. she is my soft girl, despite uh almost quite literally being made of stone. i love her.

this made me realize that i have not ever really posted about ashes but going from a 20+ level fighter and the leader of asmodeus's armies to a banished first level cleric of redemption would make you grouchy too!

ary, buddy, i'm sorry, but you're the biggest dumbass i've ever played and i love you for it!!! i think they have a -1 to INT despite being one of my highest WIS characters aijfaoiwf

eaven is the eladrin wizard that i made to playtest the strixhaven setting that we homebrewified w my wife/dm! she'd gotta be the smartest bc she was literally made to be a scholar (tho i do have a handful of other characters who could fit.) this is her spring form w the pink hair but she has a few different seasonal appearances.

val flores is one of my modern ttrpg girlies; she is a HUGE FUCKIN' DORK who loves ttrpgs so i think we'd get along the best. also, chronically ill bitches gotta stick together.

[animatedbattlemaps]

🏰 Enter the foreboding halls of Castle Ravenloft... 🌙

Adventurers, brace yourselves for a journey into the heart of darkness with our latest animated battle map: Curse of Strahd: Castle Ravenloft. Experience the gothic horror and eerie ambiance of Strahd's lair in a whole new dimension. 🦇

Perfect for bringing the iconic Dungeons and Dragons campaign to life, this map adds a layer of immersive detail that will captivate your players. From the echoing halls to the shadowy corners, every element is designed to enhance your storytelling.

🔥 Check out this map and explore our entire collection at Patreon. Your support helps us create more stunning maps for your adventures!