#random top 3

[honourablejester]

My Top 3 Ravenloft Domains

My three favourite (non-Barovia) Domains of Dread, essentially. With maybe some honourable mentions. Apropos of nothing, I’m just idly rereading some things.

No. 3: Bluetspur

The mind flayer domain. It would get points just because I love cosmic horror, but the thing I actually love most about Bluetspur is that it’s not designed for humans. It’s not a domain you can live in. It’s a domain people get taken to, have horrific things done to them, and then (if they’re lucky) get spat back out of again. It’s alien. A dying world, a vast, tortured, chaotic landscape under a dying red sun, such that even its alien inhabitants, the mind flayers, have to live underground. In, to quote, ‘their ancient metropolis-laboratory’, ruled over by a dying god. It’s not survivable. Not for anyone, not even its god. Bluetspur isn’t a domain you adventure in, it’s a domain that is forced upon you. A domain you have to escape, or rescue someone from, but never, not once, a domain you stay in.

If you’re in the mood for alien abduction, wiped memories, horrific psychic experimentation, incredibly inhospitable environments, and an alien world that is genuinely dying all around you, Bluetspur is worth a look. It’s a fantastic backstory horror to give to inhabitants of other domains, too. Extremely Lovecraftian, think the Plateau of Leng, with some William Hope Hodgson throw in for good measure.

No. 2: Richemulot

The plague domain. Look. Have you played Dishonored? Did you enjoy Dishonored? Would you like to play in an equally plague-infested series of cities ruled over by incredibly corrupt aristocrats who would not remotely balk at using bioweapons on their own people for their own selfish ends? Because if so, Richemulot is the domain for you! The rhythm of the domain is dictated by a rat-borne plague that ebbs and flows but is never successfully eradicated, and it may turn out there’s a reason for that. Navigate the fear, the sickness, the quarantines. Do you intend just to survive, to make it out? Or are your sights set higher, towards the eradication of this ever-present threat?

Look. The Pied Piper of Hamelin was one of my favourite fairytales, and Dishonored is one of my favourite video games. Richemulot is about paranoia, terror and control, the claustrophobia of the quarantine, the horror of corruption. Which, granted, given recent events, might not be what anyone’s in the mood for, but I do enjoy it.

No. 1: Lamordia

The Frankenstein domain. With some other influences mixed in. Lamordia is a fascinating mix of gothic, industrial and environmental horror, with a little bit of nuclear paranoia sprinkled in. An industrial hellscape of cities and universities pinned between a frozen sea and an irradiated mountain range, Lamordia is all mines and factories and broken bodies, relentless and remorseless progress, the flesh blackened and burned (by frostbite or radiation) and fed to the machine. You will be ground down, you will be broken, and you will be remade. Lamordia is a very 19th-to-mid-20th century sort of domain, the horrors of the industrial revolution made manifest. Staked out in a frozen and lethal world, this industrial hub uses science to write its own horrors, as terrible as anything one might find in the wastes. There are iron-clad whaling ships carving through the ice to feed the cities, there are mines where strange ores emit dangerous radiation and mutated monsters roam, there are universities where amoral scientists exploit the poor for experimental subjects, there are vast industries fed by bodies both living and dead. It’s a fantastically evocative setting, and I adore it. Lamordia is easily my favourite domain of dread. If you want a campaign built around bodily autonomy, class conflict, mad science, industrial revolution, worker’s rights, and environmental pressures, this is the domain for you.

(For real, I want to play a campaign where the party’s trying to get a worker’s revolution off the ground in Ludendorf, complicated by the facts that a) without industry the city literally freezes and starves to death, b) it’s hard to maintain morale when the factory bosses can, with the help of the universities and their mysterious backer, literally kill you, rebuild you, and put your corpse back on the assembly line, and c) death is the least worrying fate you could be landed with for trying to shake up the status quo. I don’t know, I feel like that would be an interesting storyline, you know?)

But, yes. Favourite Ravenloft domain, for sure.

Honourable mentions:

Cyre 1313, The Mourning Rail. It’s a haunted train that travels the Mists, fleeing a disaster they don’t realise has already killed them, inhabited by ghosts who don’t realise they’re dead, and a mysterious passenger who damned them all once upon a time. It’s fantastic, no notes.

The Sea of Sorrows. Just. The whole thing. I love nautical horror, we all know this.

Mordent. It’s just a good old-fashioned haunted-house-and-ghostly-moors domain, and I’m a sucker for a classic ghost story.

So, for a summary, I did rather enjoy Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft? Heh. I do like my fantasy (and science fiction) with a generous dash of horror for spice. And Ravenloft has a lot to offer outside of Barovia and Strahd, though of course I’d never knock the OG darklord and his domain.

Pardon the random diversion, and carry on!

[irenespring]

Today I would like to shout out that one random Twitter person who made up that JD Vance bragged about fucking a couch.

Imagine making a random shitpost and less than two months later your joke is being used by a major party nominee for Vice President on live television at his introduction rally, earning him thunderous applause.

That poster must be having quite the experience.

[nectar-cellar]

i rly caught the cas bug 🤧

@sourlemonsimblr aster skin

@elitisim xxblacksims curly braids hair

[kafka-ohdear]

idk what anymore i just think about slider's habit of wrapping an arm around ice's shoulder a lot. like imagine sometimes he just subconsciously do it; even when he's talking to someone else, reading a newpaper, listening to music. he just keep an arm around ice like that. and imagine this as well; they go on a summer vacation and spend a lot of time at the beach; they are both sunburnt when they comeback for sure, but there's a spot on ice's shouder that remains untouched.

the shape of that spot looks weirdly like an arm, one that the whole academy knows is slider's.

however, ice remains clueless about that spot himself, and is confused whenever mav or goose giggles when he sees ice's bare back exposed.

[stealingpotatoes]

Love arkane's games so much and just 100 percented deathloop recently. What do you think of the upcoming Blade if you have an oppinion?

i actually had no idea they were making a blade game!! but ARKANE STUDIOS I LOVE YOUU speaking of deathloop here's a last-year doodle of fia i never had an excuse to post!!

[7clubs]

think she needed more divorced programmer vibes

[sysig]

*You’re starting to feel very sleepy... (Patreon)

[rayven-ray]

Random thought: i cannot stop thinking about this scene despite having read it first time months ago

It's interesting from a point that Rewind had to ponder about the value of his relationships with Dominus and Chromedome in a hypothetical situation where only one could live

And the pondering resurfaces in the final issues, where the situation is not hypothetical anymore

I love this parallel

[icewindandboringhorror]

A little costume with eyebrow whiskers again.. making their return lol..

[itz-pandora]

There's only one person I truly hate with all my being

[19burstraat]

my six of crows fics: 2021-23

[she-posts-nerdy-stuff]

Four of my top 5 songs were by the same artist and that artist was third in my top five artists idk how to take that

[averagemrfox]

Is it wild for me to think that one of the best parts of the v5 finale was the Salem illusion scene?

Like it’s the first time our heroes see their BBEG it’s significant to me

But also Blake being the one to ask who was that and Ozcar answering “an illusion but an accurate one��� which MEANS AND CLARIFIES ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO BLAKE IN PARTICULAR

[estah]

home....✨🦆🐌🌼

[semi-senioritis]

Raise your hand if you were personally victimized by the latest comic 🙋🏽‍♀️

Thanks for rubbing salt into the wound, Vivinos 😭 knowing Till had a loving mother before this shit show is NOT helping.

[httpiastri]

happy bday paul <3